Someone just brought up the dunk against Virginia in a recent thread, he talks about that play in this Q + A that @bdivide just tweeted.
Will Blalock
- Thread starter HogueNation
- Start date
Blalock and Stinson were absolute studs.
Had Blalock played another year, he'd go down as one of the best PG's ISU has had. I remember he'd put up 10+ assists against Kansas repeatedly.
Or just once.
Came off the bench in his first game against KU and had 11/0 in 33 minutes. The rest of his games against KU...meh:
7/5
3/2
6/5
6/4
6/3
That little era, while a recovery from the Larry situation, is still a mystery that they only managed one NCAA tourney.
Well then....looks like you have a better memory and more time on your hands than me!
This is always my first thought on those teams looking back. Maybe it's my college nastalgia goggles as that is when I was in school.
Stinson, Blaylock, Clarke, should have worked out better. Throw in the end Sullivan, Homan, and vromen towards the beginning.
This will always be my favorite Will Blalock play:
One of the podcasts I subscribe to had Stinson on last week and in that interview Stinson said he and Will are still buddies and they talk frequently. It would be cool if they both played on the Hilton Magic Legends team but Stinson said Blaylock no longer plays. Very fun back court.
I always felt Wayne Morgan was never given free reign to run the program as he wished. Yes, there were the alleged (and never proven) recruiting violations, but the man was able to guide a team that was supposedly going nowhere in his first season to the final four of the NIT. The next season was an NCAA visit. And then there was the third season where the stars of the team acted like they only needed to walk on the court in order to win: the result was missing the NCAA and the NIT, and a pack of wolves hollering for Morgan's head (and wanting him replaced with McDermott - a huge mistake). No, I don't blame Blaylock and Stinson for skipping their final season and going Pro. There was a bad vibe surrounding the program back then, and it only got worse when Greg McDermott arrived.
Wow. What is a defender supposed to do on a move like that? I'm surprised that the guy actually stayed with Blalock at all.
There is a reason Wayne's coaching career died 10 years ago and has only been a mid major assistant for 3 years since then. As bad as the McDermott era was I still believe that things would have ended up in a much worse place had Wayne stayed on, things that would take much longer than the McDoormat fiasco to recover from. There was never a single blow that ended his career, it died by a thousand cuts. No violations officially stuck to him but he was far from "squeaky clean". Letting Wayne go was as much about avoiding future violations as it was about on court performance and losing control of the program.
Click right on one of the pages of text and select open in a new tab. Open the tab and read it full size.
You would think they would have included a link to the actual page, wouldn't you. I tried their web address and there is just a splash page saying they are coming soon and wanting my information.
There is so much good about that play in the Virginia game.
- Everyone is in the paint on defense.
- No way are they getting a shot up.
- Stinson amazing no look over the shoulder pass to Blalock.
- Blalock fantastic behind the back pass.
- Blalock distracting the defender by putting his hands in the air.
- And Clark with the thunderous finish.
I think if that the officials in the game at Kansas that season had even half a clue as to what they were doing and we go on to win that game the way we should have we could have been on the right side of the bubble that year.
On that note, the officiating in a very close loss at Nebraska that season was also extremely suspect. Win those two games on the road in the Big 12 conference and I think it's certainly possible we're dancing.