Thursdays With Raider: Andrew Bogut Redux
Editors Note: Sometimes life gets in the way so Raider and I will be skipping predictions this week.
Raider Thoughts
As I‘m sure you’ve heard, Andrew Bogut made his debut with the Warriors this past week. In typical Raider fashion, one would think this would give me some license to say things like “wow, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson can shoot from anywhere, Festus Ezeli doesn’t look like a complete stiff, Brandon Rush and Carl Landry can come off the bench and there’s no dropoff in production, and Bogut just might make the Bay Area forget about Monta Ellis”. Yes, it’s not without some drawbacks. Brandon Rush tore his ACL on Friday against Memphis and for the time being, Bogut can’t play the back half of back-to-back games, and I still have nightmares that Mark Jackson will go back to preaching and we’ll be stuck with Garry St. Jean or Brian Winters again. But I did have a Ute basketball related thought concerning Bogut.
Imagine if you will, the Utes rent the Wayback Machine for a day and pluck the following team from the ether:
C-Bogut
F-Mottola
F-Van Horn
G-Nick Jacobsen
G-Andre
Perhaps you saw what I did there and noticed that I grafted the 98 almost national champions and mixed in the best from the Bogut/Giac era. In all seriousness though, aside from probably the Dream Team or the ’87 Lakers, who beats that team? Add some depth–which was always the most significant issue against Kentucky back in the day–and those feral fornicators from Lexington might have been beaten. And of course, there will be those nerds out there that will say “what about Josh Grant, Michael Doleac, Billy McGill, Arnie Ferrin, Wat Misaka, etc”. Fine, you all can debate that, but as for me, I want a team that can win a whole bunch of games in my own head. Getting back to Bogut, though, do you think he was a more dominant player than either Van Horn or ‘Dre? Yes, Van Horn had that, but I think it was to a much different degree. Maybe I’m remembering that era wrong, but your insight would be greatly appreciated.
By the way, I’ve mulled around the idea of an off-season topic where you and I discuss various Ute moments of the past, both football and basketball, and you and I can add various commentary and “what if’s” to it. It would be a little therapudic depending on the event and it would also give our new conference foes some more insight into the triumph and tragedy of Utedom. Thinking out loud is a gift of mine, I suppose.
MAC Thoughts
That becomes an interesting question. Would adding Andrew Bogut and Nick Jacobsen to the 1998 team be enough to bring us a title. I think almost certainly yes as you could have done a great deal with that front like being able to run Mike Doleac in, move Bogut to the 4 and go really big or a variety of things. Nick gives us another shooter. If we had a solid back-up PG, that could have been a dominant team, one to remember. Especially if you could include a Britton Johnsen minus whatever he lost on his mission.
But I want to give a quick shout out to a forgotten hero of the 1998 team, I give you David Jackson. Jackson was huge in that Elite 8 game and I always felt that his loss was a bigger factor to the coming collapse of Utah hoops than anyone really admits. He transferred to Oregon and then had serious injury issues so people tend to discount him. But I think he’d have been a player.
Raider Thoughts
Okay, other things:
–It’s not enough that Boise State has to annoy me in the college football world, they have to do it in the NFL now, too.
–Clearly, this is something I could see Bronco Mendenhall saying.
–Lost in the shuffle of dismantling Wazzu on Saturday, during the first offensive series where the offense went three and out, I kept hearing in my section “aw, come on Brian” and “nice play calling!” I‘ve said this before and I’ll say it again: being theoffensive coordinator at the University of Utah is the toughest, most scrutinized job in the entire state and for a few reasons: 1) everybody plays XBoX and Playstationnow, so clearly the playbook in NCAA Football is, like, exactly the same one that BJ has. 2) fans, being fans, like to see lots and lots of oh-fence, as Rick Majerus wouldlikely put it. I’m not going to “go there” myself, but you ought to know that some folks out there have that mindset and that’s one of your 75 soap boxes.
–Is Reggie Dunn the new Errol Tucker? That might be a topic for a “Ute Revisited” post.
MAC Thoughts
Yeah, Mr. Fantasy Doug Martin did some work. But take some relief in knowing that Boise lost at home to San Diego St and will probably end its run in the MWC with never having actually won the MWC conference. HAHAHA. You know I get the feeling that Chris Petersen might start to rethink this whole Boise thing.
As I was speaking last week, its amazing a franchise could crap the bed as badly as the Dodgers have. It’s like BYU’s annual talk about National Titles. How about trying to win a State Championship first Dodgers and then go from there.
I will say one of the things I miss about not being in the stands at Rice Eccles is hearing all the stupid theories as to why we aren’t leading 100-0. There is a guy on the other side of N23 who, any time the defense is struggling, blames our poor huddling technique. And he is sure he is right because Utah doesn’t huddle like he did in high school. I will say, having spent the season as an Arizona season ticket holder, I don’t hear the truly stupid things like I did at Utah. But then again, when you’ve had the lack of football success like Arizona, maybe you just don’t care.
The thing about Tucker, he came before me. And while I appreciate what he did, I don’t feel comfortable having not seen it. So, and I realize this is Ute Blasphemy, I have to wonder how much is Tucker being great and how much, everything about Utah Football sucked so they remember Tucker more vividly.
See you next week.