Category: College Basketball

Halftime: When GMU got it back to 2, they give up some stupid plays. Way to keep your hand up there on the final three point shot, Noah. Now you look like a moron when it misses. Good game so far in terms of competitiveness but like most of America, I’m worried that GMU won’t be able to pull this out.

Jai Lewis is coming up small so far but Campbell has got the highlight reel so far. On the Florida side, Brewer and Green have combined for 21 points so far. Perhaps GMU should start defending them.

Can someone tell Billy Donovan he’s not in the marines.

3:48: This has been a fast game. GMU is within 2 points with a chance to get it down to 1. Just as soon as I said there were no great plays, Campbell provided a highlight reel floater over Noah. GMU might want to think about guarding brewer at the 3 point line. I was hoping for a better punchline on the nakafuki surprise bud light commercial.

7:46: 18-15 Florida. GMU makes a nice little run to get it close. Billy Packer has mentioned how long Florida is about 48 times now. This game is pretty uneventful so far. No bad calls. No spectacular plays. Much like this blog entry, I reckon. Mmmmm …hmmmm. I like me some french friend potaters.

11:49: GMU down 10 already. As much as Billy Packer sucks, he’s right about Florida’s length (one of the most overused terms in basketball next “physicality”), they are just too much for GMU at this point and the dome seems to be affecting GMU’s shooting, but not Florida’s. Oh, and Mike K reminds me that Duke sucks.

14:05: Florida is taking it to GMU right now 13-6. Florida is getting most of the loose balls and rebounds. This could be a long day for all the Cinderella backers. Oh, and Joakim Noah is really damn ugly.

20:00: They are doing the introductions and I still can’t believe George Mason is in the Final Four.  And then they introduce Tony Skinn and I wonder who he’s going to punch in the nuts tonight.

The other tourney champs

Remember when a team won the NIT Tournament you could make the “We’re #65!” joke? Well, because of greed, we now have to say “We’re #66”. (This year, that honor goes to the South Carolina Gamecocks again. But with the NCAA tourney being as great as it has this year, the NIT champions don’t even merit their own blog entry.)

Back to the topic at hand, some coaches, most notably Jim Boeheim, want the NCAA tourney field to be expanded by “about 4 to 6” teams.

One of the most interesting parts of the book by John Feinstein called Last Dance is how the tournament went from 64 teams to 65. When the Western Athletic Conference got too big, 8 of the teams broke off to form the Moutain West Conference. Since the MWC met the criteria for an automatic tournament bid, there were going to be 31 conference bids in 2001, which would mean the at-large bids would go down by 1 to 33. However, money is always the most important factor and each at-large bid was worth at least $300,000 to a school.

The power conferences didn’t want to lose an at-large bid so they pressured the committee into coming up with a terrible solution. The NCAA decided to keep all 34 at-large bids and create a “opening round game” for 2 of the automatic conference bid teams. This results in a crappy opening round game between two small schools every year and the winner is then lead to slaughter against a #1 seed.

The current push by coaches is also money related. Because of the popularity of the tournament, coaches are judged on how often they make the tournament and how far they get. Well, an expanded field means more coaches can hang their hat on getting into the tourney. This results in better job security (if there is such a thing in college basketball) and also better contract negotiating leverage.

Of course, the tournament has been expanded in it’s history but going above 64 (65) teams is a terrible idea. Too much of a good thing.

Links:
[AP]: Coaches hope NCAA will expand tournament field

Just a reminder that we’ll be live blogging the Final Four this weekend. Come add your comments or hop into the chat room.

The latest entry is on the Front Page.

My bracket is a sea of red.  Hell, it was a sea of red after the first weekend.  But 4 out of 3 million brackets (that’s .00018% or about the chances of you deflowering Adriana Lima) on ESPN’s tournament challenge actually had LSU, UCLA, George Mason, and Florida in the Final Four.

How exactly did this happen?  I am certain that all 4 people must be students or alumni of George Mason.  Either that or they are retarded and picked games by pointing at them with their left foot. How else can you explain picking a team that has NEVER won an NCAA tournament game to go to the Final Four.  

Here are some more interesting stats courtesty of ESPN:

Entries with one Final Four team left: 30%
Entries with three Final Four teams left: 0.1%

Entries with Florida in the Final Four: 11%
Entries with Florida winning it all: 1%

Entries with LSU in the Final Four: 5%
Entries with LSU winning it all: .4%

Entries with UCLA winning it all: 2%

Entries without Duke in the Final Four: 37%
Entries without UConn in the Final Four: 31%

The odds on George Mason at the beginning of the tournament was 500-1. They are currently at 15/4.
Florida is the favorite at 7/4, followed by LSU at 12/5. UCLA is at 13/4 odds — only slightly higher than George Mason’s odds.

Personally, I’d like to see George Mason win it. They might not even make the tournament next year, that’s how improbable this run has been for them. Unless you follow one of the other three teams, I don’t see how you can not root for GMU.

We laughed when Duke choked against LSU but at least they weren’t leading the entire game. Let’s rehash this, shall we? Sure they had a 17 point lead in the first half but let’s look at the second half.

20:00 42-29 Gonzaga 13 pt lead
10:00 59-47 Gonzaga 12 pt lead
03:13 71-62 Gonzaga  9 pt lead
01:00 71-66 Gonzaga  5 pt lead
00:20 71-70 Gonzaga  1 pt lead
00:13 JP Batista coughs up the ball.
00:10 71-72 UCLA
00:06 Pardo panicks even though Gonzaga has a time out and 8 secs on the clock, loses the ball.
00:00 End of the biggest choke since Arizona lost to Illinois last year.

This loss is on the whole team but especially Batista and Pardo.  Just choked big time in a pressure situation.

Oh oh oh, JJ’s cryin’

There’s nothing more powerful than the truth. And the truth is that Duke chokes again. The #1 seed and 6 point favorites go down to LSU in the sweet sixteen 62-54. Despite being in early foul trouble, the two big men for LSU, Glen “Big Baby” Davis and Tyrus Thomas, come up huge at the end of the game with rebounding and scoring.

JJ Redick goes 3-18 and 2-2 on FTs to finish with 11 points. He also had more turnovers (5) than field goals made. Player of the year my ass.

If this story sounds familiar, it’s because it is. With as much talent as Duke has every year and always going into the tournament as a #1 seed, they tend to shrink in the sweet sixteen.

2000: #1 seed Duke is upset by Florida in the Sweet 16
2002: #1 seed Duke is upset by Indiana in the Sweet 16
2005: #1 seed Duke is upset by Michigan State in the Sweet 16
2006: #1 seed Duke is upset by Louisiana State in the Sweet 16

Duke and the Atlanta Braves must get together to trade notes on how to dominate the regular season and choke during the postseason.

The Bradley Braves advancing to the sweet 16 is a good story but the eventual champions will be the team that has at least one or two top NBA draft picks on the team. This has been the conventional thinking in picking NCAA champs for the last 20 years or so.

Jake Curtis of the San Francisco Chronicle takes the NBA picks theory and runs with it. He ranks the remaining 16 teams based on the likelihood of which spot in the draft their star players will be taken.

One way to predict which team will win the national championship is to total the number of likely first-round picks each of the 16 remaining teams has. In our rating system, three points are awarded for each player expected to be a top-five pick, two for a likely first-rounder, and one for a player who has a chance to go in the first round.

His system has UConn beating Duke in the finals. Three teams (Villanova, Memphis, Texas) are tied in 3rd place. If he’s correct, then in the games this weekend, take Connecticut over Washingon, Villanova over BC, Florida over Georgetown, Duke over LSU, Texas over West Virginia and Memphis over Bradley. George Mason vs Wichita State and Gonzaga vs UCLA are tossups.

Related Links:
[SFGate.com] : Projecting pros, NCAA champs

Damn you to hell for ruining an almost perfect weekend of March Madness.  This was 4 great days of pure college basketball.  Buzzers beaters, upsets, great matchups — you couldn’t ask for a better opening 2 rounds of the NCAA Tournament.  Unfortunatley, for that enjoyment, we paid a price. And that price is a three hour ture.

I haven’t ranted about commercials in a while but here are the 5 worst tv ads you saw about 400 times this weekend.

1. Applebees Shrimp commercial I am boycotting Applebees from now on.  This commercial wasn’t funny the first time I saw it.  It certainly didn’t get any funnier.  Whoever created these commercials will rot in hell. The only question I have is, what exactly hits the lady in the eye at the end?  

2. Verizon vcast Razr phone  Just what I want to see.  Some guy speaking in an annoying voice and bugging the crap out of his coworker.  Yeah, that makes me want to get a Verizon phone.  If I were the guy in the commercial, I’d take the phone and chuck in across the room.  How cool is your phone now, bitch?

3. State Farm fan  Who greenlights these things?  If I wanted to see some retard barking and yelling, I’d go to my local sports bar.  The worst part is the “boo yah!”.  And you thought we couldn’t hate Stuart Scott any more.

4. Cingular March Sadness  Listen you smug bastard, how about I take your cingular phone and shove it up your ass?

5. Coach K Chevy commercial  I don’t get this at all. For everyone who likes Duke, there are 5 people who hate them.  So why would you have Mike Krzyzewski pitch anything? For the record, I hate Duke.

By the way, are there 27 time outs per team in college basketball?  It seems that way.

We’re down to the sweet 16 and here are the latest odds on the 2006 NCAA Tournament champion.