Posts Tagged ‘Mid-Majors’

Start with Basketball prospectus and then move on to Mike Miller’s spin at Beyond The Arc before checking out the outstanding post at CAA: Life as a Mid-Major, which makes a forceful argument for chucking the current way — RPI and all — of picking teams for the Big Dance. Something that I’m all [...]

Gotta love those kooky, nerdy Davidson supporters:

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can’t remember ever seeing a shooter as sweet as Curry at the college level. With his quick release and tireless ability to keep moving on offense, there seems to be nothing a team can do to defend him once he gets going. He wasn’t getting open looks on Sunday and Friday. He had a hand or two or four or six in his face every time he shot. Didn’t matter. Curry was money.

Maybe watching Reggie Miller during his senior year at UCLA or watching Calvin Murphy shoot the lights out for Niagara in the late 1960s is the closest it comes to watching Curry work his magic. I only sort of remember watching Reggie during his career at UCLA since I was 14 when he graduated and I wasn’t but a vision in the smoke from one of my parents bong hits when Murphy was playing college ball. So, as far as I know, watching Stephen Curry shoot the rock is as good as it gets in college hoops.

Following the first four days of the Big Dance, I want to deal with a couple of things. Let’s start with the Butler Bulldogs, 76-71 losers to Tennessee yesterday in an overtime thriller.
As good as this game was — and it was one of the best games of the college basketball season [...]

Compared to yesterday’s games like the scintillating 101-99 shootout that was the Drake-Western Kentucky scrap, the action in the Big Dance today was less than exciting.
After the thrill ride that was the concluding day of the First Round of the Big Dance, today’s been kind of a drag. Sure, it was great watching Duke [...]

UNLV spanks Kent State 71-58
Nothing good, that’s certain.
The main problems with the MAC that leave our squads unprepared for Big Dance play are the abyss in quality that are the bottom four or so teams in the league and the lack of atmosphere at gyms throughout the league, no matter where a team [...]

From our perspective at least.
Let’s start by saying that I’ve never been happier that I went to work on the opening day of the NCAA Tourney. With the exception of Duke barely surviving Belmont’s upset bid, this had to be one of the worst opening days of the Big Dance in history. And [...]

As promised, we’re picking every game tomorrow. Here goes!
(all lines from Bet US.Com as of 1:45 AM EST)
Early Games
Georgia +8.5 over Xavier
Kansas -22 over Portland State
Temple +7.5 over Michigan State
Marquette -6 over Kentucky
Purdue -3 over Baylor
Kent State -2 over UNLV
Pittsburgh -8.5 over Oral Roberts
Cornell +14.5 over Cornell
Late Games
Duke -20 over Belmont
USC -3.5 over Kansas [...]

Louisville, the only 3-seed that ranks in the top 150 in tempo, drew run-n-gun Boise State. Texas-Arlington is a run-n-gun team and they get Memphis. Belmont’s an uptempo 3-point shooting team and they get Duke, who plays the same way. Cornell’s a slick shooting team with a 7-footer girding the interior and they get Stanford, their mirror image except for the fact that they have two 7-footers.

One of the hardest things to do in the few days before the tourney starts is prepare for a squad that has a unique style of play. Sure seems like the committee considered that and tried to protect power conference teams by making sure they got matched-up with teams that play just like them.

Similar to our earlier post but much more in-depth, Joe Sheehan at Basketball Prospectus calls out the NCAA Tourney Selection Committee, writing that “they failed to serve the game this year.”
Ouch but spot fucking on, if you ask me.

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I posted about this last season but the trend of the Selection Committee pitting Mid-Major teams against one another in the First Round needs to stop. When only 6 of 34 at-large invites went to non-BCS league teams, having them play each other in the first half is just ridiculous. Four first [...]

Northwestern State’s upset of Iowa in the 2006 tourney remains one of my favorite upsets of all time:
With my best friend from Buffalo visiting New York City this weekend for several days of St. Patrick’s Day revelry, things have been quiet here. Now that he’s stuck at JFK nursing $9 beers while he [...]