Wizards and Tigers

Some of you might have glimpsed a recent post regarding Mizzou's heartbreaking loss to OSU last night. I took the post down, which is not to say that I don't stand by my opinion that Osama Bin Laden is a Kansas fan. That being said, the game was quite good up until 3 minutes to go, when the gap started widening. Kleiza went 13 for 13 from the line (he'd been averaging around 66%), and the two teams combined for a ridiculous 89% on free throws. I believe what killed the Tigers was shooting 8 for 21 on threes, to OSU's 4 for 9, sure, we got 12 more points from treys, but it felt like a lot of those 13 we missed ended up going turning into OSU field goals. That, of course, and the fact that they shot 60% in the second half and we... didn't. Everything else was pretty even, I thought, we got outrebounded, but only by 4. They played well, though, bottom line is OSU has a little number 6 by their name and we don't. (http://mutigers.collegesports.com/sports/m-baskbl/recaps/011105aaa.html).

The Kansas City Wizards are angering up my blood again, by announcing today that if Preki is healthy he will be re-signed. (http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/10622208.htm). This old fossil contributes nothing while draining our offense by having every single play go through his talentless feet in order to feed his massive ego. For proof of this one needs only to look at the 2004 season, when KC was able to win the U.S. Open Cup, lost the Supporters' Shield on goals, won the West and made the MLS Cup finals, after getting off to a sluggish start which ended once Preki was knocked out for the season. The man has many MLS records, which are due to his having played for 150 years, as well as the fact that it's easy to rack up points on assists when every single play has to go through you. My girlfriend may not speak a lot of Spanish, but she can say "Quien es este Preki? Es un queso!". The upside is that he says he will retire after this year, which does me little good considering there may be no more team after this year. The old man should just quit now and devote his energy to other pursuits, like going to Plaza bars and hitting on girls half his age that I went to high school with (I'm not saying he's ever done that, of course...). On related news, I don't like that we're not going after Meola, but I understand it. He is getting older and costs too much to keep, I just don't see why we don't apply the same logic to Preki. Also, I don't care what Gansler says about Igor Simutenkov, he is easily our best striker. If you look at the numbers, it's true that he loses out due to injury, but he still outproduces everyone else, including no shortage of game-winning goals (U.S. Open Cup, anyone?). Re-sign him, now!

Finally, there is a great editorial piece on trends in international prosecutions in today's International Herald Tribune. I encourage all advocates for global justice to check it out at
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/01/12/opinion/edpower.html.