Day 3: Walking Commentary
12:01 pm - I almost forgot to look at the Supermoon! ... ... Yup. It's pretty bright! Good night everybody! Go Orange!
11:57 pm - Looks like UConn has this one in hand. Let's take a look at tomorrow's games...
With my "the CAA is underrated" theory, I'd say Ohio State might have a tougher than expected time against George Mason, and VCU is going to beat Purdue. I think the Washington-UNC game will be fantastic. I think Michigan is playing great, and could throw a scare into Duke. I'm indifferent for the Arizona-Texas game. Kansas rolls over Illinois. Florida State will win unless Notre Dame is hot from deep.
Finally, the SU game. On a neutral court (actually a slightly pro-SU court), SU should have a distinct advantage. The Marquette loss on January 29 was the last time SU lost to an un-ranked team. The Orange are better now. Dion Waiters was exiled on the bench in that game. (Scoop says his wrist is fine, but either way, Dion is still a useful player against the undersized Golden Eagles.) Baye Keita hit the boards hard in that game, but he and Fab are much better. I think the rebounding total will be key. SU only grabbed 22 in the first meeting. That has to be better.
Of course, it's horrifying to play a team that knows the zone this early in the tournament. But on the flip side, SU knows Marquette. It lost to them once, so they'll take them seriously. But they'll also be confident that they have come a long way since that game. Syracuse should win this game. Syracuse will win this game, 74-67.
11:54 pm - Obama's bracket is in the 99.8 percentile on ESPN. He had Pitt in the Final Four, but still! And people say he hasn't accomplished anything in office...
Meanwhile, George W. Bush's bracket had Texas in the Final Four...in all four regions.
11:48 pm - Ugh. It's so hard to hate UConn when Kemba Walker is this freakin' good. The pure basketball fan in me just loves watching him play.
11:45 pm - If you're the UConn cheerleaders, don't you skip the "Go-Go-Go... U-C!" chant when you're playing the University of Cincinnati? Ha ha ha! Just kidding! I know UConn trust fund babies have no brains!
11:29 pm - I wish I had a million Tweeps so I could challenge them to post a YouTube video mixing the Visigoth Sports Net ads with the Old Spice ads. "Romantic Puppy Surprise?" "Enough of this Psycho-babble!"
11:23 pm - I was just contemplating Jim Calhoun's age...do you remember ever seeing an image of him coaching in the 1980s? I don't, and yet we see photos of Boeheim, John Thompson, and even the other big name Big East coaches from the 1980s all the time. I think he just started coaching at UConn in, like, 1993 but everyone decided it would be better for Big East lore to re-write history and pretend he was there in 1986 so they spotted him a couple hundred wins.
11:22 pm - Meanwhile, Cincy has battled back to take the lead against UConn early in the 2nd. When did Mick Cronin become a good coach? I like their effort, and their use of the 2-3 zone against Kemba and the Kids. (I just made that up! Like it?)
11:21 pm - Well, we haven't had a ton of upsets this year, but we've had a lot of quality games. That K-State-Wisconsin game was a war to the end.
11:11 pm - Anybody else just get a hankerin' for some Big Red gum?
10:58 pm - Good observation by my friend, Maarten the Belgium: what's up with all the first names starting with "J" on Wisconsin and Kansas St? There's 8 between them! Is this a record for the letter J? For any letter, ever in tournament history? Come on TNT! Do your research!
10:56 pm - What the heck is Pitino doing co-anchoring in the TBS studio? If Syracuse had lost to Indiana St, I'd be VERY displeased if Boeheim was on TV all day talking about other games.
10:39 pm - With that Pitt loss, the stakes for this Wisconsin-K-State battle are enormous. Either could be your Southeast Final Four team.
10:00 pm - Wow. Jimmer disagrees that Gonzaga was under-seeded. Jimmer thinks the Big East is garbage and the MWC is a better conference.
9:26 pm - Is the Big East overrated? I mentioned earlier how I thought judging a conference based on how their body of teams does in a single elimination tournament is unfair. The fact is there's a very good reason why each Big East team has lost so far:
Villanova - A hot mess heading into the tournament. They're a good argument for why the committee should weight the final stretch of games heavier than the early season; they probably shouldn't have even been in the tournament. Still, the Wildcats were the better team against George Mason but they blew it in the end.
Georgetown - Another hot mess heading into the tournament. (What is a hot mess, anyway? Is that a reference to hell? A kitchen debacle? A sexual mishap? Whoever can give me a convincing explanation of the origin of that phrase wins a lifetime subscription to The Sports Sauna.) Also, VCU (same conference as George Mason!) was probably under-seeded.
Notre Dame - Too many white players and... whoops! This one hasn't happened yet...
St. John's - Peaked, and Gonzaga was certainly under-seeded.
Louisville - Obviously, the biggest shocker. Morehead St is no Butler, Gonzaga, or VCU. Still, Louisville over-achieved all year.
Pittsburgh - Butler was under-seeded as a 5 last year, and they were under-seeded as an 8 this year.
West Virginia - Absolute garbage, and they still put up a fight against Kentucky.
As always, the committee doesn't respect the upper echelon mid-majors. There actually is a substantial difference between Gonzaga, Butler, and the better Colonial teams even compared to supposedly dangerous mid-majors like Utah State and Oakland. I really believe former group could hang in a better conference (see: Richmond's success in the A-10). Vulnerable Big East teams happened to run into under-seeded mid-majors this year. We should have seen this coming.
Tonight and tomorrow the last Big East teams roll into action. Two are guaranteed to lose since they're playing each other. Syracuse and UConn are two teams that are playing well, and that even objective observers thought could go deep. But conference match-ups are virtually toss-ups. Both could fall.
Anyway, I hate being in the position of defending the Big East. I don't really root that hard for my conference (as you may have noticed). I just think the answer to "why will the Big East send no more than 3 teams to the Sweet 16" is more complicated than "the Big East is overrated."
9:23 pm - Butler is this year's Butler!
They've been a March favorite of mine since the epic 1st-round loss to Florida on Mike Miller's lay-up a decade ago. I know Syracuse fans are bitter towards them, but I was in the dome following last year's heartbreaker while watching the East regionals, so it wasn't quite a traumatic as if I had watched the entire game. I think Brad Stevens is a genius and I hope they do indeed become the Gonzaga of the mid-west. Keep going Bulldogs!
9:13 pm - That Pitt possession with the 1-point lead late really showed their flaws. Against fantastic defense, they ended up with a long three from their supposed go-to guy, Gibbs. Who can make the big shot? Now it's Butler's chance.
8:57 pm - Woo! This Butler-Pitt game is epic. I think Butler is going to pull this out, and I'm really starting to think that these Jamie Dixon teams just aren't built for the NCAA tournament. They play outstanding defense but when it comes down to the wire, they just can't put games away on offense.
By the way, if Bill Raferty and Verne Lundquist had been commentating my life for the past couple hours, here's what it would have sounded like:
Bill: Look at Arras grade those papers while he watches the basketball. He's really got the ol' NOODLE WORKIN'!!
Verne: Arras...oh, nice use of boilerplate commentary there! How do you DO! It looks like this paper is all but over.
Bill: He's so efficient, Verne! Now here comes the grade! A C-minus...put it in the book with a pen! And right into his transition game!
Verne: He really is a fine young man.
5:10 pm - Wow. Erving Walker just took over for Florida. That's a great example of why NCAA games are won with backcourt stars, not frontcourt stars. Rick Jackson is an amazing weapon, but you need The Guy (and it can vary who that is from game-to-game) to be someone who can drive and, most of all, shoot. That's the difference down the stretch of these games.
5:06 pm - As a good UCLA-Florida gae winds down, Richmond-Morehead St about to tip off. Spiders will get to the Sweet 16, where they will be clobbered by Kansas.
2:29 pm - Up next, the other good SEC team takes on the defensive guru Ben Howland and his crappy UCLA squad. Florida will take it.
2:27 pm - Brandon Knight is very good. He could use another year of seasoning in college, but I hope for anti-Kentucky's sake that he goes pro.
Nice win for the Wildcats. Still, they didn't exactly dominate Princeton and West Virginia. I'm more skeptical about their chances to crack the Final Four than I was coming in to the tournament.
2:20 pm - Huggins used his last timeout with 2:00 minutes to go, ate a whole wheel of cheese, and pooped in the refrigerator! I'm not even mad! That's amazing!
1:51 pm - I should probably clarify that I am actually rooting for West Virginia. Unless you're a Kentucky fan, how can you not? John Calipari, while a sensational basketball coach in terms of strategy and execution, is pure sleaze in terms of NCAA ethics. Bobby Huggins is just a bumbling oaf. I think I might even take a perverse joy if the Mountaineers make a run. The more West Virginia wins, the more I will literally have March Madness. The oaf leads sleaze by 2 with 8 to play...
1:27 pm - This is pure!
1:23 pm - If West Virginia beats Kentucky I will print out all 501 posts of The Sports Sauna and eat them. Also, if West Virginia beats Kentucky, you can throw out the "Big East is overrated" buzz I've been hearing. Not because it means West Virginia is good and thus the Big East is good. Rather, the fact that a crappy West Virginia can beat, or even lead a talented Kentucky team by 8 at the half as the are now, demonstrates how absurd it is to judge a conference solely on the basis of a single-elimination tournament.
1:00 pm - OK, we'll go again today. Last night's Syracuse game was satisfying. I thought they took care of business well, handling a dangerous team ultimately without too much trouble. I was expecting SU's dominance to come from turnovers and transition baskets, but it didn't. Boeheim just pounded the heck out of Indiana St.'s frontcourt with Ricky. Done and done. Now we get Marquette, and a chance to redeem our earlier defeat. I'm incredibly nervous, but that's March. More on that later.
11:57 pm - Looks like UConn has this one in hand. Let's take a look at tomorrow's games...
With my "the CAA is underrated" theory, I'd say Ohio State might have a tougher than expected time against George Mason, and VCU is going to beat Purdue. I think the Washington-UNC game will be fantastic. I think Michigan is playing great, and could throw a scare into Duke. I'm indifferent for the Arizona-Texas game. Kansas rolls over Illinois. Florida State will win unless Notre Dame is hot from deep.
Finally, the SU game. On a neutral court (actually a slightly pro-SU court), SU should have a distinct advantage. The Marquette loss on January 29 was the last time SU lost to an un-ranked team. The Orange are better now. Dion Waiters was exiled on the bench in that game. (Scoop says his wrist is fine, but either way, Dion is still a useful player against the undersized Golden Eagles.) Baye Keita hit the boards hard in that game, but he and Fab are much better. I think the rebounding total will be key. SU only grabbed 22 in the first meeting. That has to be better.
Of course, it's horrifying to play a team that knows the zone this early in the tournament. But on the flip side, SU knows Marquette. It lost to them once, so they'll take them seriously. But they'll also be confident that they have come a long way since that game. Syracuse should win this game. Syracuse will win this game, 74-67.
11:54 pm - Obama's bracket is in the 99.8 percentile on ESPN. He had Pitt in the Final Four, but still! And people say he hasn't accomplished anything in office...
Meanwhile, George W. Bush's bracket had Texas in the Final Four...in all four regions.
11:48 pm - Ugh. It's so hard to hate UConn when Kemba Walker is this freakin' good. The pure basketball fan in me just loves watching him play.
11:45 pm - If you're the UConn cheerleaders, don't you skip the "Go-Go-Go... U-C!" chant when you're playing the University of Cincinnati? Ha ha ha! Just kidding! I know UConn trust fund babies have no brains!
11:29 pm - I wish I had a million Tweeps so I could challenge them to post a YouTube video mixing the Visigoth Sports Net ads with the Old Spice ads. "Romantic Puppy Surprise?" "Enough of this Psycho-babble!"
11:23 pm - I was just contemplating Jim Calhoun's age...do you remember ever seeing an image of him coaching in the 1980s? I don't, and yet we see photos of Boeheim, John Thompson, and even the other big name Big East coaches from the 1980s all the time. I think he just started coaching at UConn in, like, 1993 but everyone decided it would be better for Big East lore to re-write history and pretend he was there in 1986 so they spotted him a couple hundred wins.
11:22 pm - Meanwhile, Cincy has battled back to take the lead against UConn early in the 2nd. When did Mick Cronin become a good coach? I like their effort, and their use of the 2-3 zone against Kemba and the Kids. (I just made that up! Like it?)
11:21 pm - Well, we haven't had a ton of upsets this year, but we've had a lot of quality games. That K-State-Wisconsin game was a war to the end.
11:11 pm - Anybody else just get a hankerin' for some Big Red gum?
10:58 pm - Good observation by my friend, Maarten the Belgium: what's up with all the first names starting with "J" on Wisconsin and Kansas St? There's 8 between them! Is this a record for the letter J? For any letter, ever in tournament history? Come on TNT! Do your research!
10:56 pm - What the heck is Pitino doing co-anchoring in the TBS studio? If Syracuse had lost to Indiana St, I'd be VERY displeased if Boeheim was on TV all day talking about other games.
10:39 pm - With that Pitt loss, the stakes for this Wisconsin-K-State battle are enormous. Either could be your Southeast Final Four team.
10:00 pm - Wow. Jimmer disagrees that Gonzaga was under-seeded. Jimmer thinks the Big East is garbage and the MWC is a better conference.
9:26 pm - Is the Big East overrated? I mentioned earlier how I thought judging a conference based on how their body of teams does in a single elimination tournament is unfair. The fact is there's a very good reason why each Big East team has lost so far:
Villanova - A hot mess heading into the tournament. They're a good argument for why the committee should weight the final stretch of games heavier than the early season; they probably shouldn't have even been in the tournament. Still, the Wildcats were the better team against George Mason but they blew it in the end.
Georgetown - Another hot mess heading into the tournament. (What is a hot mess, anyway? Is that a reference to hell? A kitchen debacle? A sexual mishap? Whoever can give me a convincing explanation of the origin of that phrase wins a lifetime subscription to The Sports Sauna.) Also, VCU (same conference as George Mason!) was probably under-seeded.
Notre Dame - Too many white players and... whoops! This one hasn't happened yet...
St. John's - Peaked, and Gonzaga was certainly under-seeded.
Louisville - Obviously, the biggest shocker. Morehead St is no Butler, Gonzaga, or VCU. Still, Louisville over-achieved all year.
Pittsburgh - Butler was under-seeded as a 5 last year, and they were under-seeded as an 8 this year.
West Virginia - Absolute garbage, and they still put up a fight against Kentucky.
As always, the committee doesn't respect the upper echelon mid-majors. There actually is a substantial difference between Gonzaga, Butler, and the better Colonial teams even compared to supposedly dangerous mid-majors like Utah State and Oakland. I really believe former group could hang in a better conference (see: Richmond's success in the A-10). Vulnerable Big East teams happened to run into under-seeded mid-majors this year. We should have seen this coming.
Tonight and tomorrow the last Big East teams roll into action. Two are guaranteed to lose since they're playing each other. Syracuse and UConn are two teams that are playing well, and that even objective observers thought could go deep. But conference match-ups are virtually toss-ups. Both could fall.
Anyway, I hate being in the position of defending the Big East. I don't really root that hard for my conference (as you may have noticed). I just think the answer to "why will the Big East send no more than 3 teams to the Sweet 16" is more complicated than "the Big East is overrated."
9:23 pm - Butler is this year's Butler!
They've been a March favorite of mine since the epic 1st-round loss to Florida on Mike Miller's lay-up a decade ago. I know Syracuse fans are bitter towards them, but I was in the dome following last year's heartbreaker while watching the East regionals, so it wasn't quite a traumatic as if I had watched the entire game. I think Brad Stevens is a genius and I hope they do indeed become the Gonzaga of the mid-west. Keep going Bulldogs!
9:13 pm - That Pitt possession with the 1-point lead late really showed their flaws. Against fantastic defense, they ended up with a long three from their supposed go-to guy, Gibbs. Who can make the big shot? Now it's Butler's chance.
8:57 pm - Woo! This Butler-Pitt game is epic. I think Butler is going to pull this out, and I'm really starting to think that these Jamie Dixon teams just aren't built for the NCAA tournament. They play outstanding defense but when it comes down to the wire, they just can't put games away on offense.
By the way, if Bill Raferty and Verne Lundquist had been commentating my life for the past couple hours, here's what it would have sounded like:
Bill: Look at Arras grade those papers while he watches the basketball. He's really got the ol' NOODLE WORKIN'!!
Verne: Arras...oh, nice use of boilerplate commentary there! How do you DO! It looks like this paper is all but over.
Bill: He's so efficient, Verne! Now here comes the grade! A C-minus...put it in the book with a pen! And right into his transition game!
Verne: He really is a fine young man.
5:10 pm - Wow. Erving Walker just took over for Florida. That's a great example of why NCAA games are won with backcourt stars, not frontcourt stars. Rick Jackson is an amazing weapon, but you need The Guy (and it can vary who that is from game-to-game) to be someone who can drive and, most of all, shoot. That's the difference down the stretch of these games.
5:06 pm - As a good UCLA-Florida gae winds down, Richmond-Morehead St about to tip off. Spiders will get to the Sweet 16, where they will be clobbered by Kansas.
2:29 pm - Up next, the other good SEC team takes on the defensive guru Ben Howland and his crappy UCLA squad. Florida will take it.
2:27 pm - Brandon Knight is very good. He could use another year of seasoning in college, but I hope for anti-Kentucky's sake that he goes pro.
Nice win for the Wildcats. Still, they didn't exactly dominate Princeton and West Virginia. I'm more skeptical about their chances to crack the Final Four than I was coming in to the tournament.
2:20 pm - Huggins used his last timeout with 2:00 minutes to go, ate a whole wheel of cheese, and pooped in the refrigerator! I'm not even mad! That's amazing!
1:51 pm - I should probably clarify that I am actually rooting for West Virginia. Unless you're a Kentucky fan, how can you not? John Calipari, while a sensational basketball coach in terms of strategy and execution, is pure sleaze in terms of NCAA ethics. Bobby Huggins is just a bumbling oaf. I think I might even take a perverse joy if the Mountaineers make a run. The more West Virginia wins, the more I will literally have March Madness. The oaf leads sleaze by 2 with 8 to play...
1:27 pm - This is pure!
1:23 pm - If West Virginia beats Kentucky I will print out all 501 posts of The Sports Sauna and eat them. Also, if West Virginia beats Kentucky, you can throw out the "Big East is overrated" buzz I've been hearing. Not because it means West Virginia is good and thus the Big East is good. Rather, the fact that a crappy West Virginia can beat, or even lead a talented Kentucky team by 8 at the half as the are now, demonstrates how absurd it is to judge a conference solely on the basis of a single-elimination tournament.
1:00 pm - OK, we'll go again today. Last night's Syracuse game was satisfying. I thought they took care of business well, handling a dangerous team ultimately without too much trouble. I was expecting SU's dominance to come from turnovers and transition baskets, but it didn't. Boeheim just pounded the heck out of Indiana St.'s frontcourt with Ricky. Done and done. Now we get Marquette, and a chance to redeem our earlier defeat. I'm incredibly nervous, but that's March. More on that later.
Labels: 2011 NCAA tournament Day 3
posted by Prof. A at 12:20 PM
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