Posts Tagged ‘NCAA Tournament’

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:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pemLBs2O6s

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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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tre8Xa04g8Q

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 [...]

Here’s my official Yahoo Pick’em Entry into my work pool:

Laugh all you want but when Kent State and Drake make their runs to the Elite Eight and Georgetown beats Xavier in the championship, I’ll be the one in the money.

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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.

As much as I enjoyed watching the Eagles and Mountaineers, all the things I dislike about this “opening round game” were on display. First of all, Lavin is a chattering douchebag. I’m not sure he had any idea there was even a game being played since he seemed to think this was a talk radio gig that entailed little other than him pimping UCLA and his ruminations on who’s going to be in the Final Four. Just to add to the insult that was him completely ignoring the game taking place, he also spelled out how the NCAA can screw lower profile leagues even more by adding three additional play-in games. Great. Can’t wait for that.

And we’re in the money on another Pick of the Day, as we head to the Big Dance on Thursday and Friday.
For those planning on making some bets, we’re going to be doing a special Pick of the Day each day where we pick every Big Dance game with the spread. Thursday’s [...]

If the first half of the Coppin State-Mount St. Mary’s NCAA tourney play-in game is any indication of what’s to come this Thursday and Friday, then we are one for one exciting tournament. Unfortunately, with eight slow-paced teams from the Big Least and another four plodders from the Big Ten, it isn’t. [...]

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:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AauYMX4N368

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 [...]

As for the team that is in from the CAA, George Mason (23-10) is one of the more compelling teams in the field. In Campbell and Thomas, they have tested go-to guys that are accustomed to competing on college hoops biggest stage but Jim Larranaga also counts on sophomore wing Louis Birdsong and three freshman — Cam Long, Isaiah Tate, and Vlad Moldoveanu — for major minutes and contributions.

So the Patriots are a mix of new and old, much like they were in the 2006 tourney, this time around. In 2006, clever forward Will Thomas came through with three double-doubles during the Patriots run to the Final Four. Will it be Birdsong, one of the frosh, or seniors Thomas, Campbell, and Jordan Carter that step up this time around?

People may scoff at the Toreros’ chances of winning a game in the NCAA Tourney but they do so at their own peril. San Diego may have a handful of bad losses — an 80-72 loss at the JC to a terrible Cal-State Bakersfield being chief among them — but that’s to be expected with a young team and a new coach. Their uneven start behind them, the Toreros have won 13 of their last 15, the two losses being to Gonzaga and St. Mary’s and avenged in the WCC tourney and will roll into the Big Dance with a heap of confidence.

Should the Toreros draw a BCS side that has trouble defending deep into the shot clock and can be pushed around on the boards then Brandon Johnson & Co. have a better than average shot at the upset.

I don’t what is about being ESPN2 but something about appearing on the deuce seems to bring out the worst in MAC teams. Tonight’s 50-39 win by Kent State (24-6, 11-4) over Miami (14-14, 8-7), which notched us another win in Pick of The Day by the way, might’ve been the least watchable college hoops game televised on any channel this season. At one point during the second half, the two teams had combined for 29 turnovers and only 20 buckets. The final tally for the Golden Flashes was 19 TOs to 17 baskets while it was 15 TOs to 16 baskets for the Redhawks, a total of 34 turnovers to 33 baskets.