College Basketball

[MyAimIsTrue]

Congratulations to Yale on making their first tournament appearance since 1962 and a welcome back hello to Florida Gulf Coast, the 15 seed that made it to the Sweet 16 a few years ago.

[Minneapple]

FGC was also known as Dunk City. Their coach from then is coaching...I want to say USC now.

Northern Iowa won the MVC on a crazy buzzer beater yesterday.

[MyAimIsTrue]

Correct, Andy Enfield left for USC after that magical season for FGC.  I have to admit their first game that tournament against Georgetown was one of the most exciting, impressive displays I'd never seen.  Dunk City was amazing!

[AimingforYoko]

Congratulations to Yale on making their first tournament appearance since 1962 and a welcome back hello to Florida Gulf Coast, the 15 seed that made it to the Sweet 16 a few years ago.

You would think Yale basketball would be a simple feelgood story, but not so much.

[Minneapple]

In the category of "small school has a great season then loses in the tournament, putting their NCAA hopes in real jeopardy," we have...Monmouth. This year they gained fame and lots of ESPN time with their bench celebrations. They just lost to Iona in the MAAC championship game. And so Monmouth will be sweating it out for another week until Selection Sunday. Their resume is actually very good for an MAAC school, they have wins over USC, UCLA, Notre Dame and Georgetown. We shall see!

 

ETA: Add Valparaiso to the list! They just went down to UW Green Bay in the Horizon League final.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Minneapple

[MyAimIsTrue]

I hate to be a cynic but I fear Monmouth will be left out because G-d forbid they take the spot of the ninth school out of the ACC with barely a winning record, or something like that.

[mojoween]

Apparently this year's Final Four and championship game will be on TBS.

It doesn't matter to me either way because I have both stations, but I don't like it. Don't mess with the tourney dammit. And I know there are people out there who still only have the standard channels, even in 2016.

Allegedly it was to somehow keep ESPN from getting the rights, but I don't know how that works.

[MyAimIsTrue]

I usually don't have much good to say about the three major networks here in the US but CBS does a great job with the tourney so yeah, don't mess with it.  (and yes, I know TBS is one of the several stations that shows early round games and I'm cool with that)

[Minneapple]

The Final Four was on TBS last year. And maybe even the year before IIRC. I think the championship games were on CBS though.

 

*Shrug* All of the college football playoff and most of the bowl games are on cable. So it's not really such a surprise.

[Calvada]

In the past, all the small schools celebrating like mad when they made the tournament was a little bittersweet, since you knew they would be crushed by a Duke, or a Kentucky, or a Michigan State in Round 1.  This year it seems on any given day, just about any team can win.  Should be a great few weekends of basketball, although filling out the bracket is going to be tough. 

 

Amusing start to the Greg Gard press conference yesterday, when Barry Alvarez announces the new head coach of the Badgers is Greg Gard!  cue "On Wisconsin" and Gard doesn't walk in.  Everyone was looking over their shoulders to the back of the room, wondering where he was, and reporters were tweeting jokes along the lines of "not so fast my friend!"  Over a minute later, Gard and his wife strolled in, and he apologized, saying the elevator was slow.  Not a great day for the public relations staff - always make sure the guest of honor is ready BEFORE the AD makes the announcement.  That's press conference 101. 

[ketchuplover]

The GB Phoenix/Pheonix will rise up and vanquish all tourney foes.

[Minneapple]

The GB Phoenix/Pheonix will rise up and vanquish all tourney foes.

I want Green Bay vs. Virginia in the first round. DO IT, NCAA. What a great storyline, to see Tony coach against the team he played for. And you know Dick Bennett would be there, trying to not have a stroke over every call.

 

In the past, all the small schools celebrating like mad when they made the tournament was a little bittersweet, since you knew they would be crushed by a Duke, or a Kentucky, or a Michigan State in Round 1.  This year it seems on any given day, just about any team can win.  Should be a great few weekends of basketball, although filling out the bracket is going to be tough. 

Yup. It's going to be a wide-open tournament this year. Maybe the first time a 16 seed gets win? We shall see! I run the bracket pool at my office, and usually there s a very common winner or two. This year there will be more varied brackets. Anything can happen. It's going to be such fun!

[MyAimIsTrue]

I know you mean the men but I always like to point out that 16 seed Harvard beat the 1 seed Stanford in the women's tournament some years ago.

 

Championship week is so much fun and I much prefer watching games from smaller conferences like the MAAC or the NEC, folks that rarely get any national air time, than the big power conferences.  I really enjoyed Wagner vs. Fairleigh Dickinson the other night playing in Wagner's tiny home gym.  Not an arena with corporate naming rights, not a field house, but a gym.

[Calvada]

Crazy games in the Big Ten tourney all day, but now my Badgers are playing the Huskers in a game making the entire state of Wisconsin ill.  Other than Vitto Brown, the Badgers can't hit a shot, can't make a free throw, are turning the ball over with alarming regularity.  Only thing keeping the Badgers in this game (other than Vitto)  is Nebraska fouling like there is no tomorrow.  Ice cold shooting for Badgers and incredibly lucky to be down only by 5 at the half.  Fire Greg Gard!  (A shoutout to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Packers' game blogs, when slightly unbalanced Packers fans -- ok, sometimes me -  delight in calling for someone to be fired at the first sign of adversity.)

 

I blame the uniforms.  Once again, hideous uniforms for tournament time.  At least the Badgers don't have the zig zag lines across their asses like the Huskers.  They want to have different unis for March, fine.  But why do they have to be so damn ugly? 

 

 

[Minneapple]

A shoutout to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Packers' game blogs, when slightly unbalanced Packers fans -- ok, sometimes me -  delight in calling for someone to be fired at the first sign of adversity.

 

You should follow @JSComments on twitter. They cherry-pick the most absurd/funniest comments from the Journal Sentinel's sports section and retweet them. I remember after he slammed Vitto's head on the floor, one person called for Diamond Stone to be renamed Cubic Zirconia, which made me laugh.

 

But why do they have to be so damn ugly?

 

I think Adidas is conceding the college sports market to Nike and Under Armour so they're half-assing everything now. Wisconsin's Adidas contract expires this year and they've signed a big deal with Under Armour. Two years ago Adidas came up with really nice unis for the tournament. Last year's were bad. This year's are worse.

 

So, I think we can justly blame the unis for the awful awful awful game today. Ugh.

 

Fire Gard, he hasn't won a single game since the interim label was removed.

[Calvada]

Just more time to get ready for the real tournament, right?  I could feel the Badgers' seeding plummeting during that second half.  Sigh . ..

 

I think sometimes the teams that play on Wednesday have a bit of an advantage, since they're in the flow of playing.  Of course, by Friday, they usually have no legs!  But it's like Wild Card teams in the NFL playoffs upsetting the teams that had the bye. 

[xaxat]

UConn Cincy. . .

 

OMG!

 

ETA Not quite UConn Syracuse's 6 OT game (I'll never forget Jerry McNamara on the scorer's table) but still pretty epic in the end.

 

Lots of teams gave it their all this weekend. . .  and then their was LSU. Talk about embarrassing. Their coach was probably thinking about updating his resume during the second half.

Edited March 13, 2016 by xaxat

[mojoween]

I don't really care about either one, but I give the side-eye to Virginia as a one over Michigan State. What am I missing?

[AimingforYoko]

It's that East Coast bias.

Damn CBS, two hours? I thought you were pushing it with the full hour. Do we really need an extra hour of Charles Barkley exposing his ignorance on college basketball?

[mojoween]

I love the Round Mound a lot but Jesus Christ this is NOT making for scintillating television. Can we just go back to Greg Gumbel reading the picks? Why do the TBS/TNT guys need to be included?

[xaxat]

C'mon mojoween, you know the answer to that question! Money!

 

I too like Charles, but I really wonder how much of his college basketball "analysis" is fed through his earpiece. I also wonder how that switch from him to Seth making picks went down.

 

Source: Louisville recruits told NCAA about sex, stripper parties

 

Pitino can hide behind the "I didn't know" excuse, but there is a whole lot of shady stuff going on with this case. 

[mojoween]

I know it's all about the Benjamins. I'm assuming no one from CBS is going to check their Twitter mentions, heh.

I am irrationally pissed the full brackets were leaked during the show. I know CBS has turned this into a shitshow but why do people have to pass on info that isn't theirs?

I look forward to this day every year and CBS has ruined something I thought was unruinable.

(For the record, I purposely made sure to not look at the brackets ahead of time. I hate spoilers in any form.)

[Rick Kitchen]

Is there an NCAA rule that there must be at least one tournament venue in North Carolina every year?

[Calvada]

What's shocking is that Duke is not playing there.  I thought they put a site in one of the Carolinas for Coach K every year. 

 

There is also apparently a rule that the Big Ten tournament doesn't mean shit.  Every year, the winner of that conference tournament gets screwed over.  They claim they don't finalize the bracket until that game is completed, but I think that's horse shit.  That's a Midwest term that certainly MSU fans understand this year.

[Minneapple]

I am irrationally pissed the full brackets were leaked during the show.

 

I'm not. CBS deserved that one after expanding their selection show to two hours but not releasing the brackets right away, instead giving us brutal commentary. 

 

There is also apparently a rule that the Big Ten tournament doesn't mean shit.  Every year, the winner of that conference tournament gets screwed over.

 

The BTT final doesn't mean anything (unless there's a previously non-tournament team that wins it, like for example if Illinois or Nebraska had miracle-d out a championship). Last year the committee chairman straight-up said Wisconsin would have been a 1 seed regardless of the outcome of the final. 

 

Michigan State's reward comes in having Virginia as the 1 seed in the region. Virginia has a terrible, horrible record against Tom Izzo. Plus MSU basically has a cakewalk to the Elite 8. Virginia actually has a tougher draw, potentially facing Purdue in the Sweet 16.

[xaxat]

I have to agree with Gottlieb. Any team that lost to St. John's (Syracuse) should not be in the tournament.

 

Chris Mullin takes me back to the glory days of the Big East, but I don't think it is going to work out for him. That team is awful.

[pennben]

I'm not. CBS deserved that one after expanding their selection show to two hours but not releasing the brackets right away, instead giving us brutal commentary. 

 

I agree.  This is news in the sporting world.  News.  If the NCAA wants to sell it's soul and CBS wants to buy it and treat this like Dancing With the Stars announcing it's lineup of the "stars" for the next season, that's fine, but if other sites can break actual, real sporting news, well, more power to them. I think it is impossible for factual sporting news to be considered a "spoiler".

Edited March 14, 2016 by pennben

[MyAimIsTrue]

Monmouth did everything that was asked of a mid-major team yet they're left out of the tournament while an undeserving power conference team like Syracuse is in? I'm not a conspiracy theorist but sometimes I wonder if the selection committee is on the take.

[Minneapple]

An undeserving Tulsa team also got in. 

 

I agree Monmouth should have been in though. Everyone knows the committee likes teams that go on the road and win games; Monmouth went and beat UCLA, Georgetown, and Notre Dame among others. And then there's St. Bonaventure, which won its regular season and had an RPI of 30. 

 

I think the committee in general did a terrible job this year. Oregon State as a 7? Really?

[DrSpaceman73]

Two hours for that reveal show was just awful. I am glad someone leaked it.

I don't consider it a spoiler. I am not tuning in for the drama of it all and to here Barkely blather on. I just want to see the bracket. that's all most people want. 30 minutes, all it takes. Talk afterwards.

The committee seems to have done an awful job this year. But then I think once they expanded to 68 teams, it's been all downhill. At least they finally are going to stop calling the play in games "round one", which was stupid. I know why they did it, but was still stupid.

[blaase]

As the season went on those UCLA and Georgetown wins for Monmouth  looked less impressive. You can't have so many losses (3) to bad teams ( 200 + rpi)  and expect an at large so agree with Monmouth being left out.

[mojoween]

I feel badly for Monmouth, but I heard one of the ESPN guys say "they did all they could (with their scheduling, etc.)."

Well, no. They didn't do ALL they could. If they won their conference tourney, they'd be in. I think we all know by now that unfair or not, mid-majors don't get as many at-large bids.

[Minneapple]

You can't have so many losses (3) to bad teams ( 200 + rpi)

 

The thing is that Monmouth plays in a bad conference so just by conference association they're going to play more 200+ RPI teams -- so naturally they're going to lose to more 200+ RPI teams. A team like Syracuse is in a high major conference so they can afford to sit home, play a bunch of 150-ish RPI teams and then go play in the ACC where they have more chances for top 50-100 wins. Before January, Monmouth played exactly one home game. They did exactly what the committee in the past has said they want: they hit the road, played high major teams and won games. I hate to agree with John Calipari, but this "moving target" is exactly what he was talking about. 

 

I will say that I don't think there's ever been this much pre-games bitching about the bracket before. Normally people bitch for like a day and then move on. But people are still wondering WTF the committee was doing when they put together this bracket. There are just way too many oddities, like making both Xavier and Villanova 2 seeds but putting 'Nova in the South and Xavier in the East when it should have been the other way. Making Virginia a one seed -- then punishing them by sending them *to Chicago* to potentially face Purdue, and if they get past the Boilers, then MSU. Why not make Virginia the No. 1 seed in the South and Kansas the 1 seed in the Midwest? It just makes no sense.

[MyAimIsTrue]

A lot of the mid-majors have trouble getting top tier schools to play them.  That was the problem Gonzaga had for a long time, that the big guys didn't want to schedule them for fear of losing to them. 

 

I still say Monmouth got screwed.

[xaxat]

Did any of the CBS et al channels got to studio after Yale/Baylor? My local CBS station went to the news and I was so wanting to see Charles eat crow after the Yale victory.

[AimingforYoko]

I wonder if the Yale coverage is going to really get into the Jack Montague kerfuffle.

[Ohwell]

Those Baylor day-glow yellow uniforms hurt my eyes.  I have nothing against the kids, but for that reason alone, I'm glad they're out of the tournament.

[MyAimIsTrue]

Did any of the CBS et al channels got to studio after Yale/Baylor? My local CBS station went to the news and I was so wanting to see Charles eat crow after the Yale victory.

 

I hope he did because Charles was an absolute dick about Yale in the pregame show.

 

I think I have a crush on Yale's Brandon Sherrod.  After all he took a year off to be a Whiffenpoof.

[Rick Kitchen]

Those Baylor day-glow yellow uniforms hurt my eyes.  I have nothing against the kids, but for that reason alone, I'm glad they're out of the tournament.

 

Their football team wears the same color. It is painful.

[Ohwell]

Ouch.

[Carey]

Those Baylor day-glow yellow uniforms hurt my eyes.  I have nothing against the kids, but for that reason alone, I'm glad they're out of the tournament.

 

 

Really, for me, I'm glad the committee made that the infamous 12-5 match-up to best give everyone a shot at going with an upset to help have a decent & winning bracket.  I picked Yale to win, and as mentioned the uniforms were a factor to that.  Doesn't hurt that Ivy League schools tend to destroy the landscape of the field almost annually (with Harvard doing so earlier this decade)

[WichitaStateShock]

Stopping by to give a shout out to the shockers!!!

[xaxat]

Unicorn alert! 

 

Victories by Gonzaga and Utah means that we will see that rarest of events, two talented low post big men (Domantas Sabonis and Jakob Pöltl) going head to head. 

[AimingforYoko]

Woooooooow. Upset of the tournament. I had Michgan St. losing to Kansas in the final.

[ebk57]

Ho.  Lee.  Shit.

 

I had Michigan State beating Kansas in the finals.  My only hope now is the Terps win through somehow.

 

hahahahahahahaha... sigh...

[Wildcard]

ESPN posted that 22.3% of all people that filled out brackets picked Michigan St to win it all. At least, UVA won't lose to them for three straight years.

[shoregirl]

I had them losing to UNC in the final four. I don't even care that my brackets all messed up on the second day, I really like to see all the upsets.

[Ohwell]

Baylor alum, here, weighing in on "those" uniforms -- I hate them. A few years ago, Nike started this deal where they designed special uniforms for a handful of teams, Baylor being one. They were hideous, IMO, and the women's team has worn them too, I think.

 

It's one of my pet peeves, teams straying from their school's official colors. Baylor is green and gold (even mentioned in the school song), so as cool as the all-black football uniforms may look, I don't like them, either, but they aren't as irritating as day-glo yellow. Sadly, I don't see the garish uniform trend going away soon, as long as apparel companies can convince schools that they look good.

You have my sympathy.  Yeesh.

[kattybiz]

Sooooo, my bracket still has a prayer since I picked North Carolina.  If Maryland can beat Kansas I have a shot.  (Or if ANYONE can beat Kansas.)  Go Terps!

[bosawks]

Arghhh, Michigan State!

I'm going to need a Louisville stripper, hooker party to make this better.

Anyone have Pitino's number?