NCAA Hoops Today

Don't count out Calhoun! He managed to pick three championships spread out in 12 years, in 1999, in 2004 with the dominating Okafor/Gordon team, and this year, in 2011 with the Kemba Walker Show!

Butler deserved to win the 2010 championship against the spoiled rats of Duke, but this year, they were never really in the game, they looked out of place in the Forest of Huskies. You kinda have to score to win!

To make games more watchable, it would be really nice if they did away with the five-foul limit, or at least increased it to six!

This was a great NCAA tournament so far with lots of drama and excitement! And not one but TWO mid-major teams in the Final Four! And one of the two is guaranteed to play in the Championship Game! That's right!

Meanwhile, Bill Self is once again exposed for his inability to defeat theoretically inferior opponents in the NCAA tournament. If it wasn't for the two epic Carolina and Memphis meltdowns in 2008, he would have been on the hot seat. But a championship can cure a lot of complaints!

Speaking of complaints, Calipari got his karma back at Kentucky as he managed to get to the Final Four the year after he was supposed to. And who knows, he may actually win his first title this time!

Derrick Williams and the Arizona Wildcats just DISMANTED the overhyped, over rated and spoiled brats of the Duke Pukedevils! Take that Ratzilla! :) This EPIC dismantling of the Dookies serves as revenge for Xavier's Elite 8 unfair zebra-induced loss to the Dookies. And "revenge" for Arizona's 2001 NCAA championship loss.

This was one of the best games EVER! Epic Duke Loss! :)

As far as the player of the year, how can you give it to Nolan Smith or Jimmer, when you get epic performances like this from Derrick Williams??? Maybe Kemba Walker, but no one is more epic than Derrick Williams! #1 NBA draft pick 2011!

And big props to CBS/TBS for finally having someone in the studio that like the one and only like the Charles Barkley who doesn't parrot the never-ending ACC/BigEast worship service that we get on ESPN, CBS, and traditional print media.


PS. According to a statistic shown during the Friday games on CBS, Duke's margin of loss (16 points) was the LARGEST in the Sweet 16 for a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament history. Oh my!

The hype machine at ESPN propelled the Big East as THE college basketball conference of 2011, but the reality of the NCAA tournament did not agree with them. Eleven Big East teams were selected in the Field of 68. Of the 11, only two have made it to the Sweet 16, but there is a big asterisk there. BOTH Big East teams that made the Sweet 16 did so because they beat ANOTHER Big East team! There were that many of them!

So if we take out those two "guaranteed" spots, none of the remaining seven Big East teams made it past the first weekend of the tourney. That's just crazy considering all the Big East hype. As The Chuckster said, the Big Least.

Granted, the NCAA tournament is about matchups and there is always randomness, but still, only two out of eleven teams, and two had a GUARANTEED spot in the Sweet 16 because they were playing another Big East team.

The zebras almost screwed up the Pitt vs Butler game, but they ended the game with a second crazy whistle in the last few (nearly) milliseconds of the game. It came down to free throws, and Butler won! Right now, the co-ordinator of NCAA officials is discussing this on CBS with Ernie Johnson.

If you are planning to watch March Madness online, live or replays of games you may have missed, be sure to bookmark this url that takes you directly to the March Madness On-Demand Console. From there you can begin watching games right away!

Already available for replay are the CBS Selection Show from Sunday, and the National Bracket Day from Monday with the one and only Marques Johnson. CBS, please add Marques Johnson to your West Coast/P10 coverage. Having that complete and total idiot (Bob Wenzel) doing Pac-10 games is completely ridiculous.

Turner Sports will be working with the NCAA to produce a live show broadcast online for free at NCAA.com starting "Bracket Monday" March 14, 2011 at 12pm EASTERN (9am PACIFIC) that will talk about ...brackets and filling brackets and the whole madness about the madness.

Meanwhile, if you missed some of the ESPN action or you are away from your cable/satellite box, the ESPN YouTube channel has clips from the never-ending ESPN bracketology with Bilas, Digger, Dookie Dookitale, and friends.

There's also an interview with selection cmte chair Gene Smith at the ESPN College Basketball Nation blog.

I think we need more OPENNESS in the selection process. Just like the Courts write long-winded explanations on how they reached their decisions, the Selection Cmte should also justify in an open manner how they pick and seed the teams! Someone needs to file a FOIA? :)

The NCAA Selection Cmte is getting a lot of yelling for the way they picked and seeded the last few at-large entries, but one thing they did right is they put a lot of the slugfest teams in the same sub-region, guaranteeing that seven of the eight brackets will have watchable games :) The slugfest sub-region includes Pitt, Wisonsin, Kansas State, Utah State and ODU :-)

The selection cmte, perhaps also "optimizing" for television ratings, has set up (intentionally or not) some interesting and potential "matchups with baggage" such as:


Actual Matchups
* Arizona vs Memphis (Josh Pastnor was a former Arizona player and assistant)
* UNLV vs Illinois (Lon Kruger used to coach Illinois)


Potential 2nd round (now 3rd round) matchups
* UCLA vs Florida (rematch of previous Final Fours)
* Duke vs Michigan
* West Virginia vs Kentucky
* Arizona vs Texas (they used to play every year during the Olson era)
* and ...two Big East matches (East, West regions)

Once upon a time (such as last year), almost all the NCAA tournament coverage (except for the opening round game and a couple of Pacific-time lunch time games) was through CBS. The plus was you didn't have to remember which channel to watch. The minus was that you only got one game at a time. The internets however saved the day in recent years, as the NCAA made those games available online for free!


Things change in 2011
But starting with the 2011 NCAA Tournament things are changing! On the plus side, every single game is going to be on TV, live and in its entirety. No more screaming at the CBS monkey for showing the wrong game. The negative with this is that the games are going to be on four different channels, CBS, and three cable channels, TBS, TNT and TruTV, which is the artist formerly known as CourtTV. Make sure you find those on your cable or satellite system and check to see if they have HD (high-definition) versions available.

The schedule of the games is also slightly getting adjusted so as to prevent multiple games ending at the same time. This of course is not easy to do, because some games take longer than others, and that's before we consider overtimes.


Changes in announcer teams and studio coverage
Another interesting development is that the announcement and studio teams are merging into a giant "dream team" of basketball broadcasters. On the plus side, we are getting the one and only Charles Barkley in the studio, so we finally have someone who speaks his mind :)

TBS/TNT will also contribute one of the eight announcement teams, with Steve Kerr and Marv "I was wearing ex-girlfriend clothes before it was trendy" Albert. This means one of the eight traditional CBS duos is going to be left out. With Dick Enberg retiring, and Jay Bilas already having a gig at ESPN, Jay Bilas is indeed the odd man out.

Reggie Miller will also be joining in the Kevin Harlan and Dan Bonner duo, which is a big plus. The Ferengi ambassador to Earth was very pleased!

Sadly, still no Marques Johnson, so we have to suffer through games with idiots like Bob Wenzel and the more boring than watching-paint-dry boring duo of Ion Eagle and Jim Spanarkel.


Internet still free
The other good news is that the games will continue to be available for free online, and with computers and broadband getting cheaper infrastructure-wise, we should expect/hope that each year things will be better than previous online years.


TV schedule information around the net
* NCAA.com
* scribd.com with nice graphics showing the blocks of time with games
* Wikipedia
* philly.com

You no longer have to beg, borrow or steal bandwidth and other people's laptops if you want to watch every single NCAA game! As part of the new TV deal, every single game will be on TV! This is because CBS is now joined by Turner Networks, and they plan to show every game live. ESPN would obviously have been a great candidate as well, since they have more channels and they specialize in college hoops, unlike the Turner Network which speacializes in the NBA and reruns ;-)

The deal runs from 2011 to 2014, and in addition to CBS, games will be shown on TBS, TNT, and TruTV (formerly CourtTV).

The shocker in this is that going forward (after 2016), yikes (!), the Final Four will be alternating between CBS and TBS. What the fuck is the right reaction here!

The games will continue to be available via online streaming as well!

ESPN tried to get the TV rights but unfortunately it did not win. Having the tourney on the ESPN family would have probably been better. Fans already know where to find ESPN, ESPN2, and many have access to either ESPU, ESPN Classic or ESPN News. Plus they could show games on ABC for a national TV audience. And if they needed more channels, they could put some games on the Disney Channel!

This means college hoops fans will need to make adjustments to their current cable, satellite and DVR plans if they want to watch everything. More on that as the details and scheduling becomes more clear!

Perhaps because of this deal, TBS/TNT may try to add some regular season or conference championship basketball games, so they can "warm up" before the actual tourney!

It's a good thing common sense still exists. It looks like the 96-team crazy-talk was shut off, and now the talk is a 68-team tournament. This is great news. Now one thing that they have to make sure is that the opening round should only include bubble teams. It's not fair to send all the smaller conference automatic bids to the opening round!

And I am not the only one who wants this! Dana O'Neill has a long writeup about this very topic at ESPN.com. And Dana makes a great point - it would get the TV networks higher ratings if they have bubble-teams in the opening round, instead of small low-major schools that the majority of sports fans are not familiar with.

Lunardi is super-excited, he won't have to have a 96-team field to bracketologize for half a year :-)

Vitale tried to comment on this, but the most interesting thing he said is that complaining he paid $25 for a haircut :)

One of the coaches that would have probably been covered by the 68 one too many times is Seth Greenberg of Virginia Tech. Meanwhile, Jim Boeheim wants more - I guess he wants to play Vermont every year :-)

I hate to say I told you so, but I did! The Bill Self March Madness Fakery has been exposed once again, with yet another early round defeat at the hands of a team with significantly less talent and physical skills, but of course with a real basketball coach, not a polished used car salesman and professional BS'er from the School of Coach Ratzilla!

As pointed out before, the 2008 Kansas championship was a series of unfortunate events - the epic North Carolina meltdown and the Memphis Tigers meltdown. Kansas didn't actually win, both UNC and Memphis GAVE them the championship via meltdown.

And who can forget those lovely first round losses in 2005 and 2006 to the brave Bucknell and Bradley teams. Add 2010 to Bill Self's excellent resume of BSology!

There is talk of expanding the NCAA tournament to 96 teams (64+32=96), however, I think that such an expansion would be too big at the moment, considering the NCAA tournament is great as it currently is.

However, there are arguments made for giving more teams a chance, and selection committee screw-ups ruining student athletes dreams. So how about a compromise instead?

Expand the opening round instead! That's right. Instead of having Virginia Tech, Illinois, Mississippi State, UAB, etc whine and complain, have them play an opening-round game against the lowest ranked at-large teams on the S-curve?

So perhaps expand the opening round to four games (eight teams), but in the interest of fairness, ONLY include at-large/bubble teams in the opening round. ALL the automatic teams DESERVE to be in the field of 64!

And seating/seeding the teams is fairly simply - they already have an S-curve they use during the selection process - use their S-curve position as a placeholders in the brackets, that way all teams get a fair ranking (as fair as that could be).

With ESPN having so many channels (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN360 (renamed to ESPN3), U, Classic), they can easily televise every single one of those opening round games.

So in this year, for example, we could have these opening round games:
* UTEP vs Mississippi State
* Minnessooota vs UAB
* Utah State vs Illinois
* Florida vs Virginia Tech

That would be a good and low-risk first step. If that proves successful, then they could perhaps slowly increase it to five or six in future years...

These are some things that we forgot to mention during the Final Four :-)


Tom Izzo
Izzo's game plan to tire out the Tar Heels back-fired because of the way the TarHeels jumped to a 20-point lead. From there on, the slugfest was actually in favor of UNC, and that took the legs off the Michigan State players who needed them a lot more than the TarHeels because they had to score 20 points more than UNC in the second half.

And yes, Izzo should have called at least two time-outs earlier on in the first half to stem the tide. Even a high-school coach knows that! Ben Howland and Pete Gillan would have used up all of their timeouts before the first TV timeout :)


North Carolina
It is really amazing, that after soooo many years of college hoops only thirteen coaches have won multiple national championships. Only 13! And one of them is "dum' ol'roy". This is amazing, just thirteen! Of course Wooden ate up a whole decade on his own :)

Soft this, soft that, but this UNC wine-and-cheese team managed to do something historic: Win the most crowded road game in the history of college hoops, facing a hostile crowd of over 60,000. I do not believe anyone played in front of a bigger hostile-road crowd?

So while they were "wine and cheese" during the regular season, they got an injection of toughness from the Felton/McCants/May team of 2005 and may have actually played a little bit better on average. With the exception of the Lawson-toe-v*g*na-LSU game issues, when Lawson was warmed up and ready to go, it was Tar Heels all the way!


What did Draymond Green say?
In one of the interviews Izzo mentioned that Green said something to the team, that was so good and mature and profound that it surprised him. We forgot to google it, and by now it may be too late.

What was it?


Star vs Role player
I'm glad Bob "Guitar Hero" Knight brought this up a couple of times. It is extremely frustrating to see analyst after analyst use the stupid and divisive categorization of players into "stars" and "role players". This is just stupid.

Pigeon-holing players like that is for small minds and idiots who can't seem to understand anything that is not binary.

It's one thing to get this gibberish from play-by-play guys and TV anchors who are usually clueless anyway, but TV analysts, most of whom are former coaches and players, should know better!

So, Bob, please, the next time someone says something stupid like that, please stop them and yell at them live on TV!

Tell them, Bob! Tell them!

Our Wish List for the Final Four is simple, and it coincides with our Predictions for the Four:

+ Michigan State to beat the UConn Cheaters, Woman Batterers, and Laptop Thieves
+ The winner of Villanova and North Carolina to win the National Championship!

Both Nova and UNC would make for great championship stories, and they both play a fun style of play that moves basketball forward, instead of backwards (Izzo). So, whoever wins that game will be our favorite to win the national championship.

The Sweet 16 is all set now, and StubHub.com is offering Sweet 16 Tickets and Elite 8 Tickets.

The Sweet 16 promises to have some fireworks, with some really hot match-ups, like the Dirty Dookies squaring off against the guard-heavy Villanova. This week we are big Villanova guards. Go Jay Wright! Go Scottie Reynolds! Go Corey Fisher, smash the smugness out of the Dookie Pukie faces!

Another interesting match-up, is the run-and-gun fests of Gonzaga vs North Carolina, Arizona vs Louisville, Missouri vs Memphis. The first one to 100 wins each one of these games :)

The biggest style conflict is likely to be the Jim Boeheim zone going up against the space-eater monster-jammer Blake Griffin.

And the most likely game to be a grinder, well, what else, Michigan State vs Kansas :)

The NCAA must be worried. They sent a secret memo to the zebras instructing them to call six fouls against Binghampton in the first three minutes of the game. Yes, you read right! Six fouls in the first three minutes, that's like two fouls per minute. Just to make sure that their starters get in foul trouble and their game plan is derailed, giving the Dookies a must better chance at winning and giving CBS some good ratings in the next rounds :)

But that's okay, AJ Abrams and space-eater Pittman will be waiting the Dookies on Saturday and hopefully Texas will beat Duke!

The most exciting games were probably the two games that many had circled on their calendars, and it is no coincidence CBS scheduled them at the end of the day, in order to bring in a bigger audience.

VCU looked toast after the first half, but slowly and steadily they chipped away at UCLA, and they came very close, oh-so-close, one jump shot close to pulling yet another NCAA tourney upset. We tip our hats to the VCU Rams! Their 2007 victory over the Dookies will remain priceless through the centuries. And that Larry Sanders dude is gonna make some big bucks when he goes professional!

The other dramatic game was Western Kentucky's "how to guide" on falling apart and losing a game you had already won. A bad out-of-bounds call by the zebras did not help the Hilltoppers but ultimately they managed to hold on to dear life and make it to the second round where they'll face SoftZaga but not GoneZaga.

Pettigrew was the one who solidified the victory for W.Ky from the free throw line. He was 1 of 4 from the line, but at a very critical juncture at the end of the game he went 2 from 2, giving his team a breathable margin.

We keep pounding the selection committee for picking all these ugly and undeserving Big Ten teams, and once again, Illinois without Chester Frasier was clearly not a #5 seed. In-fact, they were probably not a #5 seed with him. But without him, were they really a better team than St Mary's with Patty Mills?

And since we are back to St Mary's, we would like to politely tell the NCAA selection committee with its clueless chairman who doesn't even know college hoops has an exhibition season: F-U NCAA SELECTION COMMITTEE OF 2009. YOU SCREWED UP THE MID-MAJORS for the sake of crappy Big-Ten teams (Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois).

The fourth game of the nightcap was Oklahoma playing the "reformed" Todd Bozeman club. The most dramatic part of that game was a wild wrestling move on Blake Griffin. Just like the NFL protects quarterbacks and the NBA protects star players, the NCAA should come in and hand out big punishments to "thuggish" moves like that, so as to discourage future recurrence. By "big" we mean long suspensions, not just a slap on the wrist with an ejection. We mean blocks of games, like 10 or more games! This is not the NHL or WWF/WWE!

No Lawson, no Calhoun, no problem! After a few minutes of getting "acquainted" with the opponents, both UNC and UConn managed to run by them and put them in their "place" as 16th seeds. Not much to say here, expect of course, waiting to find out what's the latest update on Lawson and whether he plays against LSU and if so, will that mean that he won't be able to play next week?

There were two exciting games however, Purdue was supposed to be having a comfortable slugfest win over Northern Iowa, but the purple uniforms managed to make the game interesting in the second half and give Matt Painter and crew an ulcer or two. But Purdue managed to hold on to the "W" and advance to the second round.

The other interesting game, a classic #7 vs #10 was the vindication of "The Gary". We are big fans of "The Gary", and apparently so is President O'bama. Maryland had a slight lead through the game, but in the last quarter the Terrapins were able to pull away, after Gary's defense was able to contain the #1 three-point shooting team in the country. You better watch it Roburt Sallie, you won't put 10 three-pointers on the Turtle!

Bay Area fans are no strangers to early exits by Mike Montgomerry, although this year's team over-achieved just by being in the conversation for the NCAA tourney, let alone actually being in it. So I'm sure Cal420 fans will forgive him this year.

This also sets up an interesting Memphis vs Maryland matchup. We hope it won't turn into the slugfest it was 2-3 years ago when the two teams met during the regular season.

Now in progress, Mississippi State vs Washington on CSTV (CBS College Sports)... Our next update will come after the third block of games finishes later today!

The first three games of the NCAA tournament delivered some March Madness excitement! The Cal-State Northridge team, despite all its troubles, following the leadership of their veteran head coach managed to give Memphis all it could handle for the first 32 minutes. Infact, the Matadors won the first 32 minutes of the game.

But ultimately, the size, length, depth and athleticism of Memphis rose to the surface, and the jumpers were not falling as the Matadors started running out of juice.

But our hats are off to the Matadors for an impressive performance that put the fear of elimination deep inside the hearts of the Tigers.

And one player that has earned every single penny of his scholarship in just one game is the one and only Roburt Sallie, managing to sink a total of ten (10) three-pointers for a 35-point performance. Yes, a 35-pointer that saved Calipari's 2009 NCAA tournament.

The game that was expected to be a close game was a close game, but LSU punched the Butler in the mouth at the start of the game, and that punch was enough for LSU to carry through the game, and despite an inch-by-inch comeback by the Butler bulldogs and their 19-year-old coach, the LSU Tigers kept them at bay, making them the second group of Tigers to march to the second round.

The last game of this block was not competitive, as the Texas A&M Mark Turgeons took an early lead and never looked bad. Tavernari et al were not able to hit the wild threes they needed to make this game interesting, and the Ole Roy disciple is going to make Aggies fans forget all about the great escape of "Clyde".

Stay tuned to this blog for another recap after the end of each block of games!

And one more thing, to sort through the March Madness games available on TV and online, be sure to check out our March Madness 2009 TV Guide. This include pointers to not just the NCAA, but also NIT, CBI and CIT! (Yes, CIT is a new post-season tourney for mid-majors).

Hey, it's March Madness time again! Time to use your sick days, "work from home", take a vacation day, or come up with any kind of excuse to stay home or go to your local sports bar and watch the games!

Here is the TV schedule of the post-season play, directly from the broadcasters themselves:


NCAA Tournament
+ National CBS schedule with announcers included
+ Compact national CBS schedule
+ for games available in your region, check your local CBS affiliate
+ online coverage: ncaa.com/mmod


NIT Tournament
+ games on the ESPN family of networks
+ daily ESPN games schedule
+ NIT website
+ online at espn360.com


College Basketball Invitational (CBI)
+ some of the games are available on Mark Cuban's HDNet
+ CBI page


CollegeInsider Tournament (New!)
+ official schedule
+ Yes, there is a new post-season tourney, the CollegeInsider.com post season tournament (CIT). The field is picked by four CollegeInsider.com staffers and 11 well-known coaches, including Lefty of Maryland, Nolan Richardson, Hugh Durham and Jim Phelan.
+ 16 mid-major teams are participating in this, no "BCS" giants!
+ the final will be televised on Fox College Sports on Tuesday March 31st