It's a long off season, even if we're just marking time until Marquette's soccer teams begin defending their division titles in August. We're going to have to come up with some way to entertain ourselves, and this is one of them. Each week, we'll feature a Marquette related tweet that struck our fancy. It might be someone saying something ridiculous, maybe it'll be a link to video of the "GOOD JOB, GOOD EFFORT" kid encouraging Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat after last night's loss to the Celtics (it's not, but this is), or who knows what. All we can guarantee is that it will be entertaining.
So let's tip our hats to The Admiral for this week's tweet and hit the jump!
Tomorrow is the start of the NBA Pre-Draft Camp/Combine/Whatever You Want To Call It. Only 60 players were invited, which makes sense, since there's only 60 selections to be made in the draft. That arbitrary and medieval decision by the NBA led to this:
How can a 6'4 PF & a 6'2 SG from #MU get invited to the #NBA draft combine but not @JMTaylor11? #Badgers. Taylor will have a better career.
— Jim Rutledge (@JimRutledge) June 1, 2012
First things first, in fairness to Mr. Rutledge: Taylor was recently added to the combine as a replacement.
With that out of the way, we bring ourselves to Mr. Rutledge's own Twitter profile description:
Host of the Jump Around, Madison's Game Night and In the Trenches for FM 100.5 ESPN and ESPN Wisconsin.com.
Hoo boy.
Before I give you a couple of snappy reasons, I'd like to link you to this tweet from CBSSports.com's Jeff Goodman. You'll notice the date on it is May 22, 10 days before Rutledge managed to notice. I'm guessing all information coming in to Madison has to be filtered through Bo Ryan before the media gets a hold of it, and when you combine that with the holiday weekend, I can see how Rutledge didn't find out that Jordan Taylor wasn't going to the combine for a week and a half.
On to the reasons! First of all, here's the most recent Draft Express mock draft and here's the most recent NBADraft.net mock draft. No Taylor. I'm guessing the best reason why Taylor wasn't originally invited to the 60 player combine is because no one thinks Jordan Taylor has a chance of getting drafted, ESPECIALLY the NBA GMs who almost assuredly had a hand in deciding who received an invite.
Second of all, here's the Big East's All-Conference teams, and here's the Big Ten's. You'll notice that while all three players were named the first team by the coaches of their league. But Jae Crowder and Darius Johnson-Odom were so dominant that they didn't detract from each other's reputation, while the media voters in the Big Ten didn't agree with the coaches' perspective of Taylor's season.
Finally, head to head competition has to count for something, right?
Maybe it's time for Mr. Rutledge to take the red colored glasses off, push pause on the mixtape that consists of Jump Around 17 times in a row, and realize that he doesn't have to suck up to Bo Ryan just because he works in the Madison media.
Have you seen a Marquette related tweet that you'd like to see in this feature in the future? Send the direct URL link to anon.eagle@gmail.com and be sure to send your Twitter tag along with it so we can give you credit for finding it!