NMSooner'80
5/13/2009, 10:42 AM
- The preseason favorite in the Big 8 in '88 was Missouri, followed by Kansas, then OU.
- Kansas was the preseason No. 1 team in the nation in Basketball Times.
- OU was thought to be in a rebuilding year, after losing Tim McCalister, Choo Kennedy and David Johnson. The two returning starters were second-year JC's, Ricky Grace and Harvey Grant. Some in the Oklahoma media thought OU might fall behind OSU and its "recruiting machine," Leonard Hamilton.
I'm posting this, and on a board that doesn't include Jaysquawks, because I get so sick of the revisionist history behind the so-called "Danny and the Miracles" and their disgusting run through the NCAA tourney. The main fact involving KU was that they underachieved all season, until they caught fire late in the regular season and even beat KSU in Manhattan. That actually helped OU win the league outright - otherwise it'd have been a co-championship with K-State at 12-2.
Of course, I really get sick of the never-ending notion that KU represented truth, justice and the American way, and the 1988 Sooners represented all Evil. Those were some really good kids on that OU team; the problem that many in the non-Oklahoma media had with them was that they won easily and had too much fun doing it.
I also don't think it was a coincidence that OU was almost universally hated in the media because they didn't like Tubbs. It was okay to take pot-shots at him, because he's White. If the media went after John Thompson at Georgetown (another so-called "villian" of that era of college basketball, it was called racism back then.
The whole "OU won with talent; KU won with better coaching" also still steams me to this day. OU had no high school All-Americans; KU did (Manning, Randall, Pritchard), but they just weren't flashy. And, of course in the cases of Randall and Pritchard, they were pigmentally challenged. It was possible, even back then, for a White player to have talent. But most media-darling teams were more racially-mixed than OU was, and didn't put up the numbers that OU did. In the eyes of many media types, it seemed like they thought of slow-down ball as being "better coached" for whatever reason. Arizona, when it first burst onto the scene that year, was another media darling.
And, people old enough to remember that debacle may also remember the stories of how many KU fans followed the OU team bus back to their hotel, so they could taunt the players that much more. Of course, this was all justified because OU was pure Evil and deserved to lose to the self-proclaimed "class program" of the region.
For that matter, both Kansas schools, when I was an OU student from '76-80, had that self-important image of how classy they were. Ugh! KU just elevated that arrogance to new heights.
- Kansas was the preseason No. 1 team in the nation in Basketball Times.
- OU was thought to be in a rebuilding year, after losing Tim McCalister, Choo Kennedy and David Johnson. The two returning starters were second-year JC's, Ricky Grace and Harvey Grant. Some in the Oklahoma media thought OU might fall behind OSU and its "recruiting machine," Leonard Hamilton.
I'm posting this, and on a board that doesn't include Jaysquawks, because I get so sick of the revisionist history behind the so-called "Danny and the Miracles" and their disgusting run through the NCAA tourney. The main fact involving KU was that they underachieved all season, until they caught fire late in the regular season and even beat KSU in Manhattan. That actually helped OU win the league outright - otherwise it'd have been a co-championship with K-State at 12-2.
Of course, I really get sick of the never-ending notion that KU represented truth, justice and the American way, and the 1988 Sooners represented all Evil. Those were some really good kids on that OU team; the problem that many in the non-Oklahoma media had with them was that they won easily and had too much fun doing it.
I also don't think it was a coincidence that OU was almost universally hated in the media because they didn't like Tubbs. It was okay to take pot-shots at him, because he's White. If the media went after John Thompson at Georgetown (another so-called "villian" of that era of college basketball, it was called racism back then.
The whole "OU won with talent; KU won with better coaching" also still steams me to this day. OU had no high school All-Americans; KU did (Manning, Randall, Pritchard), but they just weren't flashy. And, of course in the cases of Randall and Pritchard, they were pigmentally challenged. It was possible, even back then, for a White player to have talent. But most media-darling teams were more racially-mixed than OU was, and didn't put up the numbers that OU did. In the eyes of many media types, it seemed like they thought of slow-down ball as being "better coached" for whatever reason. Arizona, when it first burst onto the scene that year, was another media darling.
And, people old enough to remember that debacle may also remember the stories of how many KU fans followed the OU team bus back to their hotel, so they could taunt the players that much more. Of course, this was all justified because OU was pure Evil and deserved to lose to the self-proclaimed "class program" of the region.
For that matter, both Kansas schools, when I was an OU student from '76-80, had that self-important image of how classy they were. Ugh! KU just elevated that arrogance to new heights.