By Jack Kerwin  |  ydkjack1@gmail.com

Playoffs? PLAYOFFS??!!!

Yeah, despite the immortal rant of a former Philadelphia pro sports coach still cognizant in the cranium, we got playoffs on the mind right now.

With regard to a team 10 games under .500.

With its regular season more than half complete.

With its previous three seasons a testament to ineptitude of the highest order.

Take heart, though, Sixers fans, this is no mirage. Nor is it strictly wishful thinking.

The strides your squad is making are not only of the quantum leap variety, they’re also legit.

Seriously.

Bland uniforms aside, they currently rank among the hottest outfits in the NBA. Only three teams can match their 8-2 mark in the last 10 games, with Western Conference dynamos Golden State and San Antonio being two of them.

All told, the Sixers have won 10 of their last 13. They’ve inched within 5.5 games of eighth place in the Eastern Conference standings, the final spot available to them for the postseason. They have, arguably, the most entertaining, if not intriguing, player in the game with center Joel Embiid, a 7-2 man-child of a center whose skills seem limitless especially if he ever fully grows into his body and erases the gangly from his otherwise awesome athleticism.

Consider this, four of the Sixers’ victims during this current run of success would be playoff teams if the regular season ended today, and another three have better records right now than Philly’s hoops franchise, including Milwaukee, which has fallen twice to coach Brett Brown’s bunch in the last nine days.

A real selling point, though, on their chances to extend things beyond an April 12 finale in New York is that they just went 2-0 on a back-to-back without the services of their prodigal big man.

Plus, the Sixers are doing this with 2016 No. 1 overall draft pick Ben Simmons having yet to take the floor in a regular-season game because contributions are coming from everywhere. Nerlens Noel and Jahlil Okafor, frustrated souls in search of more playing time, have been extremely productive when on the floor. Ersan Ilyasova has been a 15-point, 6-rebound revelation. Heck, even diminutive point guard T.J. McConnell, previously destined for a career of bench duty, has played well enough to make a mockery of those who had mocked him.

Pick any guy on the roster and he had his moments for this team. Positive moments.

The Sixers’ transformation from “oh, so close” losers earlier this season, when fading down the stretch seemed to be taking on ugly art-form fashion, to the energetic, upbeat, never-out-of-it group now has been nothing short of inspirational.

One need not look any further than the blossoming crowds, not to mention their reactions, at the Wells Fargo Center as this process goes on, as well as local and national publicity to grasp that.

So, playoffs? Yeah, they don’t seem out of the question anymore.

Embiid was on to something when he first suggested that earlier this month.
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By Jack Kerwin  |  ydkjack1@gmail.com

Mike Williams was great. DeShaun Watson was terrific.
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Yep, got it. Both probably made a few extra bucks Monday night.

Yet, for all the hype and hoopla surrounding those two future first-day NFL Draft picks and what they did in sparking Clemson to a college football national championship against Alabama, it was a former walk-on with no pay-to-play likely down the road who proved the real game-changer.

Hunter Renfrow … remember the name, especially since he already outperformed any unknown label in last year’s Round 1 of Tigers vs. Tide for All the Marbles (or Cheesy Crystal Trophy) before topping himself the second time.

Caught a title tilt-high 10 passes. Two of them for touchdowns. Including the winner with 0:01 left on the clock.

Oh yeah, while the talking heads were raving about Bama linebacker Ryan Anderson’s fumble recovery in the third quarter, they forgot to take note of the textbook, diving shoulder-cutdown-legs tackle Renfrow made on Anderson to save a surefire touchdown and give his defensive mates a chance to hold the Tide to a field goal, which they did.

Take note of the final margin of victory: four points.

That tackle, as it turns out, was as big as any play in the game.

Just sayin’ …

Kinda like enough with the Bama domination discussion in the first half, too. By the break, Clemson had outgained the defending champ by 20 yards. By the final whistle, it was almost 140.

Same silliness 12 months before, when the Tigers were said to be “lucky” to hang in there. Yeah, lucky when they outgained the Tide by 80 yards in that one.

Never let facts get in the way of distorted perception, you know.

Back to Renfrow …

Funny thing about him is, despite his relative obscurity he has been Watson’s security blanket for two seasons – both of which found Clemson vying for a national championship. The star quarterback has never concealed that.

But the little guy has stepped out of the supporting role two straight times under the brightest of lights. He had a pair of TD catches against Bama last year, too.
Plus the critical tackle.

He may never join Williams or Watson on a sideline some Sunday, but for a second time, Renfrow was as big a star as anyone on college football’s biggest stage.

​By Jack Kerwin  |  ydkjack1@gmail.com

Was an easy call for the masses.

Euro player previously chosen in the first round of an NBA Draft made sense to be the starter against an unheralded and undrafted American white kid when the 76ers laced 'em for real this season.

Now, hmmm ...

Frankly, never got the fascination with Sergio Rodriguez when the club signed him to make a return trip from overseas. He was OK in his first go-round here. Nothing crazy. Nothing special. Nothing more than, say, T.J. McConnell was during his initial campaign in Philly last year.

But those stigmas against McConnell – undrafted and white, American white – were the deciding factors with preconceived notions trumping reality.

Fast forward to Sunday afternoon's affair against Brooklyn, though, and even those beholden to their prejudices are coming around a bit. Which is why we're starting to hear a little rumbling for McConnell to get the nod over Rodriguez even when the latter comes back from injury.

Why?

Well, to tip things off, the Sixers are 3-1 with McConnell as the starter. They look better with him at the helm. Quicker. More aggressive. Better at moving the ball around.

Think Ryan Arcidiacano of Villanova fame ... going at a faster pace.

Rodrgiuez, meanwhile, is 5-25 as the starter.

Individual stat wise, you could make the case that they're a wash. The rub for Serg supporters, however, is that he was promoted as a superior player with superior skills that would translate into superior numbers, if not results for the team.

None of which has happened.

About the only advantages the Spaniard seems to have is as a scorer and free-throw shooter. But McConnell matches him, or tops him, everywhere else.

Those career-high 17 assists at Boston Friday night weren't too shabby, even if they came in a four-point loss.

Of course, once Ben Simmons is cleared to play, it won't really matter where Rodriguez or McConnell gets slotted. They'll both be behind the 2016 overall top pick.

By Jack Kerwin  |  ydkjack1@gmail.com

So much for the regular season.

If any insight was offered during the pre-bowl part of the 2016 college football campaign, the last few weeks have proven this: it meant little outside of machine-like Alabama proving its dominance yet again.

Think about it. Clemson, currently awaiting a revenge date in the national title game against the Crimson Tide this coming Monday night, looked imminently beatable almost every week. Southern California appeared to be an embarrassment in the making after opening with a 52-6 loss to Nick Saban’s bunch. The Big Ten rose up from the recognition ashes to gain acclaim as the nation’s best conference, and caused all kinds of commotion in playoff discussions with four – count ’em, four – teams actually considered viable for two available spots entering the final weekend.

Now? Well, it’s pretty apparent the second-ranked Tigers were not going to be denied another crack at the Tide, that the ninth-ranked Trojans might be the third-best squad in the country and that the Big Ten, umm, really wasn’t ready for prime-time.

A 3-7 combined mark in bowls by member schools is clear evidence of that.

Granted, two of those losses came against Clemson, which whipped No. 3 Ohio State 31-zip in the Fiesta Bowl, and USC, which slipped by No. 9 Penn State in the Rose Bowl.

Otherwise, pretty much ewww …

Even Michigan’s exciting one-point loss to Florida State in the Orange Bowl wasn’t much to speak of when you consider the Wolverines were being touted as a very likely counterpart to Alabama next week for much of the season and were ranked five spots higher than the Seminoles.

When your best candidates for top performance are Northwestern beating Pittsburgh in the Pinstripe, Minnesota muddling its way past Washington State in the Holiday and Wisconsin outlasting a non-Power 5 school in Western Michigan to win the Cotton … that ain’t saying much.

Clearly, the Buckeyes had no business being in the playoff. In hindsight, that game for the ages against Michigan was nothing more than a battle to determine which squad was leaking the least amount of oil down the stretch and/or which would benefit the most from officials’ blunders.

By season’s end, Penn State really was the conference’s best team … and it still wasn’t good enough to get by USC, a team that didn’t even play in the Pac-12 title game.

But the Nittany Lions were the most worthy Big 10 candidate for the Final Four, no question. Not only had they beaten Ohio State, but they were the hottest team in the circuit, having won nine in a row to close out the regular season.

Oddly, they deserve to jump a spot in the final rankings, from five to four, behind Alabama, Clemson and USC, thanks to putting on such a thrilling display in Pasadena.

Ohio State? Michigan? Neither deserve to be in the final top four. Not now.