Staff turnover, and an anniversary of sorts
Buckley leaves the staff, the basketball team heads to Starkville and I reminisce on my delightful hoops career
Hope everyone had a good week and the weekend is off to a great start. We’ve got a pair of new podcasts out since our last newsletter.
Collin Brister and I previewed the Ole Miss baseball season. Don’t roll your eyes. We discussed all the topics you’re likely thinking about right now, debating whether you’re going to buy in again and why you want to buy a Mike Bianco dart board after his LSU flirtation. We hit all of that and who will play where and who the rotation will be. Check that out here or anywhere you get your podcasts.
Mailbag Friday covering baseball rotation, Elko’s legacy and would I rather be able to talk to animals or speak any language. Check that out here or anywhere you get your podcasts.
We’ve got some basketball, golf, staff turnover and an anniversary of sorts to get to today.
A quick programming note: We have open advertising slots for both the newsletter and the podcast. We’ve worked hard to build an audience that’s well-worth advertising to. Honestly, it is still sort of crazy to me to look at how quickly all of this has grown in such a short amount of time. If you think your business might be a good fit, shoot me an email. I can promise you it’ll be worth it. Thanks, now buckle up.
Buckley leaves Ole Miss staff
Ole Miss has parted ways with cornerbacks coach Terrell Buckley. I don’t really know a whole lot about what specifically went into this decision, but I can tell you it didn’t really sound like much of a surprise from anyone around the program and that there were rumblings of this as early as mid-December. Buckley wasn’t exactly a dynamic recruiter while at Ole Miss, and with Chris Partridge in charge of the defense now, perhaps he wanted to get someone else in there? I am not sure. Buckley was seen as a great get when Ole Miss picked him up from Mississippi State after Joe Moorhead was fire. But this is a ‘what have you done for me lately’ business and Buckley was a bit underwhelming on the recruiting front.
Really, the first thing that came to my mind after seeing this news become official is that Derrick Nix and Chris Partridge are the only two remaining coaches from Kiffin’s original staff. Turnover is commonplace in college football, but to have this amount of turnover in two years is certainly a little bit more than your average staff attrition. It’s not necessarily a bad thing if Kiffin replaces all the departures with people who are good at their job. He’s been pretty spot-on from a hiring standpoint so far, but this goes back to the baseball analogy we’ve discussed time and time again in this space: Kiffin’s batting average is great, but the more at-bats he gets in terms of hiring coaches, the better chance that average goes down. So far, so good. We’ll see what it looks like next year.
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Weis Jr. has always had a clarity of purpose
I wrote a story for RebelGrove.com on Friday about new Ole Miss offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr and how his childhood year’s being around his father’s program at Notre Dame shaped his path to becoming an SEC offensive coordinator at 28 years old. I talked to John Latina and Frank Verducci for the story. Why? Latina was David Cutcliffe’s offensive line coach at Ole Miss and is someone I have gotten to know a little bit through various stories and interviews over the years. Latina was the offensive line coach on Weis Sr.’s staff at Notre Dame. Verducci actually replaced Latina in Weis’s final year in South Bend and, oddly enough, is the brother of legendary baseball write Tom Verducci.
Anyway, both had some pretty cool stories about Charlie Jr. sitting in film sessions and legitimately learning and preparing to become a full-time football coach before he even had a driver’s license. This one quote from Verducci stuck out.
"Not too many 14-year-old kids have such clarity on what they want to be and also have the wherewithal to pursue it at whatever cost," Verducci said. "For him, it was the hours and hours invested being in those meetings. Most of his buddies are out playing video games. Charlie Jr. was watching tape.”
I went into this just wanting to learn a little more about the guy, and I left fascinated by his path. Everyone talks about how young he is and being FAU’s offensive coordinator at 24 (the youngest coordinator in college football history), but I had never thought about it from the standpoint of his career clock starting a decade earlier than most coaches. You can check that story out here.
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Ole Miss hoops heads to Starkville
Everyone’s favorite topic! I didn’t have time to get another newsletter out since Ole Miss’s embarrassing loss to Missouri on Tuesday night. But, trust me, I have some thoughts. Ole Miss lost to a 7-9 Mizzou team (with a NET in the 220s, for those keeping score at home) by 25 points on its home floor. It’s as embarrassing of a loss as I can remember. That game deserved to be played in the Tad Pad and be interrupted twice by leaks in the roof. I once heard the great Andy Kennedy listen to one of his student managers cough during a practice in the Tad Pad, to which he shouted “It’s not his fault! It’s the asbestos in here!” For whatever reason, I thought about that quote and that depressing building every single time Ole Miss clanked another aimless jumper on Tuesday night.
On a more serious note, this goes back to what I wrote about last week and mentioned a little bit on the podcast. Every time I watch this dreadful offense, I ask myself this: should it really be this bad? Again, we’ve covered the obvious. Not having Jarkel Joiner hurts. Not having Austin Crowley really makes them short on ball handlers. Not having Robert Allen is a defensive blow. But with all that being true, it still shouldn’t be THIS bad. Ole Miss went over eight minutes without a basket in the first half on Tuesday night as Mizzou’s lead swelled from four points to 17 points. There’s an absurdly long offensive drought in every loss that dooms this team. Kermit Davis used every single timeout he had in the first half. ESPN commentator Jimmy Dykes declared that he’d never seen that happen before. This team is truly historic, just not in a good way.
Even for a program like Ole Miss that doesn’t get much investment and buy-in from a financial standpoint, there is a baseline standard of competence that isn’t being met right now and someone needs to be held accountable for it. This is an unwatchable product. This offense looks like it’s playing a different sport than other teams in this league. Watch Alabama and Auburn and then watch Ole Miss and tell me that’s the same sport. It’s atrocious. Ole Miss does nothing to help itself on the offensive end. Davis has forgotten more basketball than I will ever know, so I hesitate to second guess offensive sets and why the Rebels run the motion, dribble-weave offense so often. It makes me sound like an asshole, because in reality, I don’t know enough to question things like that. But I do have two eyeballs, and what I see is three guards and a tweener forward dribbling aimlessly, unable to get by defenders off the bounce. I see no one putting any real effort to screen anyone and I see a disjointed mess that leads to some pretty jarring box score statistics when it comes to shooting percentage. Remember when I mentioned Ole Miss called all of its timeouts in the first half? How many times did Ole Miss score off a nifty draw-up to stop the bleeding out of those timeouts? None.
This is s is a flawed roster. It wasn’t constructed well. There are too many forwards and too many freshmen that aren’t ready to contribute. Hell, the crowd treated Grant Slatten like a walk-on. Or, maybe more on the nose, they treated him like a certain 5-foot-6 guard at Jackson Academy in 2013 (more on that later). Slatten is a guy Davis gave a scholarship to this offseason. This isn’t a roast of Slatten, James White or any of the other freshmen on the end of the bench that Davis put into the game in the second half, in what was almost a protest of the grotesque show the starters put on, but it’s an indictment on how this roster was constructed. White and Slatten may turn out to be good players eventually. But one of those scholarships couldn’t have gone to a transfer guard that can fill it up on the offensive end? It makes no sense to me.
Not to mention, Bryce Williams is still getting significant minutes for Oklahoma State. K.J. Buffen is thriving at UAB. Things that’ll make ya go hmm. Something’s got to change, and honestly, if this thing continue to bottom out like it did inside The Pavilion on Tuesday night, it wouldn’t stun me if Davis is not given the chance to change it. I’m purely speculating here, but like I said, there is a baseline competency level that’s not being met right now. Ole Miss heads to Starkville on Saturday. Mississippi State is a good team and I doubt Matthew Murrell will make his first 10 shots again. Good luck to the Rebels. They’ll surely need it. This could get ugly over the next couple of weeks.
Magnolia State golf update
The PGA Tour is in La Quinta, California at the American Express at PGA West. The usual trio of Mississippians on Tour are in the field. This event is a little unique in the sense that it is technically a pro-am and the cut is after 54 holes instead of the usual 36 hole cut. Players play three different golf courses over the first three days, too. All times are CT
Tupelo native and Mizzou alum Hayden Buckley shot 70-74. He is 2-under for the tournament and T-133. He tees off at 12:20 on Saturday and has some work to do to make the cut. Buckley is coming off a T-12 finish at the Sony. He has three top-15 finishes in his first six PGA Tour events including a pair of top-10s. Can we get my guy some early PGA Tour rookie of the year odds? Thank you.
Hattiesburg native and Alabama alum Davis Riley shot 66-69 and is 9-under after two rounds and is T-24. He tees off at 11:40 on Saturday. Riley registered a T-20 finish at the Sony last week and is steadily plodding along, making cuts and cashing checks. He had a T-8 at The Bermuda Championship in the fall. Riley is a budding superstar. Mark my words.
Fulton native and Mississippi State alum Chad Ramey shot 74-72 and is 2-over for the tournament. He would need a ridiculous number to make the weekend. Ramey has struggled a little bit in his first four rounds of 2022. He missed the cut last week at the Sony. But this is also the man that went over a calendar year without missing a cut and put together one of the most consistent runs you’ll see in professional golf on the Korn Ferry Tour last year. He will be fine.
KORN FERRY TOUR
Braden Thornberry is in the field at the Korn Ferry Tour’s Great Abaco classic in the Bahamas. The Korn Ferry Tour kicked off its season last week in one of two stops in the Bahamas at The Great Exumas Championship. With an assist from Chase Parham, I was able to figure out that Thornberry was not in that event due to COVID but has cleared all protocols and is ready to start his Korn Ferry Tour season. Thornberry narrowly missed getting his PGA Tour card via the Korn Ferry Tour Finals last August. And while it may seem like a disappointment, he had a pretty decent year. He finished in the top-60 in the points standings, which secured him full status on the Korn Ferry Tour this year. That’s not a bad place to be at 25 years old. These things take time. Professional golf is hard. I bet Thornberry gets his PGA Tour card this year.
An anniversary of sorts
Seven years ago today, I chronicled why I no longer play sports. It’s a story that, for whatever reason, has stood the test of time. Perhaps it’s a testament to my underwhelming writing career that, of all the things I have written, a blog I wrote for a site run by college students, over two beers in about 45 minutes, is the most lasting content item I have on my track record.
In all seriousness, I do enjoy people reaching out and telling me it made them or their husband or wife or brother laugh. That’s part of the goal in all of this. Way too many people in this industry take themselves way too seriously. This is sports. These are games. What’s the point of it all if we can’t laugh along the way. If I can provide that some folks, even if it comes at my expense, I am happy to oblige. I should’ve been taller and had better handles.
So, happy anniversary to all who celebrate, and thanks for reading.