Player Ratings to the Theme of Magic

Well, that game had just about everything you wouldn’t want to see in it: lots of turnovers, a key player getting injured in practice and unable to play, missed shots, lots of turnovers. One thing it didn’t seem to have, and this is odd in Ames, Iowa, is cascading boos raining down on the referees. They just weren’t necessary. There was nothing for those ISU fans to get upset about.

Another thing that wasn’t needed: the so-called “Hilton Magic.” Nope, no mysterious forces from beyond were needed in this clown show. Kansas was too inept for “Hilton Magic” to even be necessary. But, the player ratings must go on, and because so much “magic” has happened in that place- up to and including Jamaal Tinsley qualifying to play at Iowa State despite not having a high school education- we will rate players to magic tricks.

5 Stars: Levitation

Ah, the old classic. A fine young magician’s assistant gets horizontally raised and then that magician puts a ring around her body and moves it up and down the length of her body to “prove” to the audience that she is floating. At all time classic.

Yep, that one’s a classic, so there are certainly going to be no KU players as a five-star after that game in Ames.

4 Stars: Sawing a body in half

This is one of my personal favorites. Even though everyone knows that there is another body in the second half of the box who conveniently sticks their legs out when the other person gets in, it’s still pretty cool, especially when they show the above shot where the volunteer takes up the whole box.

Quentin Grimes and Dedric Lawsonwere the only bright spots for KU in this one. Grimes had a pretty good game and was the only person keeping Kansas in it for a big portion of the game- he had 14 straight KU points at one point, and Lawson is a double-double machine. Most of his defensive rebounds came on those awful first half Iowa State shots, or at least it seemed like it.

3 Stars: Pulling a rabbit out of a hat

Another classic. Show the audience an empty top hat, say a few magic words, pull a furry white rabbit out of the previously empty hat. Nice work.

Nice indeed, and no other Kansas player was good enough to even warrant an equivalent rating to a rabbit being taken out of a hat.

2 Stars: The never-ending string of hankies

Ok, we get it, you’ve got a lot of hankies. A LOT. Oh, you can pull them out of your sleeve? Cool. Your mouth? Weird. Your nose? Get out of here and show me that rabbit trick again.

This is where almost everyone else sits, a two-star rating. Lagerald Vick and Devon Dotson turned it over a combined 12 times (seven for Vick and five for Devon) and combined for a total of four assists. Not good. Marcus Garrett was probably the best of the two-star gang, and his zero steals are an aberration, but he didn’t do enough to warrant a three. Charlie Moore did very little, Mitch Lightfoot hustled a bit, and David McCormack ran around for a while.

1 Star: Any trick performed by Gob in the series Arrested Development

Every trick that Gob performed wound up backfiring extraordinarily. I mean, the man was kicked out of the Magician’s Alliance, and all of his attempts to regain acceptance seemed to put him further in the hole. Classic ineptitude.

The move that epitomized the evening and thus garnered the season’s first one-star rating was when KJ Lawson tried to send a behind the back pass to Mitch Lightfoot in the waning minutes and KU down by a ton. For that, KJ gets a one.

Not Rated: Chris Teahan