I (Don't) Wanna Talk to Sampson!

Next season will be the 20th year since Indiana’s last national basketball championship. It’s going to be about 20 more before they get another because, after the hiring of Oklahoma’s Kelvin Sampson, the Hoosiers have purchased a first-class ticket to mediocrity.
How on earth did Indiana decide on a tired, no-talent clown like Sampson when the coaching ranks are filled with either guys on-the-rise (Bruce Pearl, Jim Larranaga), major-conference stalwarts (John Beilein, Tom Crean) or former Dukies with wonderful hair (Quin Snyder)? Hiring Sampson after Mike Davis is like trading in a Geo Prism for a Hyundai Elantra.
Sampson has no upside. He has no potential. He’s climbed his own Everest (reaching a Final Four in 2002) and then fell-off it (one Tourney win in the past three seasons). Sampson has no redeeming qualities at all. He’s not young, he’s not talented, he’s not good and he’s already maxed-out his talent level. What the hell were they thinking?
Sampson’s eternal crappiness is made even more remarkable by the fact that he’s a pedestrian coach who can’t win even though he’s a dirty cheat. Sampson bolted OU with the program under investigation for alleged offenses that occurred under his watch. That Oklahoma can’t even have success while cheating says more about Sampson than any criticism I can come up with. I mean, say what you want about Jim Calhoun, but at least the man gets results from his blatant disregard for the rules.
Why would IU hire a coach whose ceiling is waist-high? Did they really want to distance themselves from Bobby Knight that much? It’s almost like this was an F-U to the legions who still expect The General to walk through the doors. "You want to force out Mike Davis? Well here's Mike Davis in 15 years!"
I also can’t help but think that the Sampson hiring came, at least in part, because of fear of the backlash that would come from hiring a white coach after canning a black coach who did a decent job (a la Notre Dame football). Of course, just because Scoop Jackson gets upset about the Irish’s Willingham-fiasco doesn’t mean everybody agrees with him. Scoop thinks black holes demonstrate how racist the astronomy community is.
But if that was the case, surely there were better black coaches who have never played under, coached for, or heard of Bobby Knight.
ESPN.com’s Jason Whitlock wrote a nonsensical column about why the Sampson hiring was great for Indiana. Almost every paragraph contained a “you get paid to write?!” moment. Some examples:

Whitlock: Sampson is as good as it gets. The winningest coach in the history of the Big 12 conference won 20 games nine straight years, advanced to the Elite Eight twice and one Final Four despite coaching just one NBA player.
Chase: The Big 12 began in 1995, doofus. Sampson is the winningest coach because he’s the only coach in the league who’s been there that long. Roy Williams left two years ago, Rick Barnes got there seven years ago, Eddie Sutton is a drunk and Baylor’s coach took part in a murder cover-up. If that’s the best compliment you can give Sampson, that’s a problem.
As for the making a Final Four: So did Mike Davis! And he actually won a game, unlike Sampson. The “coaching just one NBA player” thing is just as ridiculous. Coach K has coached zero NBA players and has three national titles!

Whitlock: Under Sampson, the Sooners always overachieved in conference play by giving a superior, more consistent effort than their opponents. OU's NCAA flameouts were somewhat predictable. Sampson never really had the horses, and his teams were generally worn out in March because they'd played harder for longer than just about every team in the country.
Chase: Maybe the Sooners wouldn’t be so tired if Sampson would give his players some rest. And who says they overachieved in conference play? Oklahoma only has one Big 12 regular season win and zero Tournament titles. If that’s overachieving I (and Indiana) shudder to think of what regular, old achieving will be like.
I love the “OU’s NCAA flameouts were somewhat predictable,” line too. Of course they were. Their coach is Kelvin Freakin’ Sampson!

Whitlock: Give Sampson a lottery pick -- let alone the all-star squad Williams had at UNC -- and he'll have no trouble winning in March.
Chase: Give him a lottery pick? What, this is a charity Whitlock is running? And what about Hollis Price and Kevin Bookout? Those guys were great JUCO and high-school players, respectively. Forget that Sampson probably committed major violations to get these players, but at least he got 'em! Sampson also had a McDonald’s All-American signed up for this year. (Maybe he got all those phone calls.) Sampson couldn’t win the WNBA title if he had the Spurs and LeBron. Giving him Marvin Williams would just have cost Marvin Williams a few million on draft night.

Whitlock: Translation: Kelvin Sampson is best appreciated up close. You can't fully appreciate him from a distance.
Chase: So he’s sort of like Van Gogh in that way, I suppose. Well, I’d cut my ear off too if I had to “appreciate” Kelvin Sampson from up close.

Unlike Whitlock, I have some stats at my disposal to prove my point. Below is OU’s Tournament history since Sampson arrived:

2006 - #6 lost 1st round #11 Wisconsin-Milwaukee
2005 - #3 lost 2nd round to #6 Utah
2004 – No Tournament
2003 – #1 lost Elite Eight to #3 Syracuse
2002 – #2 lost Final Four to #5 Indiana
2001 - #4 lost 1st round to #13 Indiana State
2000 - #3 lost 2nd round to #6 Purdue
1999 - #13 lost Elite Eight
1998 - #10 lost 1st round to #7 Indiana in first round
1997 - #11 lost 1st round to #6 Stanford
1996 - #10 lost 1st round to #7 Temple
1995 - #4 lost 1st round to #13 Manhattan

That’s six straight Tournaments where Sampson has lost to lower-seeded teams. Hmm, Whitlock was right. I did need to get closer up before I could fully appreciate Kelvin!
The ’02 Final Four was an aberration (much like Lute Olsen’s National Championship), but can be explained by the easy-road OU took to get there. They beat a #15, #7, #4 and #12 seed to reach Atlanta. Not exactly George Mason-esque.
The following year, OU got to the Elite Eight as a #1 seed, but that road was even smoother, as they had to beat #16, #8 and #12, before losing to the first equally-matched team they saw.
Sampson supporters will point to 1999 when the Sooners made a surprising run to the Elite Eight as a #13 seed. (First thing, it's never good when supporters can point to one of ten seasons, but I digress.) Sampson rippers will say the Sooners underachieved all season (hear that Jason Whitlock?) and should have been a #5 seed in the Tournament if not for a terrible run in conference play. Anytime a major-conference team with a low-seed makes a run in the Tournament (see: Missouri), it’s usually because they finally play up to their abilities in March after a wasteful season.
At the beginning of his ode to Kelvin, Whitlock ran a quote from former Hoosier star Ted Kitchel: "[Hiring Sampson] is an absolute disgrace. I wouldn't hire that guy to coach my fifth-grade girls team. That guy is absolutely what we don't want at IU."
Kitchel was, of course, incorrect. I’d hire Sampson to coach a fifth-grade girls team any day. As long “any day” refers to a day when said fifth-grade girls team was playing a group of blind, wheelchair-ridden nuns. But even then, I’d have to think about it.

On Deck with George Wallace debuts today on Washington Post Radio, 1500 AM in D.C. Listen live worldwide at WashingtonPostRadio.com.

Apparently Dukies DO Know How To Party!

My sister and her newborn baby got to town late last night and, as typing is difficult with a screaming baby and snoring dog in the midst, my planned rip-job of Kelvin Sampson will have to wait until tomorrow. Plus, writing about Sampson would probably have only made more tears flow from my niece, Alexa Demetria who was born March 7 at 9:57 p.m. and weighed in at 5 pounds, 3 ounces. In other words, she's about as small as J.J. Redick's chances at having a productive NBA career. But they're equally feminine.
Speaking of failed Dukies, how 'bout that Blue Devil lacrosse team? It's ironic, a school known for having the worst parties and biggest losers in the country apparently knows how to throw-down a little too well! I jest, but not really.
Seriously though, does this story sound strange to anybody else? I'm not trying to get into a racial battle (which is where this thing is inevitably headed), but, come on... Who gang-rapes a stripper when there's easy and ugly Jersey chicks living down the hall? And how does this information add to the case:

Fifteen of the 47 members of the team have been charged with offenses ranging from underage alcohol possession, violating open container laws, loud noise and public urination, according to the News and Observer.

Hold up here. One-third of college-aged males (and lacrosse players, no less) have had run-ins with the law? I'm shocked, I tell you! Underage alcohol possession??!! It's at times like these that I wish we still used the stockades in this country. And if marijuana is a gateway drug that supposedly leads to starting a meth-lab in your basement then loud noise violations are just the first step on a road to multiple homicides. Fifteen of 47? Seriously? If anything, that number seems low!
I don't know, but this whole things seem fishy. As much as I want to believe a bunch of Duke lacrosse players are two-bit felons, I'm going to go against popular sentiment and stick with the whole 'innocent until proven guilty' thing. If these guys are convicted of the alleged crime, then prison will be too good for them. But I'll hold-up with my derision until then. I mean, this incident happened two weeks ago and there still aren't any charges yet?
Ahhh, now I've spent too much time writing about alleged rapes instead of focusing on my niece who is sleeping on my chest as I type. And by the way, at the exact moment I wrote "J.J. Redick" I'm pretty sure she pooped in her diaper.

Update (Friday, 11:00 a.m.) The Durham Herald-Sun takes a break from planning the execution of the Duke lacrosse team and publishes an article which suggests the rape allegations might be, gasp! totally fabricated! I didn't rip into things as much on Wednesday as I wanted, because I didn't want it to seem like I support violence against women in any capacity. As I wrote then, if the rape allegations are true, prison would be too good for those cretins. However, I've been skepitcal of this whole story since day one and think everybody at Duke and in Durham should be ashamed of themselves for joining a mob to crucify these players before any substantial evidence came to light. The press has already convicted the players and the public has agreed. If these charges turn out to be false, then I hope there are vigils and protests objecting to the stupidity of the previous vigils and protests.

The Tuesday Ten

1) There are a number of reasons George Mason became the first mid-major team in modern Tournament history to make the Final Four, but one stands high above the rest: Jim Larranaga. And for as good a basketball coach is, Larranaga has another quality that makes him even better: He’s one hell of a speaker.
Whenever ESPN put a camera crew in a basketball locker room or a reporter writes an “inside” story about a team, I’m always amazed at how uninspiring most basketball coaches are. Public speaking ability isn’t a prerequisite for coaching, but it’s a huge part of the job. And Larranaga is simply fantastic at it. I’m not surprised his players were so relaxed playing the likes of Michigan State, North Carolina and Connecticut. When you have a coach who plays it as cool as Larranaga and can get you hyped-up with a 60-second soliloquy, it’s probably much easier to go out and beat four of the past seven national champions.
I find myself getting fired up listening to Larranaga or a guy like Bruce Pearl. John Feinstein often has excerpts from Coach K pre-game speeches in his books. They give me goosebumps. But most coaches are bumps of another sort; the ones sitting on a log. It’s like they’re teaching a college economics course. How could anybody want to play for a guy like that? Give me the fire, the brimstone, the coach humming the “Mission Impossible Theme”. You can stuff your Skip Prosser's in a sack.

2) It’s sort of been lost in the hullaballo over George Mason’s victory, but UConn got bailed out by the refs in their win over Washington… Big time.
I was at Friday’s session in D.C. and even without the benefit of replay, it was obvious the officials were handing the game to Connecticut (despite Jim Calhoun’s technical which would suggest otherwise.)
Brandon Roy’s ridiculous technical foul, an absurd over-the-back call on the Huskies, Josh Boone’s fourth foul that was credited to another player, a non-existent kick that was ruled a foul in overtime and the absolutely unbelievable no-call on a clear goaltending play by UConn (also in the extra session) were just a few of the rulings UConn needed to advance to face their eventual doom.

3) Is there an unwritten rule that the NFL’s Thursday night season-opener has to be between two teams, one the defending Super Bowl champions, the other a non-compelling team on the rise, with aboslutely no rivalry whatsoever?
The league announced that this would be the case again in 2006, with Pittsburgh opening up at home against the new-look Dolphins. Last year we were “treated” to the freakin’ Raiders at New England. Part of me (well, all of me) thinks this stems from Bob Kraft’s’ bitchcanery a few years back when he whined like a baby about how it was “unfair” that the Pats had to open their season against a good team like the Colts.
No, Bob. The only thing unfair is that I have to look at your dress shirts that have a different-colored collar. The champs, he argued, shouldn’t have to play their toughest game of the season to open their season. The argument was idiotic on many levels, the least of which being that it was made by a guy wearing, again, a dress shirt with a collar-color differing from the actual color of the rest of the sthiry.
If Kraft wasn’t such a different-collar-colored putz, he’s realize the Pats had it easy; in 1992 the defending champ Redskins had to open the season at Dallas.

4) Speaking of the Redskins, I was amazingly unexcited about their announced season-opener on Monday Night Football. Maybe it was because they didn’t get their much-rumored primetime game on Thanksgiving or maybe it was because I was too excited over the prospect of seeing Eli Manning go 9-28 the night before, but my usual enthusiasm for any Redskins Monday night home game wasn’t there. Perhaps I just don’t like season opening Monday nighters. Having to sit through that first Sunday without a Redskins game will be like watching all your buddies do shots of Patron while you’re sitting to the side sipping on water because you’re on copious amounts of muscle relaxers for your back. (Not that I’m still bitter about something that happened two weeks ago.) Or maybe it was the fact that they’re playing the damn VIKINGS. Who scheduled this game, the ghost of Bud Carson? The Vikings were terrible last year! And this year they aren't going to be any better. The fact that ESPN hyped this game by saying “the Super Bowl contending Redskins will face the Vikings and star free agent Steve Hutchinson,” I knew we were in trouble. Well, at least Kornheiser won’t have too far to travel.

5) One more possible reason for my lack of enthusiasm: The double-header. Is it also a rule that the Redskins can’t play on Monday night unless there’s another game to steal their thunder? Remember, last year the classic ‘Skins-‘Boys game was played concurrently with Paul Tagliabue’s “I love New York - Oh, and I guess New Orleans is OK too - Bowl”

6) When the Patriots lose a game this year because their new kicker misses a game-winner, the media at Bill Belichick’s post-game press conference should just sit there and stare at the coach until he breaks down and admits what an arrogant schmuck he is and how the Pats couldn’t have won three (or any) Super Bowls without their star kicker. Man, that’s going to be a sweet, sweet day.

7) Maybe it’s because Jim Bowden, Bud Selig and Alfonso Soriano have conspired to sabotage that Nationals 2006 season (seriously, how is there still no owner), but I can’t remember ever being less excited (or less aware) of a baseball opening day as I am right now. It’s only six days away!

8) Hmm, lack of excitement about a Redskins’ Monday night game and baseball’s opening day. Maybe my aforementioned back medication is relaxing more than my muscles. Seeing as how I have no actual muscles anyway, this is a distinct possibility.

9) It’s pretty funny, just yesterday I was commenting to a friend about how I wondered about the state of Peter King’s bowel movements. That man’s timing is impeccable, I say.

10) Congratulations to my cousin George Wallace, whose first, and as-of-yet untitled, radio show will debut this Friday at 1:00 p.m. on the new Washington Post radio station, 1500 AM in the nation's capital. John Feinstein will be George’s first guest. But I have to warn him: George, if you mention the Maryland women’s basketball team making the Final Four at any point during the show, you will have one less listener. This is no idle threat.

Regional Thoughts

George Mason (East)
Yes, Virginia, this the greatest upset in NCAA basketball history. Michael Wilbon (and many others) are putting the Chaminade over UVA game ahead of Mason's win and, while that used to be the benchmark and is still the most unexpected result ever, George Mason over UConn is greater for a whole number of reasons.
First, consider the stakes involved in both games: UVA lost to Chaminade on a November afternoon following a plane trip through five time zones. They had absolutely nothing to play for and probably didn't even have any tape on their NAIA opponent. There was no reason for UVA to expect any sort of close contest and by the time they realized they were going to get one, it was probably already too late. In addition, Virginia (from all accounts) played absolutely terrible against Chaminade, as you would expect.
Mason, on the other hand, beat the overwhelming favorites to win the National Championship in a Regional Final. They beat a #1 seed who played very well (few turnovers and great field-goal percentage). Plus, they did it with a shot clock, which makes it much more difficult to sit on a lead, which is what Chaminade, Villanova and N.C. State were able to do in their huge upset wins. (When the shot clock was first instituted in 1985, many thought huge upsets would become a thing of the past. Eight years later when the shot clock time was reduced from 45 seconds to 35 seconds, the same sentiment was expressed.)
Some will say, "yeah, but Mason had a homecourt advantage." That's true, but unless yesterday's game had taken place in New England, Mason would have had the backing of the fans no matter where the contest took place. Everybody loves an underdog. And the fans didn't go 5-6 in overtime and drop in left-hooks.
Villanova's upset was amazing, but few remember the Wildcats' played Georgetown tough in their two meetings during the regular season. The Hoyas won both, but each were hard-fought contests and one went to overtime. Not to take anything away from the enormity of that win, but how huge an upset can it really be if an earlier game between the same teams went to overtime?
More on Mason tomorrow.

Florida (Midwest)
Smithers, I'm beginning to think that Villanova was not the brilliant tacticians I thought they were. The last time they played a game worthy of a #1 seed was on February 19, when they came from behind to beat Georgetown at the MCI Center. Since then, the Wildcats have been a poor-shooting, uninspired, one-man bunch. Yesterday it caught up with them.
(It behooves us to remember, though, that if 'Nova had a healthy Curtis Sumpter this season, they'd almost definitely be in the Final Four right now.)

LSU (South)
UCLA (West)
The Tigers have to be the favorites to win the whole thing, right? I can't imagine them having any trouble with a UCLA squad that has all the makings of that Final Four team you won't be able to remember in six weeks. (At some point next season you're guaranteed to have one of those "huh? Ohhhh... riiiiiight" moments when you hear about UCLA's Final Four.)

These Patriots Don't Need No Tuck Rule!

For the past 20 years, two teams have played the role of the NCAA Tournament's ultimate Cinderellas. N.C. State's amazing win over Houston's Phi Slamma Jamma in 1983 and Villanova's "perfect game" against Georgetown two years later were the benchmarks for Tournament unpredictability. Until today.
The achievement's of those teams are still great, but now, and forever, they take a backseat to the four-game run of the 2006 George Mason Patriots. I try not to play instant historian, but sometimes it's unavoidable: This is the greatest upset in NCAA Tournament history. And, given the stakes, it might be the greatest upset in college basketball history. (If not, it's a close second behind Chaminade's upset of Ralph Sampson's UVA team in 1982.)
Just 14 days ago, the CAA's second-place team was on the Tournament bubble and had to wait until the final pod was announced before they heard their name called. Today, George Mason capped the most remarkable run in NCAA history, beating the overwhelming favorite to win the National title (UConn), after vanquishing two former champs last week.
In all, George Mason knocked off teams that had won four of the past seven national championships, fairly impressive for a school that dropped two games to Hofstra this month. Now, with their bandwagon overflowing, George Mason heads to Indianapolis to face a Florida team that can't want any part of the greatest story to hit college basketball in a generation.
Florida will be the favorite, of course, (just as MSU, UNC and UConn were), but nothing that Mason does from now on will come as a surprise. With no number one seeds in the Final Four for the first time since 1980, Mason has a realistic chance of pulling off the greatest shocker of all: Winning the national title. They have a better shot than you think.
But no matter what happens, there will be an unexpected champion this year. UCLA, LSU, Florida and Mason make up the most unlikely Final Four in history and the fact that one of those teams will be cutting down the nets eight days from now is mind-boggling. (Remember though, this site has been talking-up the possibility of an unlikely champ since February:

Today it seems like there’s only three teams that have a realistic shot of winning the National Championship: Duke, Villanova and Connecticut. Memphis hasn’t played a good team since December, Gonzaga always flames out and can’t rely on Morrison so heavily, championship teams don’t get blown out like Texas does and everyone else is just too damn streaky.
In recent memory only the 2003 Tournament was like this year is shaping up to be. Going into that Dance, everyone had either Kentucky or Arizona winning and everybody else was an afterthought. Of course, neither of those teams made the Final Four and Syracuse ended up winning on the strength of Carmelo Anthony. The moral of the story: The fewer great teams in an NCAA Tournament puts a whole bunch of teams in the mix. Conversely, if there are six or seven teams everyone is talking about, then the winner usually comes from those six or seven teams. I'm still going to pick Villanova, but don't be surprised if a team comes from out of the blue to win the whole thing.
- February 24, 2006

Of course, if you read everything I wrote that day, you'd also find me ripping Florida and praising Kansas.)
Anyway, I'm still in shock that George Mason is in the Final Four. Words can't express how unbelievable this is. Think about it... Duke, Connecticut, Villanova, Texas, Michigan State, Kansas, Syracuse and dozens of other perennial college basketball powerhouses will be sitting at home watching the Final Four on television while George Mason, a school nobody outside the D.C. area knew of 14 days ago, will be playing on the sport's biggest stage. It's simply remarkable.
I'll have more on this tomorrow but, for now, I'll end with this: No matter what happens next weekend, Mason's run to the Final Four is the greatest team performance in modern Tournament history. Right after Wake Forest's ten-point half in 2001 against Butler, of course.

Oh, What A Night!

Between Duke's loss (due to an 3-18 shooting performance by J.J. Redick in the final game of his championship-less career), West Virginia falling on a tremendous, no-doubt-about-it buzzer beater by Texas, UCLA’s furious 11-point end-of-game run that stunned Gonzaga and both Redick and Morrison spending their final collegiate moments crying like pansies on the court, it was pretty much a perfect night of basketball.
Some thoughts from each of the three contests:

LSU 62 – Duke 54
* One week ago, Iona put up 64 points on LSU. A week before that, Vanderbilt notched 73 in a loss to the Tigers. Duke, the #1 overall seed in the Tournament; Duke, with National Player of the Year and "greatest jump-shooter ever" in J.J. Redick; Duke, with the so-called Landlord dominating the paint; Duke, with six McDonald’s All-Americans on their rosters; Duke, with (allegedly) a possible top-five pick in their froncourt; Duke, with the (for real) best coach in college basketball history; and Duke, with all their prestige, media-love and loser fans, couldn’t even crack 55 points in a Sweet 16 game in the NCAA Tournament against those very same Tigers. It defies belief.
While we’re on beliefs, let me debunk a popular one: LSU didn’t play the perfect game to beat Duke. In fact, it was far from it. This was no Villanova over Georgetown situation.
Over a stretch of 8:02 in the middle of the second half, the Tigers scored three points and saw a six-point lead turn into a five-point deficit. They were missing open shots, dropping assignments on defense and looked totally lost. But Duke couldn't fully capitalize.
At various points during Duke’s run, J.J. Redick had wide-open looks and bricked them in every way possible (long, short, off Shelden William’s gargantuan head).
The sequence of the game came with 8:47 left, with Duke leading 45-40. After a DeMarcus Nelson missed free throw, Josh McRoberts came down with the rebound and kicked it to J.J. Redick, who had no defender within four feet of him. His entire career, Redick has made back-breaking shots exactly like that and, even with a poor shooting day thus far, it seemed this one would be no different. Except the shot was short and caromed into Magnum Rolle’s hands. On the subsequent possession, Darrel Mitchell nailed a three, ending LSU’s drought and cutting the Duke lead, which could have been eight just seconds before, down to a manageable two.

* Why did Duke stop going to Shelden Williams inside during the second half? I thought I was watching a Wake Forest game. How did that happen? Williams was dominating the interior and Davis and Thomas were in major foul trouble. (At halftime I asked the Wolfman when he thought Davis and Thomas would pick up their third fouls. He said before the under 12 timeout, I said before the under 16. We were both right, but oh so wrong. It took just 109 seconds for LSU’s frontcourt to get their third fouls in the second half. And this was a Duke game that, for all intents and purposes, was actually called fairly evenly.)
Anyway, I still don’t understand why they stopped going to Williams. My college buddy Obaza placed the blame on one rat-faced individual:

It blows me away that Coach K REFUSES to alter his gameplan during a game. He gets outcoached quite frequently in the NCAA tournament and last night is a great example. Shelden Williams should have touched the ball every time down the court. He was the only one generating any consistency for them on offense. Even if he wasn't scoring they double teamed him and it opened up three pointers (not like they were making any). Coaching is about putting your players in a position to succeed and Coach K did not do that last night.

Ouch. And that’s from a Duke fan. (Yes, he went to Wake Forest, but that’s a whole other can of worms.)

* In the comments section from last night’s euphoria-induced post, Craig made an interesting point. He thinks the ACC officials that give Duke all the calls during the regular season are actually doing the Blue Devils an injustice (as well as the team the refs are screwing over).
The theory is this: By calling every game in favor of Duke, the Blue Devils get an overinflated sense of their ability. They also can’t adapt when a game is called normally. It’s like the old counterintuitive tale of the coddled high school student whom everybody helped out along the way and when he finally gets to college he realizes he’s not as smart as everybody told him he was. Or the tale of a coddled college student getting inflated grades and going out into the real world and realizing that not everybody kisses your ass like in Durham. (Wait… Too specific?)
You can use Shelden Williams last night as an example. Unless he’s just a really good actor, Williams looked like he was really shocked when officials whistled him for his fourth foul. (On the play, Williams ranged over and threw his body into a driving shooter.) In the ACC, the officials never called that because it would earn a 45-second staredown from Mike Krzyzewski and maybe a hit-order from the Polish mafia. But in the NCAA’s, they correctly called the infraction and Williams was stunned. Defensively, he was never the same, playing too cautious, even for a guy with four fouls.

* Greg Paulus: Man, he ain’t too good.

* Once again; Duke has been a #1 seed in eight of the last nine NCAA Tournaments. They’ve lost before the Final Four six of those eight times, including in the Sweet 16 the past two years. Paging Bob Huggins. Paging Bob Huggins. What’s next, Coach K recruiting at Sing-Sing and forgetting his ABC’s during routine drives? (And I don’t care how much your basketball team sucks. How can any university with any academic or social conscience hire Bob Huggins. If I thought Kansas State actually existed (think about it: Have you ever met anybody who went there?) I’d be appalled.)

Texas 74 – West Virginia 71
Seven Reasons I Loved This Game
1) West Virginia beat Wake Forest last year in the NCAA Tournament. This was an indirect way of payback, but, boy was it sweet. (You want to know how indirect: Rick Barnes coached under Gary Williams, who coached under Tom Davis, who once coached with Bones McKinney, who coached Wake Forest. Plus, somewhere along the line, I'm pretty sure one of them dated Kevin Bacon.)
2) There were no timeouts taken in the game’s final, furious seconds.
3) Kevin Pittsnogle’s Scotty Thurman-esque three. I don’t know about anybody else, but I thought that thing was about six inches short when it left his hands. Instead, it was a thing of beauty. Much like that yellow basketball tattoo on his arm.
4) The fact that there was no doubt Kenton Paulino’s three was going to fall. Unlike the Pittsnogle shot, which was easy to misjudge, Paulino’s was true the second it left his hand.
5) Sad hillbillies are my reverse-Kryptonite.
6) Texas’ win gives me a glimmer of hope in my pool (although if your enjoyment of last night’s games were ruined by your pool, you might have a gambling problem. Send me $50 and we can talk about it.)
7) Seriously, if you aren’t a Wake fan, I don’t think you could understand just how much I hate those WVU hillbillies.

UCLA 73 – Gonzaga 71
* You know a game sequence is amazing when you can’t remember exactly how it happened immediately after it happened. Until CBS showed the replay of UCLA knocking the ball out of J.P. Batista’s hands (on what would be the Bruins’ go-ahead possession), I didn’t know if Batista had thrown it away, dribbled off his foot or had the ball taken, knocked, or jostled from his hands. All I could remember was that Jordan Farmar ended up with the ball and dished it to a guy whose name I can’t spell (Luc Richard Mbah a Moute) who then made an awesome play (more on that in a second). Then Gonzaga inbounded again, had it stolen (again) and had to foul UCLA in order to have a chance at a nice-look buzzer beater.
It wasn’t until after the game that CBS was able to show the full replay and I saw Farmar (I think) just knock the ball clean out of Batista’s hands. (My buddy Horo made a point of praising the officials for not calling a foul on that, as there was some contact on an otherwise-clean steal. For as crappy as the officiating had been all night (the waved-off basket in particular), they did deserve credit for that.)
What an unbelievable finish to the game. Almost as unbelievable as Adam Morrison beginning to cry when the game was still in doubt! When Redick cried, the game was still going on, but the result wasn’t in question. Morrison began crying (and what self-respecting Rage Against the Machine fan cries anyway?) with 2.6 seconds left on the clock with his team down by only one! Hmm... Giving up late in big games. Maybe he'll get drafted by the Eagles.

* The catch-and-shoot by long-name-man was fantastic. Many players would have fumbled the pass, or tried to put the ball up immediately. But long-name-man caught the ball, stopped, hesitated, and shot, an amazing show of patience in a game that frantic.

* Did anybody else think the Arron Affalo should have missed the second free throw at the end of the game? By making it, he gave Gonzaga a chance to inbound and, thus, get a good look at a potential game-tying (or game-winning) shot. If he had missed, it would have been nearly impossible for the Zags to get off a reasonable attempt.

* If J.P. Batista’s final shot had fallen, I thought there was a very good chance Gus Johnson would spontaneously combust. I recorded the end of the game (after the fact) just so I could listen to Johnson’s call of the craziness of the last few seconds. Let me transcribe: “AAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH -UCLA STEAL – AAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH - GONZAGA LOSES THE BALL AAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH – UNBELIEVABLE - AAAAIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGHHHH”
Meanwhile, Len Elmore was absolutely ripping the officials during the game and, at the end, even got a little excited himself. Elmore was the color guy during the Laettner shot and barely said peep that night. Yesterday he was going crazy. I’m just glad Gus Johnson didn’t eat him in all the excitement.

Tonight’s Picks

East Regional Semi-Finals
#1 Connecticut over #5 Washington
Whereas some teams (Bradley) spent all their energy just getting to the Sweet 16, UConn seemed to expend as little as possible. Tonight, I think they turn it on.

#7 Wichita State over #11 George Mason
Mason gets about 3,500 people per game at the Patriot Center. Tonight they’ll be playing in front of 20,000, a majority of whom will be rooting for them. All week they’ve been the toast of nation’s capital (even more than Georgetown), have had ESPN cameras following them (which I never like. Look what it did for Tennessee) and have done interviews with every publication known to man. I think it will catch up with them tonight.
Both Mason and Wichita State are thrilled to be in the Sweet 16, so the “we’re just happy to be here” argument can’t really be used when comparing them. But this is the equivalent of a National title game for Mason. Playing an evenly-matched team in front of a home crowd for the chance to play in front of them again on Sunday with a Final Four berth on the line is about as pressure-packed a situation as there is out there.
I’m pulling for Mason, but think the Shockers will advance.

Midwest Regional Semi-Finals
#1 Villanova over #4 Boston College
The first time I hear “Boston College is the only ACC team left in the Tournament” I’m going to throw a hissy-fit the likes of which ye have only heard in tale.

#7 Georgetown over #3 Florida
Expect CBS President Les Moonves to be in the ears of the officials if there is the possibility of a Villanova-Georgetown Elite Eight match-up.

At Least J.J. Redick Went Out On A High Note

For the eighth time in nine years, Duke will not win the National Championship, despite being a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that make the Blue Devils a bit, gasp, overrated??!!
If not for the refs handing the Dukies their National Semifinal game against Maryland in 2001, the Blue Devils would have exactly zero national titles since 1992. Even with that gift, Coach K has zero wins in the Final Four since that 2001 title, one less than Mike Davis, who just quit at Indiana.
But, hey. At least the Dukies went down fighting tonight. 54 points. 3-18 shooting from J.J. Redick. 19 fouls for Shelden Williams. What a stellar effort. They really gave it their all. Of course, according to Jay Bilas, Duke played flawless basketball all night. Listening to him, one would have thought the '72 Dolphins were on the court. At one point Big Baby blocked a Redick layup and Bilas said something along the lines of, "within the next five years J.J. will cure cancer." How could CBS assign that homer to a Duke game? Did ESPN Deportes hire Castro for the WBC finals?
Anyway, it's so nice to know that 35 years from now, J.J. Redick will be able to look back on his last college game and know he went out like the loser he is. Three-for-eighteen. Man, there's gonna be a whole lot of terrible poetry emanating from that performance.
Of course, it's not like this comes as much of a surprise to Redick. The never-championship-winning guard has always choked in big games for Duke and tonight was no different. Some have claimed Redick is the best Duke player of all-time, which is a tough sell considering he has one less Final Four win than Greg Newton.
In Redick's four Tournament losses he went (oh, this is great): 13 for 60 from the field, for 44 points. Averaged out, that's 11 points per game on 22% shooting. That makes A. Rod look like Mr. October. The question has to be asked: Has there ever been a less-clutch "great" player in college basketball history?
Oh, I'm way too happy to delve into that tonight, so I'm just going to crack another beer, toast to Redick's tears of unfathomable sadness and wish Cartman were there to lick them off his bitch-ass face. Enjoy the D-League, punk. Say hi to Chris Carrawell for me. And tell McRoberts it doesn't matter when he goes pro, he'll never be anything but a poor man's Mike Dunleavy, which is sort of like being a poor man's homeless guy. But I guess collecting paychecks while sitting on the bench in Atlanta is better than getting a beatdown twice a year from Tyler Hansbrough.
As for all you Duke fans out there, I hope you appreciated the championship-less run you've witnessed over the past five years. Because with Paulus running the show next year, you won't even have the chance to get your heart broken in the Sweet 16 like usual.

South and West Regional-Semifinal Preview

#1 Duke vs. #4 LSU
I've written about this game all week, but let me sum it up for you: Glen "Big Baby" Davis is a question mark to me. Not because he, himself, is a question mark, but because I haven't really seen him all that much. What I have seen hasn't been all that impressive though. He is four steps slow defensively and, beyond dunking, every shot is an adventure.
His match-up with Shelden Williams tonight will be ridiculously hyped, but, much like The Slumlord/Pops battle last week, this one isn't really a fair fight. Pops was injured and Davis doesn't play defense.
When Shelden and his small-ass ears go for 23 and 13 tonight, the Davis in the studio (Seth) will proclaim Shelden the best center since Alcindor, without mentioning that anytime he plays a tall, athletic center, Shelden curls up into the fetal position and starts sucking on J.J. Redick's thumb.
Of course, every analyst will also completely ignore the numbers Davis and the fantastic Tyrus Thomas will put up. And that's what's just so fascinating to me: Everybody loves mentioning how great Shelden Williams is defensively, even as opponents are putting up huge numbers on him. Watch tonight: Even if Williams gets the best of LSU's frontcourt on the offensive end, Thomas, Davis and Tasmin Mitchell will get theirs. This will be praised, but nobody will stop and think about how they were able to get so many points. Man, it just makes me so mad.
My perception of LSU (and all SEC teams, pretty much) is that they aren't very physical. Even for a 309-pound behemoth, Davis plays more of the gentle giant role (again, from what I've seen). This could be a problem against a Duke team that: a) will get all the calls and b) is used to throwing down a little in the paint. And, this is why I'm almost rooting for Duke tonight (I said almost). Texas is the most physical team left in the Tournament and Buckman, Alrdidge and company will be throwin 'bows and hip-checking all over the place in a probable Saturday match-up.)
I'll wrap this one up with this thought: A lot of people are picking LSU tonight, which is fine. My feelings about Duke are well-known and I think they are absolutely beatable. However, when was the last time the Blue Devils were upset in the Tournament by a team everybody thought they'd lose to? Last year they dropped a surprising game to Michigan State. In 2002 Indiana pulled the stunner. And in 2000 Florida pulled the upset. Some people might have picked those teams, but Duke was the overwhelming favorite in each of those games vs. lower-seeded teams. (In the other years, Duke lost a better team - UConn in 2004 and Kansas in 2003.) My point? Mike Krzyzewski is the best college basketball coach in history for a reason. With LSU the trendy upset pick, I can't see the Blue Devils going out tonight. That will have to wait until Saturday.
Pick: Duke

#1 Memphis vs. #13 Bradley
Hmmm... I guess I can't stick with my original pick of Kansas in this game.
When most Cinderella teams make the Sweet 16, they go back to campus to a hero's welcome and bask in the glory of their two wins on the Tournament's first weekend. And that's great because usually, the goal of a low-seeded team is to make the Sweet 16. Once that happens, the fire kind of goes out. Sure, they want to play hard and make an unprecedented run to the Final Four, but as Syracuse, Kansas and Iowa showed last week, it's very tough to get up for a new set of games after accomplishing one of your main goals. Bradley's season could end tomorrow and be complete. They upset two major-conference teams (including one with the most storied history in the game) and advanced to the Sweet 16 (and got a Sports Illustrated cover in the process, even if it as a watered-down version of it). But I still think they have a chance against Memphis because the Tigers have accomplished something too. They got a #1 seed out of a weak conference and made everybody who picked Oral Roberts or Bucknell/Arkansas look like idiots. Their stated goal might be the Final Four, but one can't help but think they're feeling a little pleased with themselves right now. And this is why picking this game is more difficult that I had anticipated.
Pick: Bradley

#2 Texas vs. #6 West Virginia
Kevin Pittnogle's stats in WVU's seven biggest games this season: 10.2 ppg, 4 rpg
Kevin Pittnogle's stats in WVU's other 25 games this season: 21.8 ppg, 6.2 rpg
The only thing consistent about Kevin Pittsnogle are his hideous tattoos, which is why Texas will win a tough one tonight. (While looking up some info about Pittnogle's tattoos I found this gem of a paragraph from an article about him in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Turner explained his friend's path of body art: The "Gift from God" ink on the big guy's upper right arm is a tribute to his parents and the Lord blessing him with a shooting touch. Along with that came, on the inside of the left arm, a tribal tattoo with a band. Next arrived the flaming basketball on the left shoulder, the dragon on the lower right arm, the mother, father, sister and lost child tribute on his right leg and the Jesus replica on the left leg. That was followed by the left elbow and forearm ink for his family and, finally, the right arm adornment for baby Kwynsie.

Oh, where to begin. 1) I suppose the Lord can giveth a shooting touch and taketh away one too, looking at those stat discrepancies.
2) He has a tattoo of a flaming basketball? Interesting, I would have thought that'd be J.J. Redick's thing.
3) A dragon? Really? Does he have a unicorn on his left arm?
4) I'm glad the author of this article clarified that it's a Jesus replica on Pittsnogle's left leg. Because, for a second there, I thought maybe he actually had Jesus tattooed there.
5) Kwynsie? Come on now. That sounds like an eradicated disease, not a child.
One more thing, in an article about Pittsnogle in the same newspaper last year, the lead was, "Kevin Pittsnogle grew up in a trailer park in Martinsburg, W.Va." That explains Kwynsie, I guess.
Pick: Texas

#2 UCLA vs. #3 Gonzaga
Does anybody else think Jordan Farmar (below left) looks like Scarface from Half Baked? Except that instead of a lovable pothead, Farmar is a guy I'd like to punch, but don't really know why.
Maybe instead of a basketball tonight, Adam Morrison can headbutt Farmar's face instead and save us the trouble of watching both of those punks try to put themselves ahead of the team.
Anyway, UCLA might be the higher seed but all the pressure is on Gonzaga. The Bulldogs have had weak Tournament showings since they burst onto the scene with an Elite Eight appearance in 1999 and with Morrison almost certain to depart after this season, this might be their best chance to make a Final Four (and prove the doubters wrong) in the near future. (Is it just me, or does anybody else often forget Morrison is a junior. His basketball head-pounding is just so reminiscent of somebody who has four years of college under their belt.)
I'm not really a fan of either of these teams (or anybody in this bracket, really) but I think Gonzaga's poor defense catches up with them tonight as UCLA marches on to the Regional Final.
Pick: UCLA

Tomorrow: East/Midwest Picks & South/West review

Chris Answers PTI's Questions

Can a darkhorse win it all?
First of all, what’s a darkhorse? It sounds kind of racist. Surely none of the #2 seeds could be considered a darkhorse, especially not Texas, which entered the season as the #2 team in the country. UCLA flew under the radar most of the year, but they were the chic pick coming out of the West, so they wouldn’t be a surprise either. I guess the only real #2 shocks would be if Tennessee and Ohio State pulled off Lazarus-like comebacks and took the NCAA title, but I’m pretty sure Lazarus’ eligibility ran out in 1996.
We can also cross the following teams off the darkhorse list: West Virginia (top 10 much of the year), Gonzaga (top 10 all of the year), Florida (SEC champ and hit #2 in the AP) and Boston College (trendy pre-Tournament pick).
That leaves: LSU, Georgetown, Wichita State, George Mason and Bradley. Can any of these teams win the whole thing? Sure. Will they? Probably not. But if they do, the order they’re in above is the order of probability.
Georgetown is a better team than LSU, but the Hoyas would have a tougher road to the title (Florida, Villanova/BC and UConn (likely). If LSU can handle Duke, they’d play a difficult Texas or West Virginia team in the Elite Eight and then have an easier Final Four match-up.
Wichita State is ranked ahead of George Mason because I think the Shockers will disappoint the crowd at the MCI Center Friday night and pull the “upset” (more on that tomorrow), while Bradley’s run will almost definitely come to an end before Indianapolis.

What should the Nats do about Soriano?
Between college basketball and the Redskins free agent orgy, I’ve been quiet on the Soriano situation. But that’s really just an excuse, because I get so damn frustrated just thinking about it.
Before I begin, let’s get the obvious out of the way: Jim Bowden f***** up. There’s no other way to put it. When he called the Rangers before he pulled the trigger on this trade and asked to speak with Soriano about the move to left field and was rebuffed by the organization, that should have sent up a flag so red that Lenin would pop out of his tomb to salute if he ever saw it. But Jim Bowden has never been about making rational baseball moves (see: Guzman, Cristian). Bowden’s an idiot, but the move is made, so we have to move on. (I see no reason we can’t kick Bowden as we are moving on, though. Also, let’s completely ignore the fact that Soriano is one of the worst defensive second baseman in baseball. I don’t have enough energy to cross that bridge today.)
I found it very interesting yesterday that both Wilbon and Buster Olney said something along the lines of, “Soriano called the Nats bluff” by not going out into the outfield on Monday. Because I totally thought it was the other way around.
Alfonso Soriano has absolutely no leverage in this situation. If he doesn’t play left, he doesn’t play. And if he doesn’t play, he doesn’t get paid. And if he doesn’t get paid, he doesn’t become a free agent in 2007, which makes the whole “I want to increase my market value by playing second” totally meaningless. Soriano has a market value of zero if he’s not playing. He needs to play. By not playing on Monday he simply lost face in the baseball community. He didn’t call any bluff. The Nats called his bluff. They essentially said, “you don’t want to play left, Alfonso? Fine. Sit on the bench for the year, lose out on $10 million and free agency to make your point.”
Make no mistake, the Nats won’t cave on this issue. They’ve drawn the line in the dirt (to steal a phrase from Thomas Boswell). They called his bluff. And today (or later this week) he’ll blink. I don’t know who Soriano has in his ear, but anybody with sense has to be telling him that playing left field with the ability to move to second will impress teams much more than sulking like a child and still sucking at second.

Is a Terrell Owens book a good idea?
Nothing with Terrell Owens is a good idea. Especially not using a new book deal as an excuse to talk about him during PTI. (By the way, how bad is it going to be in August when Owens’ day at Cowboys training camp is the lead story every single day on the 6:00 Sportscenter. I think Pedro Gomez might have a new best friend.)
Forgetting about the book forever, I’m still in shock that everybody says signing Owens is a great move for Dallas (Peter King is driving this bandwagon.) I’ll agree that Owens will likely be good for a year and get his 100 catches and 15 TD, but since when can any contract be judged on what happens during a four-month window?
Philly got to a Super Bowl because of Owens, but that didn’t change what happened last year. If he leads the Cowboys to the NFC Championship game this year but then strangles Jerry Jones next year, was his time in Dallas a success? I think Peter King would argue yes, since he makes the ridiculous statement that what happens down the road doesn't matter.
The only way the Owens-to-Dallas move becomes great is if the Cowboys win a Super Bowl this season. Because in 2007, the honeymoon will end and T.O. will go back to his old ways. Barring that Super Bowl, this is a not a great move for the Cowboys, or even a good move. Sometime in the near future they’ll have to take an enormous cap-hit by releasing Owens or suffer through a season of him complaining about Drew Bledsoe. (Can we get bets on when Owens first blasts his QB in a Sunday Conversation? I'm saying week 14.)
I’m inclined to say Parcells will be able to handle T.O., but not because the Tuna handled Lawrence Taylor well. Taylor might have been a cokehead womanizer, but he loved winning. Owens loves being good at football, but I’m not so sure he loves winning.

If Keyshawn signs with the Giants, does that shift the balance of power in the NFC East?
If Phil Simms was still playing quarterback in New York, then yes. But last I checked some dude named Elisha with a 52% completion percentage was playing QB. And as long as that’s happening, the only shift happening in the NFC East will be from Joe Gibbs’ NASCAR teams. (Plus, didn’t the Giants win the NFC East last year? I know they didn’t win a playoff game (some NFC East team did, but I can’t remember which) but they still won the division which means a power shift would mean a shift down for them. And with Keyshawn turning 34 during training camp, that might not be too much of a stretch if he does sign. And, way to shore up your secondary, New York. Sam Madison and R.W. Acquirers? (Note: I got too excited hitting "ignore all" while spellchecking this, and that's what came up for R.W. McQuarters. I decided to leave it because it works on many levels. Or maybe just one.) Those wouldn’t have been great signings when those guys were in their primes let alone when they’ll be 32 and 30, respectively, by the end of the season.)

Should the NFL be interested in Condoleeza Rice?
Once, while watching a 3 a.m. rerun of Condi on Oprah, I went on a ten-minute drunken rant about how the NFL needed to hire Condoleeza Rice to succeed Tags should he ever retire. I’m told my debate with myself would have bested Will Ferrell’s in Old School. Sadly I remember none of my points and don’t have a bottle of Patron near me to help jog my memory, so I’ll just say, Condi should stick to politics and the NFL should hire another suit like Paul Tagliabue who is content to rule the league without stealing the spotlight.

Do you have any problem with the Stanford Tree getting ejected during the NCAA Women’s Tournament?
There’s an NCAA Women’s Tournament?

Five Good Minutes
Did Hubert Davis win some sort of Dream Job competition on ESPN? Because he’s pretty terrible. You could see Tony Kornheiser cringing when they introduced him. By my count Davis had 19 “uhs” and used the word “guy” 12 times during his 4:46 on the show. He also praised Greg Oden for going to college (as if he had a choice) and said, “he might be an NBA All-Star and the best player in college” which I’m guessing might be a little difficult, even for a 7-footer with prodigious talent.
Hubert (man, that is a great name though) also said J.J. Redick would have a tough time should Duke ever face Memphis again because Tiger star Rodney Carney held Redick scoreless during their first meeting. Now, maybe Carney himself held Redick scoreless when he was defending him during that early-season match-up. But Redick finished the game with an (admittedly pedestrian) 15 points on 4-9 shooting. Still, Davis can’t throw out a line like “Redick was held scoreless” without providing the context, because it sure as hell seemed like he meant Redick had zero points for the game.
Davis is new, but he does seem like he might get better with experience (as Harold Reynolds did). For now, let’s just say he has “tremendous upsides”. His quote, not mine.

Toss-Up
More likely to get upset in next game: Duke or UConn?
A philosophical question: If, as everyone agrees, Duke has a problem with size, how can Shelden Williams be the defensive player of the year while Josh McRoberts is a top-five NBA prospect? As I see it, there is no answer to this question. Maybe I’ll find those Buddhist monks that slapped around Tony Soprano and see if they know.
Anyway, I suppose Duke is more likely to get upset in the next game because Glen Davis and Tyrus Thomas are supposed to form a pretty good frontcourt for the Tigers. And while I love Thomas’ game, I haven’t been all that impressed by Davis. (Again, the caveat, I haven’t seen him play much and I can’t knock his game without seeing it. But I did watch a lot of that Texas A&M game and barely noticed him. Conversely, it took me about five seconds to notice Patrick O’Bryant on Bradley and anybody unfamiliar with Georgetown would have realized Roy Hibbert was a force from the minute they switched the game on. Plus, why do I have the feeling that Shelden Williams is going to eat up Davis which will cause everybody to say how awesome Williams is? They did it when he tore up an injured Pops Mensah-Bonsu last week.)
A quick look at Big Baby’s stats tell me I’m an idiot and probably caught him on a bad day: He’s had double-doubles in ten of his last 13 games and, somewhat amazingly, has only had four fouls called against him in three of those games, while fouling out zero times. In over half of those games, he’s had two or less fouls called on him despite playing over 30 minutes in each of those contests. Davis’ shooting percentage scares me a little: For a big man, he should be shooting well over 55%, but in those 13 games he’s shooting 49%.

Who is going to have the better season: Terrell Owens or Donovan McNabb?
Is this really a toss-up? How many seasons has McNabb ever had a better season than T.O.? Unless better seasons are defined by choking in big games, because if that were the case, Donners would have him beat. (And I love Wilbon, but his Donovan-love makes me sick. If there were a toss-up asking “Who’s the better human being: Donovan McNabb or Mother Theresa” you know which way Wilbon would swing.)

More overrated: Kevin Garnett and Scottie Pippen?
Back in my freshman year at Wake Forest, The Wolfman and I got into an hour-long debate at the Benson food court with two football players about whether or not Scottie Pippen was overrated. We insisted Pippen was a vital cog in the Bulls Championship teams and Jordan could have never won without him. I seem to remember harping endlessly on this point by yelling, “What did MJ ever win without Scottie??!!” They came back with “What has Scottie ever won without MJ??!!” Touche, meatheads, I remember thinking.
There’s no doubt Scottie Pippen benefited greatly by playing with Jordan and that Jordan wouldn’t have had six championships if he didn’t have Pippen. So the answer was probably somewhere in between. (But, correct me if I’m wrong Wolfman, I think they were making so many ridiculous points that we had to defend Pippen more strongly than I would have cared to.)
Garnett, on the other hand, has won diddly-poo. Maybe he’s a victim of circumstance (the opposite of Pippen) but, of the two, he’s the more overrated.
I’m interested in your thoughts on this question and the following: Would Scottie Pippen have been named one of the NBA’s top 50 players without Michael Jordan?

Better fall: The cat or the bear?
If the cat had died it would have been a better fall because there’d be one less cat in the world right now.

Big Finish
T.O. jersey sales high?
In 16 months those people are going to rue the day they shelled out $69.95 for a jersey they were able to wear for one season.

Hiring Northern Iowa coach good for ISU?
Wait, Larry Eustachy is no longer at Iowa State? When the hell did this happen?!

Dolphins looking at Tommy Maddox for backup role?
Why am I getting the image of Nick Saban tapping on Maddox’s head like a cantaloupe to see if he’s up for the job.

Missouri interested in Bob Huggins?
I can’t think of any better way to clean up a program than by hiring Bob Huggins. Maybe they’ll get lucky and convince Eddie Sutton to come on as an assistant.

Is Steve Hutchinson a good pickup for the Vikings?
Fantasy owners, prepare to be disappointed by Shaun Alexander in 2006.

Dap for Middlebury for winning Division III men’s and women’s hockey championships?
I just hope Chief Wiggum got Snake out of jail so he could see his alma mater win the championships in person.

What will Yao Ming do tonight?
Be tall.

"Chris Answers PTI's Questions" is an occasional feature on this site

More NCAA Tournament Thoughts

* Whenever something different or unexpected happens in sports, analysts proclaim that said development is the beginning of a major shift in that respective game. Years ago, when running quarterbacks were en vogue, most people associated with the NFL said the pocket passer was a thing of the past. When the Oakland A’s won the World Series in 1989 while finishing near the top of the majors in stolen bases, baseball was supposed to turn into a game of speed. More recently, the Pistons’ title was to bring about a fundamental shift to team basketball in the NBA, just like the Patriots’ Super Bowls were to do to the NFL. Anytime a team different sort of team, player or concept has success, people are quick to say massive change is close behind. And, more often than not, the hype fizzles and the status quo returns to a sport. But not this time. The increasing competitiveness of the mid-majors isn’t some sort of basketball-fad, it’s the real thing. They’re here to stay.
Mid-majors advance to the Sweet 16 in most NCAA Tournaments. But they usually do so because they get a favorable high-seed match-up in round one and play another upset-puller in round two. This year, however, George Mason went through half of last year’s Final Four, while Bradley upset the Big 12 champion and Big East runner-up. (Wichita State beat a Seton Hall team that had no business being in the Tournament and the worst #2 seed in history, but that doesn’t mean the Shockers aren’t a good team.) In each of those games, the mid-majors outplayed their big conference brethren. Yes, mistakes were made by those big-time teams (particularly by UNC who couldn’t hold onto the ball early in the second half), but those mistakes were forced by their opponents.
George Mason coach Jim Larranaga knew the young Tar Heels would be easily flustered, so he had his defenders aggressively trap to start the second half. Bradley utilized 7-footer Patrick O’Bryant against another colossus, Aaron Gray of Pitt. It was an unfair fight, as evidenced by Gray’s frustration-induced technical early in the second half.
The talent gap is closing in big time college basketball. This doesn’t mean a team like Bradley is going to win the National Championship, but their fellow mid-majors will continue to make their presence felt on the national level. They’ll be invited to more pre-season tournaments, get more press, get better recruits and, one day soon, somebody from the MVC or CAA or Horizon will make a Final Four. These teams are too good not to.

* Reason #475 why Gus Johnson is my favorite play-by-play man on television and why it is imperative CBS pair him with Bill Raftery for the Regionals: As the clock hit zero in the George Mason/North Carolina game, Gus screamed, “THERE’S A NEW CINDERELLA AND HER NAME IS GEORGE!”

* Do you want to hear my conspiracy theory? No? Too bad: You know that unbelievably annoying Applebee’s commercial, where those two doofuses sing the Gilligan’s Island theme song except instead of a tune about Robinson Crusoe-like passengers on a fateful trip they changed the words to detail all the great deals Applebee’s has on wood-grilled pineapple chicken and their rip-off of Outback’s bloomin’ onion?
Now, while Applebee’s might have had a part in the production of the commercial and certainly paid a nominal fee to get it to air, I think they’re just a partner in the advertisement while a huge shadow corporation really funded the entire campaign. That company: Sony.
Hear me out. Besides killing people, what’s the first impulse you have when seeing that damn commercial for the 15th time during the NCAA Tournament? Throwing your remote control at your television set. (I had to move my remote fearing such an occasion.) As Sony is the most popular brand of television in the United States (and maker of the most gorgeous 1080p HDTV on the market), they stand to benefit from such hate-fueled screen-breaking. Think about it.

* I’m an ACC guy, but the prospect of a Villanova/Georgetown Regional Final has me (and CBS execs, presumably) very excited. Too bad those anticipated match-ups never happen (see Pittsburgh/Kansas, just like I predicted last week).

* A lot has been made of Connecticut’s easy runs to the Final Four in each of their two National Championship seasons, but what about Memphis? They could theoretically go through Oral Roberts, Bucknell, Bradley and Gonzaga to reach Indianapolis. But maybe the selection committee would keep them out due to a poor non-conference RPI.

* The only way I could hate UCLA’s Jordan Farmar more is if he were on that Applebee’s commercial.

NCAA Tournament Thoughts

* The center of the college basketball world is not on Tobacco Road or in Lawrence, Kansas or at Pauley Pavilion. This week, the capital of the nation becomes the capital of hoops, with George Mason and Georgetown playing in the Sweet 16 and the East regional coming to town at the MCI (not Verizon) Center.
Georgetown manhandled highly-regarded Ohio State yesterday, behind stellar performances from Jeff Green and Roy Hibbert. (Hibbert could barely run 18 months ago, let alone play basketball. Yesterday he had 20 and 14 against the Big Ten Player of the Year.)
George Mason stunned the college basketball world (and messed up a number of brackets in the process) with their come-from-behind victory over the defending National Champs yesterday in Dayton.
Neither win was a fluke. Georgetown was the better team yesterday and George Mason outplayed, outhustled and outworked a superior, and heavily favored, Tar Heel squad. Sure, UNC and Michigan State didn’t play great basketball against the Patriots, but Jim Larranaga’s squad had a lot to do with that. They forced turnovers, dominated the boards and never quit when they got down 16-2 early.
Now they’re coming home to play Wichita State, in a rematch of their classic Bracket Buster contest from last month. Either way, one of those teams will be one game from the Final Four this weekend. And anybody who thinks that game will be a cakewalk for UConn (or Washington) clearly didn’t watch the Pats or Shockers play this weekend. The mid-majors are for real.

* OMG!!!! Did u c Candace Parker’s dunk n da NCAA Tournament?! It wuz soooo kewl! On da first 1 she got so hi n da air and threw da roc down w/ awesome power! Xcept she barely touched da rim and sort of threw it in, not dunked. But who carez??!! She’z totally da best player ever just becuz Sportscenter sayz so. And y wood they lie?!! Itz not like they hav any interest in da womenz tourney doin well. That wood b a conflict of interest, covering n event u pay $ 4, right? No worriez, Candace Parker is da Gloria Steinem of 2006!

* All season long I’ve heard about Glen “Big Baby” Davis from LSU and how great he is. His pre-tournament hype rivaled J.J. Redick’s, if you can believe that. (Granted, every media outlet had already done so many J.J. stories they’d already exhausted interviews with his 4th grade tee-ball coach, so I guess the hype had to stop sometime.) I had seen LSU play just a few minutes this year and didn’t remember Davis at all.
Saturday, during the LSU/Texas A&M game, I had been watching for about 20 minutes before I remembered Davis was even on the floor, and only realized it when the announcers were discussing how he hadn’t been playing well. How can a guy be so great if his presence on the court is totally unnoticeable? Granted, the announcers said he played a poor game and I’ll buy that. But for me not to notice him at all indicates the “Big Baby”-love might have been a little forced. We’ll see later this week, I suppose.

* You know what this Tournament is missing? Camera shots of the coaches wives. During the UCLA/Alabama game I constantly found myself wondering (particularly late in the game when the tension was high), what Alabama coach Mark Gottfried’s wife was doing at that exact moment? Is she covering her eyes? Twirling her hair? Looking nervous, excited, anxious or kind of bored? But, according to my count, CBS only showed her 13 times in the game’s final three minutes, which was about 87 less times than they should have. Who cares about a game when a mildly-attractive coach’s wife is in the stands with a hair color that can’t be described in the English language (it was sort of blonde, sort of gray and pretty scary. I think the Chinese have a character for it, and I’m pretty sure it was on one of the Tennessee player’s biceps.)
CBS, a reaction shot of members of the coach’s family is fine once or twice during the game. But when you miss free throws because you’re showing the umpteenth shot of Mark Gottfried’s wife, you’ve gone too far. I was actually yelling at the director during that game, which was a nice change from yelling at the refs who dictated that contest with their uneven calls. (More on the Tournament’s crappy officiating tomorrow.)

* My bracket was ruined right about the time that dude from Bradley banked in a three-pointer as the first-half buzzer sounded on Friday night. The Pittsburgh loss yesterday helped me a little, since nobody had Bradley advancing out of that region. While I can’t say I’m particularly proud of my picks, I will give myself a small back-pat for calling the Georgetown and Wichita State upsets, as well as nailing Texas A&M and Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the first round. (Always remember, Kelvin Sampson losing in the first round is sort of like the Spring Equinox: It usually occurs doing a two day-stretch in mid-to-late March.)

* When Gary Williams began his “Bitchapalooza 2006” tour, he told The Washington Post that he didn’t understand why the MVC had such a high RPI this year and how they shouldn’t complain about scheduling because “the phone works both ways.” Afterwards, it was remarked that every single Missouri Valley team should call Maryland and attempt to schedule a home-and-home.
Apparently that’s exactly what’s happening. Reports say that more than half of the MVC schools have contacted Maryland attempting to take Williams up on his offer, and the teams that have yet to do so will make the call soon. The MVC called Gary’s bluff. Whether or not he’ll man up and take a series or two will be one of the more intriguing subplots to the off-season.
And Gary… Shut up already. Nobody feels sorry for your underachieving team. You didn’t deserve to make the Tournament, you tried to get out of the NIT and then, when you couldn’t, you laid an egg in front of 4,000 people at Comcast Center. I’ve always been one of your biggest supporters, but stop whining and get out on the recruiting trail.

* Can somebody explain to me why Rudy Gay is considered the best NBA prospect in college basketball? He’s not even the best prospect on his team (that would be Marcus Williams).
Speaking of Williams, whenever his arrest for computer theft gets mentioned on CBS (and that’s a rare occurrence), the announcers always skip over the fact that Williams’ accomplice, A.J. Price, was kicked off the team while Williams was allowed to stay. Do they leave that out because that piece of information would make Jim Calhoun look the hypocritical, unethical sleezeball he is and CBS doesn’t like to market hypocritical, unethical sleezeballs? He kicked off a lesser player and kept a great player even though they committed the same offense. And nobody talks about this. It’s why I can’t stand UConn and have a dislike for Marcus Williams that’s even more intense than the one I have for J.J. Redick. Redick might be a punk, but he’s not a felon.

Come back tomorrow for more NCAA Tournament thoughts

I, For One, Think The Big East Should Have Gotten More Teams In

Nice job Seton Hall, Marquette and Syracuse. Way to prove major conference supremecy. A special shout-out to The Hall though. How a team has their tournament-worthiness doubted publicly all week long and then lays an egg the size of Shelden Williams' head is beyond me. Cincinnati must have enjoyed watching the Pirates get scurveyed as they prepare for their opening-round NIT contest.
And is it coincidence that Steve Fisher's San Diego State team just lost because of an unbelievable mental gaffe by their point guard? I mean, I've always blamed C-Webb for the timeout, but Fisher does have a knack for being in the vicinity of massive player stupidity.
Some more quick thoughts on the first day of the Tournament: BC got bailed out by the refs and by Pacific's terrible in-bounds plays, Gonzaga is going down sooner rather than later, Tennessee played well yet still needed a near buzzer-beater to best 15th seeded Winthrop and at one point in the first-half of their game, Southern had seven team fouls while Duke had zero. It's good to know some things never change in this Madness they call March.
Come back tomorrow for some more on the Tournament's first day.

NCAA Tournament Picks

The two greatest sports days of the year are here. Thirty-two games filled with upsets, buzzer beaters, bracket busters and blowouts. And with Dick Vitale nowhere to be found.
But you're not here to read meaningless banter, you're here to read meaningless banter intermingled with picks for all 63 games. Onward!

*** South Region (Atlanta) ***

First Round
#1 Duke vs. #16 Southern
My sister had a lovely, healthy baby girl last Tuesday night. I’d be interested to see if the resultant happiness of a Southern victory over Duke would exceed the joy I felt eight days ago when my niece was born. It’d probably be close, but I’m thinking that Alexa’s birth would take the cake. However, I make no such promises if, after the Duke loss, J.J. Redick spends 30 minutes sprawled out on the court bawling uncontrollably.
Pick: Duke

#8 George Washington vs. #9 UNC-Wilmington
In other news, my sister’s eight-day old child was just accepted to George Washington on a basketball scholarship.
Pick: UNC-Wilmington

#5 Syracuse vs. #12 Texas A&M
I’ve been told I remind people of J.J. Redick. Luckily, for these people, I’m not Chuck Norris or they’d be dead via karate chop to the temple by the time they got out the second “J”. Apparently, though, Redick’s attitude on the court reminds some people of me. To which I say, “poppycock”. If I were as good at college basketball as J.J. Redick I’d be hated so much more than him.
Seriously, everybody would despise me because I’d taunt the crowd, go in other teams huddles and use all available media time as a personal venting session. Case in point: If I played on Texas A&M I would devote my whole press conference to discussing how overrated Gerry McNamara is. That I don’t actually believe this to be true is irrelevant. Oh, and my poetry wouldn’t suck also. I’d just have my buddy Redemer write it for me.
Pick: Texas A&M

#4 LSU vs. #13 Iona
About that last pick: Syracuse was a bubble team seven days ago, I’m not buying their 5th seed at all. I’m a little worried about picking the Aggies because the ‘Cuse lost last year in an upset after winning the Big East Tournament and Jim Boeheim will have his team ready this time, but four games in four days takes a lot out of a team. With G-Mac hobbled, I think Texas A&M steals an ugly win.
Pick: LSU

#6 West Virginia vs. #11 Southern Illinois
What can I say, I love dogs.
Pick: Southern Illinois

#3 Iowa vs. #14 Northwestern State
On most college websites, the picture on the main page is a grandiose shot of one of the campus’ most beautiful buildings. On Northwestern State’s web site… Well, let’s just say Princeton's not gonna be too jealous.
Pick: Iowa

#7 California vs. #10 North Carolina State
Leon Powe turned into one of the nation’s best college basketball players after dealing with a father's abandonment, a house burning down, his mother’s drug abuse, moving dozens of times between the worst parts of Oakland, his mother’s death, being shipped to foster home after foster home and shredding his ACL during high school. Somehow I think he’ll be able to handle N.C. State’s Princeton offense.
Pick: California

#2 Texas vs. #15 Pennsylvania
They always say you can bet on anything in Vegas. Well, I want Vegas to prove it. I want to bet on whether or not the final margin of this game will be greater or less than Vince Young’s Wonderlic score times three. I’m thinking I’d take the under. Unless Vince himself was doing the math.
Pick: Texas

Second Round
#1 Duke vs. #9 UNC-Wilmington
I once had to write an article about a guy who ran a pet crematorium. His last name was Goldsberry. And while he was very nice and not at all creepy, as I had anticipated a pet cremator would be, the whole experience kind of gave me the willies, particularly when I watched him incinerate the pet carcasses.
Even though he torched my Terps in the first-round of the NCAA’s a few years back (almost single-handedly leading UNCW to the upset, until Drew Nicholas’ last-second miracle), I kind of liked John Goldsberry because I can respect a kid who goes 8-8 from beyond the arc in the biggest game of his career. But since I interviewed that pet cremator with the same last name, John Goldsberry has scared the bejeezus out of me.
Pick: Duke

#4 LSU vs. #12 Texas A&M
How awesome is it that LSU’s best player is nicknamed “Big Baby”? Why hasn’t there been an Outside the Lines about this?
Pick: LSU

#3 Iowa vs. #11 Southern Illinois
I’m a Southern Illinois fan, don’t get me wrong. But I’m no Wolfman. (And not just because I've never been pulled over while dressed as Alex P. Keaton.)
Pick: Iowa

#2 Texas vs. #7 California
You know how Joe Fraternity would always correct people who called his organization a “frat” by saying “you don’t call your country [by the first syllable of the word]”? I think if I went to the University of California I’d make it a point to say the same thing to anybody who called it “Cal” just so I could make a big deal about it. It'd sort of be like when I say “only in New York!” to my buddy Falkow anytime he says something ordinary about the city he just moved to. Example:
Falkow - So I’m in the drug store today and –
Me - (Interrupting) - Only in New York!
Pick: Texas

Regional Semi-Final
#1 Duke vs. #4 LSU
J.J. Redick will show Glen Davis who the real Big Baby is. Yeah, I know it was obvious and not that funny, but it’s getting late and I have physical therapy at 8:30 tomorrow morning. Or today, depending on when you’re reading this. Wow, now I know what Marty McFly feels like.
Pick: Duke

#2 Texas vs. #3 Iowa
Could Texas become the first team with a state-name to beat three straight state-named teams en route to the Elite Eight? It’s questions like this that sort of made me wish I worked at Elias. And was good at tongue twisters.
Pick: Texas

Regional Final
#1 Duke vs. #2 Texas
When these two teams played in December, Duke won by 31 points. So it’s only natural that I, like the fool I am and will always be, will be picking Texas.
South Champion: Texas

*** West Region (Oakland) ***

First Round
#1 Memphis vs. #16 Oral Roberts
While Ned Flanders will certainly be disappointed if his alma mater loses in the first round, he’ll be fine as long as he remembers his three c’s: clean living, chewing thoroughly and a daily dose of vitamin church. John Calipari was on Ned's old "c" list, until he found out the Memphis coach doesn't like Ziggy comics, baby ducks and Sweatin' to the Oldies Volumes I, II and IV.
Pick: Memphis

#8 Arkansas vs. #9 Bucknell
I’d be more inclined to pick Oral Roberts in that last game if everybody wasn’t already talking about it. People much more intelligent than myself say one of the committee’s most overlooked blunders was seeding Oral Roberts as a #16. Apparently they were more deserving of a #14. But I think the #16 seed upset is going to happen when one of those teams catches their opponent totally off-guard. Memphis has to be prepared for Oral Roberts, right? There’s no way the Golden Eagles are going to surprise Memphis, yes? John Calipari has to be posting all the clippings that say his team has a shot at becoming the first #1 seed to lose in the first-round, correct? But maybe Oral Roberts will just outplay them. I’m still picking Memphis, but don’t be shocked if the upset is sprung. It’s going to happen sometime.
Pick: Arkansas

#5 Pittsburgh vs. #12 Kent State
Everybody’s talking about how this is a revenge game for Pittsburgh, but what about Kent State? They have to avenge the Steelers defeat of the Golden Flashes favorite son, Antonio Gates, in week five of this past NFL season.
Pick: Pittsburgh

#4 Kansas vs. #13 Bradley
The Bradley Braves. It’s just such a stupid name. (Normally at this point I’d mention how I have a general distaste for any alliterative name that also has second-letter alliteration as well. But then I’d fear somebody pointing out that my name is Chris Chase and, frankly, I’m just not prepared to deal with all that self-loathing irony right now.)
Pick: Kansas

#6 Indiana vs. #11 San Diego State
Indiana could either make a run to the Final Four or lose in the first round. See, Hoosier fans? Not much has changed since Bobby Knight left, after all!
Pick: San Diego State

#3 Gonzaga vs. #14 Xavier
Nothing says basketball like a good ol’ scrum between the Catholics and the Jesuits. My money’s on the Catholics in this one, but if Xavier can get St. Ignatius of Loyola to come out of retirement for the contest, there’s a good chance the Musketeers could steal this first-rounder. Brotha had a killer crossover back in the day.
Pick: Gonzaga

#7 Marquette vs. #10 Alabama
I’ve been staring at a blinking cursor for 45 seconds trying to think of something to write about this game. That should do it.
Pick: Marquette

#2 UCLA vs. #15 Belmont
If this were an episode of Too Close for Comfort Ted Knight would ask Jim J. Bullock who he was picking in this game and Jim J. would thoughtfully respond, “well Mr. Rush, I think I’ll take the Bruins!!” and then he’d give his goofy smile and make that weird sound he always made.
Pick: UCLA

Second Round
#1 Memphis vs. #8 Arkansas
So I typed in Jim J. Bullock on the Google search bar on Firefox a second ago just to make sure I was spelling his name correctly and there’s this new feature that guesses what you’re going to search for (which, by the way, is pretty amazing in its own right). So I typed in Jim J. Bullock and I guess I hit the down button instead of hitting enter because it took me to the next most popular search involving Jim J. Bullock which is “Jim J. Bullock dies” and there was a harrowing few seconds when, panic-stricken, I thought the man who had given us Monroe Ficus had passed on. Luckily for me (and mankind) it must have been one of those crazy urban legends that caused people to search for that.
Pick: Memphis

#4 Kansas vs. #5 Pittsburgh
Hey, did you hear Screech got shot by the kid who played Mikey in those Life Cereal commercials?
Pick: Kansas

#3 Gonzaga vs. #11 San Diego State
Imagine, for a second, that you’re now reading a gossip column. This should make the following seem a little less pretentious: I’m hearing things out of Salt Lake City implying all is not well in Zag-land. Adam Morrison apparently has a massive ego and has begun demanding the ball during games, much to the chagrin of his teammates. This has allegedly caused a rift in the locker room.
You see, this is what happens when you develop a cross-country video-game friendship with J.J. Redick.
Pick: San Diego State

#2 UCLA vs. #7 Marquette
I could have sworn UCLA had beat Marquette for one of their National titles during the Wooden era, but upon further review, I discovered Marquette lost to David Thompson and N.C. State in 1974, not the Bruins like I had anticipated, which killed my intended joke. Well, it’s probably for the best. The whole bit wasn’t that good anyway.
Pick: UCLA

Regional Semi-Final
#1 Memphis vs. #4 Kansas
Any school that shares a name with a character Nicolas Cage once played in a movie cannot, and will not, make a Final Four in my brackets.
Pick: Kansas

#2 UCLA vs. #11 San Diego State
As a descendent of Hernando Cortes, I’m very offended by San Diego State’s “Aztecs” moniker. Or, I would be if I were actually a descendent of Hernando Cortes.
Pick: UCLA

Regional Final
#2 UCLA vs. #4 Kansas
Two of the most storied programs in all of college basketball meet for the chance to go to the Final Four. I can practically hear Dick Vitale dry-humping his television, until he realizes that one of those storied programs isn’t Duke. Because they’re not storied. A recent success, yes. Storied, no. As my Godfather mentioned at lunch yesterday, Kansas plays in (Phog) Allen Fieldhouse on (James) Naismith Court. Duke had Johnny Dawkins play on their team once.
West Champion: Kansas

*** East Region (Washington D.C.) ***

First Round
#1 Connecticut vs. #16 Albany
In a Westside Story-type brawl between state capitals, I have little doubt Albany would kick the crap out of Hartford and get to go home with Natalie Wood. Sadly, this is basketball though.
Pick: Connecticut

#8 Kentucky vs. #9 UAB
Kentucky doesn’t use Ashley Judd as effectively as they should. They need to sit her behind the opponent’s basket in the second-half, wearing a sundress, holding a parasol in one hand and running an ice cube up and down her neck with the other like an undersexed Southern belle. How could an opponent ever make a shot with that distraction? They’d almost be willed to miss their baskets because it might upset Ashley Judd. And this is just another in a long line of reasons why I should be an SID for major conference teams.
Pick: Kentucky

#5 Washington vs. #12 Utah State
An anagram of Lorenzo Romar is: Razor or Lemon. But not both, because the Gillette Fusion is the greatest invention of the last quarter-century. And that includes the Internet. Because Al Gore was this close to discovering that anyway.
Pick: Washington

#4 Illinois vs. #13 Air Force
First of all, that made no sense. Second of all, what’s all this about the East being the toughest region? Illinois is a fine team, but are a shell of what they were last year. Michigan State and Kentucky are big names in college basketball, with the former always being a threat because of Tom Izzo, but they’re not exactly in peak form right now. UNC is young and Tennessee might be the worst #2 seed in history (although the Iowa State team that lost to Hampton a few years back was pretty bad too). All in all, I think the East is the easiest region and UConn should have a cakewalk to Indy.
Pick: Illinois

#6 Michigan State vs. #11 George Mason
If Tony Skinn were playing, I might have picked George Mason. But this is the second straight my year my “upset special” team has played Michigan State. I think it all stems from the time I ran over Craig Littlepage’s azaleas with my car.
Pick: Michigan State

#3 North Carolina vs. #14 Murray State
If you were Murray State, wouldn’t you hire Harold Arceneaux as an assistant coach for this game?
Pick: North Carolina

#7 Wichita State vs. #10 Seton Hall
Wichita State’s athletic teams are nicknamed the Shockers. If I were a Pirate – Nope. Thought I was going to go there but couldn’t pull the trigger.
Pick: Wichita State

#2 Tennessee vs. #15 Winthrop
I’d pick Winthrop but, after he and Billy Ray took the Duke brothers for all they were worth, I’d assume affluence has softened him.
Pick: Tennessee

Second Round
#1 Connecticut vs. #8 Kentucky
If the first title game between an all-white starting five and an all-black starting five was such a big deal, why wasn’t the first title game between two all-black starting fives an even bigger deal? I don’t know when that happened, but I wouldn’t be shocked if both John Thompson and Phi Slamma Jamma were involved.
Pick: Connecticut

#4 Illinois vs. #5 Washington
The computers love both Illinois and Washington. Now, I’ve only skimmed the Cliff’s Notes, but I’m pretty sure that’s how 1984 started.
Pick: Washington

#3 North Carolina vs. #6 Michigan State
Tom Izzo’s teams always screw me in my brackets, so this pick is guaranteed to be wrong no matter which team I choose.
Pick: North Carolina

#2 Tennessee vs. #7 Wichita State
Prepare to be shocked. (I hate nothing more than when people say “no pun intended” because, more often than not, the pun was fully intended. It’s like when somebody says, “I’m sorry to interrupt but…”. Well, sweetheart, if you were so sorry about interrupting, maybe you shouldn’t have done it in the first place. Anyway, I bring this up because I actually didn’t intend to make the fairly obvious “shocked” connection between Wichita State and the fact that it might be surprising that I'm picking them to upset Tennessee. The “shocked” was intended sarcasm because I’ve been ripping the Vols all week and, to anybody who had read this blog since Monday, me picking against Tennessee will be anything but a shock. OK, I really need to stop explaining my jokes.)
Pick: Wichita State

Regional Semi-Final
#1 Connecticut vs. #4 Illinois
It might not be pretty, but..... Well, I guess that was all I had to say.
Pick: Connecticut

#3 North Carolina vs. #7 Wichita State
I’m going to be kicking myself when Michigan State beats UNC this weekend. Not actually kicking myself, mind you, because that would take a flexibility with which I am only acquainted in dreams.
Pick: North Carolina

Regional Final
#1 Connecticut vs. #3 North Carolina
Amazing as it sounds, I think I’d be rooting just as hard for North Carolina in this game as I did for them on Senior Night in Durham. I just hate Jim Calhoun that much.
East Champion: Connecticut

*** Midwest Region (Minneapolis) ***

First Round
#1 Villanova vs. #16 Monmouth
The last time Monmouth was a #16 in the Tournament was in 2001 when they played eventual National champion Duke in the first round.
Does this mean Villanova is destined to win this National Championship this year? Nah, it just means that the 2001 Monmouth team knows how much of a tool Mike Dunleavy Jr. is first-hand.
Pick: Villanova

#8 Arizona vs. #9 Wisconsin
I made that same exact joke last year, but incorrectly referenced Farleigh-Dickinson as the team the 2001 Dukies beat in the first round. As far as I can tell, FDU has never played Duke in the NCAA Tournament and had only made one previous appearance in the modern era (1998, when they played Connecticut). So either I made a mistake (always a good possibility) or I came up with a joke I found to be amusing and had to tweak it a little bit to make it relevant (ding ding ding). That’s the last time I’ll ever lie to you, my reader. Starting now.
Pick: Wisconsin

#5 Nevada vs. #12 Montana
Q:What do Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada and Montana all have in common?
A: Lute Olsen was alive when each gained statehood.
Pick: Nevada

#4 Boston College vs. #13 Pacific
Al Skinner is the black Skip Prosser.
Pick: Boston College

#6 Oklahoma vs. #11 Wisconsin-Milwaukee
But Kelvin Sampson makes both look like John Wooden.
Pick: Wisconsin-Milwaukee

#3 Florida vs. #14 South Alabama
That redneck chick from Florida got voted out last night on American Idol. I only mention this because she had a huge rack.
Pick: Florida

#7 Georgetown vs. #10 Northern Iowa
The only thing Northern Iowa and I have in common is that they are from Northern Iowa, and I had once heard of Northern Iowa.
Pick: Georgetown

#2 Ohio State vs. #15 Davidson
You know how they make schools take down their prestige banners if they’re put on probation for violations that occurred when the basketball team went to or won a Tournament? What happens when a crappy team goes on probation? Do they make them erase the 6-22 record from the media guide? If so, why wouldn’t a perennially terrible basketball program like Clemson uncover 100 years worth of violations so they could start over anew. Anyone?
Pick: Ohio State

Second Round
#1 Villanova vs. #9 Wisconsin
Is anybody else bored by the brackets this year? I can’t remember ever having so few intriguing match-ups. Beyond the possible Kansas-Pittsburgh second round game, is there any weekend game that’s going to be a “must-watch?”
Pick: Villanova

#4 Boston College vs. #5 Nevada
BC coach Al Skinner, who has never made it out of the first weekend in six NCAA Tournament appearances, was walking around with his collar up during walk-throughs yesterday in Salt Lake City. No word on whether George was making sandwiches.
Pick: Nevada

#3 Florida vs. #11 Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Remember when the Packers used to play one or two home games per year in Milwaukee? I don’t know why, but I always enjoyed that. (This will make sense once you get to the Villanova/Nevada semi-final blurb. I do these things out of order most of the time.)
Pick: Florida

#2 Ohio State vs. #7 Georgetown
Ohio State struggled in both games against Northwestern this season, which bodes well for Georgetown, a team that runs the same Princeton-style offense as Bill Carmody’s Wildcats. Since I’ve seen Ohio State play about five minutes of basketball this year, I’m wary of picking against them because of an inherent bias I have towards teams I don’t see, but I’m going to do it anyway. Cause I’m like that. What?
Pick: Georgetown

Regional Semi-Final
#1 Villanova vs. #5 Nevada
The road ends here for Nick Fazekas and let me be the first to say, it’s about damn time. I haven’t had as hard a time spelling a last name (the “a”, “e”, “a” placement got me every time) since Khabeer Gbhaja-Biamilia was relevant. (And no, that’s not how you spell it, but I’m refusing to look it up out of principle. Sadly, that’s the only principle I have. Not looking up last names of ex-Packers defensive ends.)
Pick: Villanova

#3 Florida vs. #7 Georgetown
Do I really have Florida and Georgetown playing in the Sweet 16? If I were Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky I’d be beginning my lucid dream right about….. now.
Pick: Florida

Regional Final
#1 Villanova vs. #3 Florida
Two of the teams I’ve been ripping all year, Florida and Texas, appear in my Elite Eight. At this rate, I suppose I’ll be picking Eli Manning as my preseason NFL MVP this August as well.
Midwest Champion: Villanova

*** Final Four ***

#2 Texas vs. #4 Kansas
The Longhorns win the rubber match, but not before people recognize Bill Self’s coaching job at KU this year as one of the best in recent memory.
Pick: Texas

#1 Connecticut vs. #1 Villanova
The Wildcats win the rubber match, but not before people recognize Jim Calhoun’s coaching job at Connecticut this year as one of the dirtiest in recent memory. What a scuzzball that guy is.
Pick: Villanova

*** National Championship ***

Villanova vs. Texas
On November 11, I picked Villanova to win the NCAA title. It’d be cooler if today was March 11 so I could write, “On March 11, I’ll do the same,” but since it’s March 16, I’ll just say this: Villanova will win the 2006 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship.
National Champion: Villanova Wildcats

Even More Bracket Thoughts

* On ESPN’s Bracketology special, Dick Vitale made a point of mentioning how Duke was a #1 seed in the Tournament for the ninth time in ten years. I made a note of it because it sounded like one of the most impressive college basketball feats I’d ever heard (right behind Dean Smith’s UNC teams finishing in the top three of the ACC in each of his final 33 years as head coach). It seemed almost too unbelievable though, so I checked it out. As I went backwards year-by-year (giggling maniacally when I got to the 2003 Tournament where Duke was a lowly #3 seed) and kept seeing Duke at the top of a region, I started thinking, “wow, Vitale was right.” Until I came to 1997 and saw that Duke, shockingly, was not a #1 seed in that magical prime numbered year but a #2! This means Dick Vitale was making up facts that appeared to make Duke greater than they really are. I demand a full investigation!
Even so, being a #1 seed eight out of nine years is pretty damn amazing. Almost as amazing as the fact that Duke only has three Final Four appearances and one title in those eight years as a #1 seed. In all seriousness (I know that’s a stretch, but bear with me), that’s really surprising. Nobody ever mentions this, but might Duke have a problem getting it done in March? Remember, their only title since 1992 came in a year when the officials handed them a Final Four game against Maryland. (The Blue Devils were down 22 at one point in the game, before a phantom fouls on Terrence Morris and a completely blown call that should have been Shane Battier’s fifth foul changed the complexion of the contest.) Duke is a very vulnerable #1 seed this year. If they fail to make it to Indianapolis, a responsible journalist will have to pose the question: Does Duke choke in the Tournament?

* I want to feel bad for Cincinnati, really I do. Bob Huggins cultivated such a wholesome image at the university that I have a soft spot in my heart for that zero-graduating DUI-haven. And even though I don’t really feel bad, I can commiserate with the Bearcats’ faithful because they should be in the NCAA Tournament. That being said, if Andy Kennedy and company really, really wanted to get into the field of 65, they should have won more than one of their last four games.
Cincinnati fans can complain all they want about how Air Force didn’t deserve an at-large bid and how the Bearcats had a better resume than Seton Hall and I’m sure it will make them feel better when both lose in the first round of the Tournament. But if the team had just won a damn game (at Seton Hall or against Syracuse in the Big East play-in games) they wouldn’t have had to complain.
Again, it’s a little unfair for Gerry McNamara’s prayer to be the difference between an NCAA berth and NIT bid, but did Mississippi get to advance against Valparaiso in the NCAA’s a few years back when Bryce Drew hit his shot just because they almost won? Did Kentucky get to go to the 1992 Final Four because it took a Christian Laettner miracle for them to lose? Of course not. There are no such thing as moral victories. The Big East Tournament was Cincy’s NCAA Tournament. They lost.
Of course, so did Seton Hall. And the Pirates lost to a non-NCAA team in Rutgers. (To say they lost is misleading. Seton Hall got their asses whupped in a must-win game.) They should have been the Big East team left out, not Cincinnati. But anytime you leave your fate in the hands of the committee, you have nobody to blame but yourself.

* Can we stop slobbering over the Big East now? Please? Getting eight teams into the Tournament might be a record, but it’s not nearly as impressive as when the ACC used to get six or those years the Big Ten got seven or even when the Big East themselves got seven in 1991. Those conferences had considerably less than 16 members, meaning their percentage of teams in the Tournament was much higher than the Big East this year, who only managed to get 50% of their teams in. Compare that to the stretch the ACC had from 1986 to 1989 when six of the conference’s eight teams (75%) qualified for the NCAA Tournament. That’s impressive. The ACC getting 50% back then was a down year, so let’s not get our panties in a bunch about the Big East doing the same thing but with more teams. Hell, if they expanded to 68 teams, maybe they could have the entire at-large field come from their conference. Well, except for Cincinnati.

* George Washington’s #8 seed is a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy by the committee. By pairing the Colonials with a solid UNC-Wilmington team, the committee is setting up GW for failure. If they lose, it will justify the committee’s seeding because, in their eyes, GW couldn’t even win a first-round game. But that’s just a convenient excuse. By giving GW a tougher game against a #9 seed instead of scheduling them for an easier first-round match-up against a #12 or #13 seed, the committee is making it more difficult for GW to win.
They do the same thing with mid-majors, which is why Billy Packer’s argument that the MVC has only one win over the past four years was so ridiculous. The MVC was only favored in one game over the past four years because of seeding. So why is their lack of success a surprise? If Duke, UNC, Maryland and Wake Forest all had to play top seeds in the first round, the winning percentage of the ACC would be pretty bad too. Well, I guess it doesn’t matter who Wake plays as long as Skip Prosser is coaching, but that’s neither here nor there.

* I saw Bruce Pearl on PTI’s “Five Good Minutes” yesterday and was reminded that he’s the best guest of the non-journalist variety PTI has. (The best guest overall is David DuPree.) Pearl has no bullshit about him (well, maybe a little) and seems to be one of the most likeable people in sports. I almost felt a little bad for ripping his Tennessee Volunteers so badly earlier this week. But then I remembered they’ve lost four of six and are still seeded ahead of teams that finished ahead of them in both the SEC standings and SEC Tournament.

* The U.S. Constitution has been amended 17 times since the Bill of Rights was passed in 1789. Our government has determined that even our brilliant founding fathers weren’t perfect and have, 17 times, decided to change the rules they set forth 230 years ago. Yet somehow, the NCAA can’t change a rule that they themselves made which says there must be 34 at-large teams in the NCAA Tournament.
When the Mountain West was formed in 2001, thus creating 31 conferences, the NCAA should have taken away an at-large berth to keep the field at 64. Instead, they cited some arcane rule about how the at-large pool can’t be lowered (translation: we don’t want the 7th team from the Big East to miss out on losing in the first round) and shoved two small schools into a play-in game. One of these schools always comes from one of the two historically black conferences and the winner always loses to the #1 seed by a large margin. Nobody seems to care how unfair it is that two schools that have just, days before, experienced the exhilarating high of qualifying for an NCAA Tournament, are sent to play in front of a half-empty arena in Dayton for the right to be sacrificed by a #1 seed three days later. The players miss out on traveling to a game site and feeling like part of the NCAA Tournament. It’s just so damn unfair.
The NCAA needs to (but won’t) get rid of the 34th at-large team and, short of that, should put the two last at-large teams in the play-in game. The teams in the play-in game deserve to have the NCAA Tournament experience like everyone else. Hampton, who lost yesterday, deserved better than a Tuesday night in Dayton.

* How bad must Joe Lunardi have felt when CBS revealed the brackets and he only had 61 of the 65 teams correct, while many writers at small newspapers nationwide hit 62 or 63? I imagine it was sort of like back in elementary school when one kid learned how to yo-yo really well and for a day or two everyone thought he was the bee’s knees. Then, everybody bought a yo-yo and realized it wasn’t that hard and began doing moves that made the old kid look worthless and when somebody learned the nearly impossible “shoot the moon” trick he was proclaimed as the greatest showman since the kid who ate worms (“my 15 minutes of fame are over”) while the old best yo-yo’er in school cried in the corner. That’s what I think Lunardi’s Sunday night was like.
I also found it interesting how George Mason was listed as the last team on the “next four out” list when I woke up on Sunday morning (meaning Lunardi had them eight spots away from an at-large berth) but were the 64th team in later that day. How did they move up, basically, nine spots in a matter of hours when no games that had anything to do with bubble placement had gone final? It seemed to me that Lunardi heard something from Indy that indicated George Mason would get in, or started doubting his own work when he saw Mason in everybody else’s projected field. It’s probably the latter, because if Lunardi had a contact in Indy, he never would have sucked so badly in the first place. I kind of hope ESPN fires him for his poor showing because that would be fairly hilarious. Of course if they did that, Len Pasquarelli would have to be thrown out the door too.

* And if it’s time to talk about Pasquarelli, it’s time to discuss the Washington Redskins. Originally I had planned on holding off on all Redskins talk until next week due to the Tournament, but some e-mails have come my way requesting otherwise. So Dickman, this is for you:
So far, in the first 96 hours of free agency, the Redskins have acquired Antwaan Randle El, Brandon Lloyd, Adam Archuleta, Andre Carter, Christian Fauria and Todd Collins. Earlier in March, the ‘Skins released LaVar Arrington and soon they will trade Patrick Ramsey. Besides picking up some depth for the o-line and maybe a new punter and kicker, it’s safe to say the Redskins off-season personnel changes are almost over. And it’s much safer to say that the Redskins team that will step on the field in September will certainly be much improved from the team that walked off the field in Seattle on that cold, rainy afternoon in January.
Even Len Pasquarelli had to admit in a recent column that Redskins cap expert Eric Schaffer is a bit of a cap genius. How else can one explain how the ‘Skins can get under the cap with the massive contracts of Mark Brunell, Santana Moss, Clinton Portis, Randle El, Archuleta, Carter, Sean Taylor, Carlos Rogers, Jason Campbell, Marcus Washington, Chris Samuels, Jon Jansen, Cornelius Griffin and Shawn Springs? Each of those players received signing bonuses over $8 million and are among the best compensated at their position in the league. How can the Redskins possibly fit them all under the cap, while still managing to pay 31 players on their roster competitive wages as well?
Pasquarelli and others think the Redskins can’t, which is why every off-season they write articles about how the sky will be falling soon enough in Ashburn and how, three years down the road, Daniel Snyder will be in a self-induced cap hell because of his free spending ways. The problem is, they wrote the same articles in 2000. And in 2001. And in 2002. And, last time I checked, the Redskins were still fielding competitive teams years after that.
After Snyder’s infamous free agent purge of 2000 every single writer who had ever possessed an NFL credential was writing stories about how it would be impossible for the Redskins to field a team in three years without cutting all their players. They didn’t. And it wasn’t. So Len Pasquarelli, this is my pre-emptive strike to your inevitable column about how Dan Snyder is digging his own financial grave.
But what about the signings themselves? Am I a fan? Clearly, the money is always an issue. I’m surprised how much money they threw at Randle El and Archuleta, in particular, but I also thought the same thing about Santana Moss last year, and look how that one turned out. (And Brandon Lloyd’s cost was probably too high, but the Redskins can’t draft anyway, so those picks would have been wasted.) I’ve decided that when it comes to finances, the Redskins front office knows a whole lot more than anybody else. While Pasquarelli and friends might think the Washington suits are short-sighted and possess no roadmap for the future, the front office has proven over the years that they’re smarter than everybody else. So I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt on the contracts. They seem to know what they’re doing. But about the players…
Antwaan Randle El/Brandon Lloyd - It’s impossible to separate these two because their acquisitions probably wouldn’t have happened if the other wasn’t available. Separately, I’d be skeptical of both these players.
At the beginning of the off-season I wrote about my disdain for the possibility of Randle El becoming a Redskin:

If Wayne doesn’t sign, expect to hear a lot about Antwaan Randle El. If that’s the case, expect to read a lot (on this site) about how that would be a terrible signing and won’t help the Redskins at all. I like Randle El a lot, but he’s no #2 receiver. He’s the quintessential big-play threat as a third wideout. In that role, I love him. As a guy you need to catch a difficult ball on a big third down, not so much.

When I wrote that, I assumed Randle El would be thrown on the field with Santana and David Patten, thus making him the #2 receiver. With Lloyd coming in as well, though, Randle El still might be listed as the #2 receiver but, in actuality, Randle El and Lloyd will split duties and often be on the field together in three receiver sets, just like The Posse was back in Gibbs’ original heyday. In that regard, I love both signings (assuming Lloyd does ink an extension in the coming days, which seems like a foregone conclusion at this point). Randle El can stretch the field with Moss and Lloyd can go over the middle to draw in safety help. With Joe Gibbs and Al Saunders developing gameplans, I’d lie if I said I’m already not counting down the days until training camp opens.
There’s been some questions about Brandon Lloyd’s effort and dedication, stemming from some problems he had in San Francisco. At first, I was turned off by these reports, but then I realized: 1) Why am believing anything Kevan Barlow says. I hate Kevan Barlow. I told everyone not to pick him in their 2004 fantasy drafts because I knew he sucked, yet people did and apparently his sucking was contagious because anybody who picked him did terrible. 2) Now maybe this is just wishful thinking, but I’ll chalk up Lloyd’s frustrations to a 1-6 record on a team that had no chance of doing anything. Maybe he’s just the kind of guy that wants to win so bad and annoys everybody in the process. You’ve played basketball with those kinds of people before. They get frustrated when people don’t try or don’t seem to care. Kevan Barlow certainly seems like he’d belong in that group.
But I was still on the fence about Lloyd on Monday evening, when I stumbled upon an interview he was doing with George Michael (the D.C. sportscaster, not the felonious Greek pop star). After watching the interview I called my cousin to George to say, “I love Brandon Lloyd so much,” but was interrupted by a text from the aforementioned George which read, “I love Brandon Lloyd.”
There was something infectious about him, and in a non-Paris Hilton way. He was bright, bubbly, eager, excited. He said all the right things. He praised Joe Gibbs, he said he didn’t care if he got catches as long as it led to winning. He went out of his way to mention how much he respects Chris Cooley. He said all the right things, and in a way that showed he actually meant that.
Now, I’m not naïve. I know these guys have had a ton of media training and have been prepped for interviews like this. Still, you can always tell who means it and who is just going through the motions. Brandon Lloyd seems thrilled to be in Washington. (So does Randle El. I love how he was thrilled when Gibbs asked to talk to his wife during a recruiting call.) And, just days after predicting that Brandon Lloyd would be the player I hate the most during the coming season, I can honestly say I’m happy he’s in Washington.
Adam Archuleta – I loved Archuleta coming out of Arizona State and when he was in his first couple years in the league (so much so that I always traded for him when I’d make a Madden franchise). I’ve sort of lost track of him over the past few years though, so don’t really know if he’s still a good player or if he’s just another overrated white safety in the vein of John Lynch and Jason Sehorn. I hope it’s the former. But the latter wouldn’t surprise me. He seems like a good fit for Gregg Williams’ defense: Disciplined, quick and hard-hitting. Hopefully he’ll be able to play with Sean Taylor, assuming Sean Taylor’s football playing days aren’t confined to Longest Yard-esque romps.
Andre Carter – Besides a #2 receiver, a pass rusher was at the top of the Redskins shopping list. They got one in Carter. Here’s hoping he’s more disciplined than LaVar Arrington.
Christian Fauria – In real estate it’s all about “location, location, location.” In football it’s all about “blocking, blocking, blocking.” I love the Fauria pick-up for this reason.
Todd Collins – Nobody’s really said, but I’m assuming Collins will be the 3rd-string QB in Washington, even though he’s making 2nd-string money. But I guess with the way the NFL goes through quarterbacks, it’s a good investment.
All in all, the Redskins have done a great job so far in free agency. After they plug in some holes in the depths of both lines, and grab a steady kicker and punter, they’ll be set.
Lost in all the euphoria, however, is this: The Redskins starting quarterback is 36-years old and fragile. Their backup is 24-years old and green. And all the great receivers in the world can’t change that. More on the Redskins quarterback problems next week.

* Back to basketball. I’m predicting the drumbeat to get rid of the RPI will grow louder and louder in the coming years, particularly when its use by the committee is so erratic. They penalize GW for a poor non-conference strength of schedule, but let in Air Force in spite of one. They give Tennessee a high seed because of their RPI but leave out Missouri State even though their RPI was higher than a team the committee rewarded with a #4 seed (Boston College).
The RPI is a joke, just like the BCS. As a tool, it’s fine. (Even though the Sagarin ratings are better.) As a factor in determining which teams make the Tournament, it’s a corruption of common sense. In honor of that, some awesome RPI facts:

- Non-conference strength of schedules for a selection of at-large teams:
Texas A&M – 219
Arkansas – 233
Pittsburgh – 241
Connecticut - 244
Florida – 261
Air Force - 273
Boston College – 294
George Washington – 323
Teams with NCSOS’ in-between BC and GW include: Bethune-Cookman, Mercer, Longwood, UC-Riverside, North Florida (?!) and Savannah State. The team with the lowest RPI in the nation (Prairie View A&M) had a non-conference SOS of 250, by the way.

- Wake Forest had more (or the same number of) wins against the RPI top 50 than: Oklahoma, Boston College, Arizona, George Mason, UNC-Wilmington, Marquette, UAB, George Washington, Washington, Cincinnati, Kentucky, Bucknell, Texas A&M, Arkansas, Utah State, N.C. State, Air Force and Cal. To simplify: Wake Forest had more (or the same number of ) wins against the RPI top 50 than more than half of the at-large field.

- Oklahoma has a .500 record against the RPI top 100, but an impressive 93% winning percentage against teams ranked 101 and below.

- The following teams had a higher non-conference RPI than George Washington: Sacramento State (13-15), Loyola of Maryland (15-13 this season, 6-22 in 2005) and Wagner (12-14). Those teams were an impressive 20-9 in non-conference games. GW was a more impressive 10-1.

- Arizona lost three games to teams ranked below 100 in the RPI, or the same amount as Duke, Villanova, Connecticut, Memphis, Ohio State, Iowa, Tennessee, UCLA, Texas, Gonzaga, LSU, Florida, North Carolina, Syracuse, Michigan State, Wichita State, UAB and George Washington, combined.

- North Dakota State (RPI: 223) has more wins against the RPI top 50 than Air Force. So do Bowling Green, Illinois State, Towson, Evansville and College of Charleston, for that matter.

- Compare the following non-conference schedules:

Team A: Northern Illinois, Arkansas State, Georgia Southern, Texas A&M Corpus-Christi, Oral Roberts, Detroit, Arkansas, Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Team B: Louisiana-Monroe, Wofford, Texas, Kentucky, LSU, St. Bonaventure, UMBC, Duquesne, Oklahoma, Marshall, Canisius, UCLA.

Let’s throw out the easy wins (teams with an RPI below 125) and look again:

Team A: Arkansas, Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Team B: Texas, Kentucky, LSU, Oklahoma, UCLA

Which team’s schedule is more difficult? It’s not even close, right? Team B has the much more difficult non-conference schedule. Correct?
Well, you won’t be at all surprised to find out this was a set-up (“they’re ALL Twix!”) and, according to the RPI, team B does not, in fact, have the more difficult non-conference schedule.
According to the wise RPI, the schedule of Team A was the 41st most difficult non-conference slate in the country. By finishing 8-1 in those games, Team A earned a non-conference RPI of 5.
Team B’s non-conference schedule was ranked 113 spots below Team A’s, good for 154th in the nation. By virtue of an 8-4 finish with that schedule, Team B earned a non-conference RPI of 123.
You might have figured out Team B is West Virginia. Team A didn’t make the Tournament despite their ridiculous gaudy RPI. That schedule belonged to Missouri State.
(Note: West Virginia’s NC-RPI is so low mainly because they lost to 231st ranked Marshall. But that doesn’t explain why their schedule was rated so much lower than Missouri State’s. Granted, the guarantee-games on WVU’s schedule were against really terrible teams, but shouldn’t the games against the country’s best knock them up a few slots?)

* Digger Phelps and Jay Bilas are ridiculous and I’m just going to leave it at that. Except I’m not, because they’re just so damn ridiculous.
Bilas actually wanted Michigan in the NCAA Tournament. Michigan, losers of seven of their last nine games, would have been playing for the National Title if Jay Bilas had something to do with it. Thankfully, though, he doesn’t, so the only effect he has on us as a viewing public is freaking us out with the orange-glow he gets from one too many trips to the tanning salon.
I won’t even get started on the hypocrisy spewing from Bilas’ mouth every time he got into a discussion with Joe Lunardi this past weekend. I was talking with George about it before the Wake/Duke game on Saturday and then I read this comment left by an anoymous hero who must have been reading my mind at the exact moment he (or she) wrote:

I find it funny that on College Gameday today all the ESPN analysts (Bilas, Digger, etc.) rip the Missouri Valley and the RPI, yet every time they show bubble teams they post the teams' RPI, record vs. RPI Top 50, and RPI SOS as their basis for evaluating teams. Then Bilas blasts Lunardi for choosing FSU over Michigan and quotes all the quantitative data he shot down just 5 minutes ago. I like Bilas, but don't blast a statistic that you know you're going to quote to support your analysis later in the same program. I know they prefer Pomeroy and Sagarin ratings to the RPI, but if you're going to promote those stats as superior to the RPI, then freakin' use them.

Seriously, I was having the exact same conversation when my e-mail chime, um, chimed. It was so spot-on, I’ll even ignore the part where the commenter claimed to like Jay Bilas. Maybe he was just transfixed by the orange glow.
As for Digger, at least he didn’t throw a hissy-fit about Notre Dame this time. But he did choose another school affiliated with Lou Holtz to absurdly get behind. Sunday, Digger was ranting and raving about how South Carolina didn’t get in the Tournament. Digger: “I don’t care what happened out of conference, the only thing that matters is what happened in conference.” Well, Digger, the Gamecocks went 6-10 in a mediocre SEC and lost twice to Georgia. Air Force, for all their faults, finished second in the eighth-rated conference in the country.
And I still can’t get over Bilas defending Michigan. THEY LOST SEVEN OF NINE TO FINISH THE YEAR, including to Purdue and Minnesota! How can anybody praise their Tournament-worthiness with a straight face. Maybe he gets Botox too.

* I have a new addition to my short list of amazing video clips I want access to at all-times. Joining Jim Mora’s “diddly-poo” tirade, the trampoline bear, Tommy Lasorda falling over in the All-Star game, Carl Lewis’ first pitch, Allen Iverson’s “practice?” press conference and Joe Namath kissing Suzy Kolber is John Chaney charging John Calipari while screaming “I’ma KILL you!” Man, that must have been so amazing to witness live. Chaney was a great coach and should be remembered as such, but John, you’ll always have a place in my heart for threatening to kill a man in front of 200 people with the camera’s rolling. You may have never made a Final Four, but you’re a champion in my heart.

Tomorrow: Picks for all 63 Tournament Games

Bracket Tips

Opinions on how to fill out your NCAA brackets are like embarrassing drunken stories – everybody, except the Amish, has one.
The problem with bracket tips is that everyone claims to be an expert because they’ve read a one-paragraph summary of Belmont’s season in their local newspaper and learned about Nick Fazekas from ESPNs’ Bracketology special. Everybody has can’t-miss teams and potential sleepers today, but by Friday they’ll have forgotten about them and will already be on another bandwagon.
In reality, nobody can predict the NCAA Tournament with any real degree of accuracy and that’s what makes the thing so damn fun.
To be successful with your brackets you don’t need to read every single statistic and analyze game-film, you just need to combine a little bit of knowledge with a little bit of analysis and then hope you step in a big pile of lucky.
Go on any one of the three major sports sites on the Internet (ESPN, SI and Sportsline) and you’ll be deluged with information ranging from the size of Wichita State’s center to the three-point percentage of Iowa’s backcourt. Just like with any piece of info, you’ll be able to skew the data anyway you choose. If you want to believe that Kent St. can beat Pittsburgh, you’ll likely find a way to justify your prediction. If not, it won’t be difficult to rationalize selecting the Panthers instead.
Sifting through all the data, info, predictions, analysis and stories is a daunting task. How can you separate the good tips from the bad ones, the pertinent info from the worthless? You can’t, which is why you should keep your research to a minimum. Identify the best teams in the major conferences and at least three or four mid-major upstarts and go from there.
Listen to what experts have to say, but, as you’ve learned from an early age, don’t believe everything you read (or hear). This week everyone will say that there’s no way a #2 seed will lose in the 1st round this year (as if those monumental upsets are ever expected), or how Connecticut is a lock for the Final Four (just like Duke was last year).
One analyst will guarantee that Villanova will come out of the Midwest (as always, I’m refusing to call the regions by their bulky location names) and another will be just as sure that Ohio State will come out of that region.
But nobody really knows, and therein lies the beauty of March Madness: Anything can happen, and usually does.
A #2 seed could easily lose, it’s happened four times before. And there is no such thing as a lock for the Final Four as Kentucky proved in 2003 and 2004.
Did anybody think that Coppin State would beat South Carolina a few years back? How many people really predicted that Syracuse would cut the nets down in 2003? And who really envisioned Michigan State in the Final Four last year?
If being knowledgeable about college basketball translated into NCAA pool success, then Digger Phelps and Andy Katz would predict all 63 of the games correctly. Instead, both analysts were in the 20th percentile on ESPN.com’s Tournament Challenge last year, finishing behind people that couldn’t name the North Carolina coach if you gave them the “R” and the “O”.
It’s a cliché, but in so many office pools the secretary who has never watched college basketball and thinks that Gonzaga is the new Viagra competitor often wins.
Why? Because there is no right way to make the picks. I’ve watched a lot of college basketball this season, probably more than 95% of the people I will be competing against in various pools. Yet, I’ll probably finish up somewhere in the middle of the pack.
Why?
Because the only thing predictable about the NCAA Tournament is its unpredictability.
And that’s what makes March Madness so wonderful. If each of the four top seeds advanced to the Final Four every season, filling out brackets and watching the 1st and 2nd round games wouldn’t be as fun. The one-and-done format of the Tournament lends itself to high drama, stunning upsets and intense pressure of every single possession. And that, in turn, makes filling out brackets an exercise in guesswork, at best.
With that word of warning, I now will offer some tips on how to have a great looking bracket on Thursday morning turn into a mediocre bracket by Thursday night.

- Be wary of picking too many big upsets. Me giving out this advice is like Courtney Love being the keynote speaker at a Just Say No! rally, but this year I plan to tone down my upset zeal. Really, I do.
In years past I always picked a lot of shockers. (And not just Wichita State.) Sometimes it works; I remember the glorious run of the Kent State Golden Flashes to the Elite Eight in 2002 and basking in the praises of my peers for such a clairvoyant pick. But for every Kent State on my resume, there are about 40 Michigan States, a #10 seed I thought would make a deep run in that same 2002 tourney, but ended up being out of the Tournament at 2:30 on the first Thursday. The Wolfman knows what I’m talking about; he had Southern Illinois in the Elite Eight back in ‘03. They lost in the first round.
You’re better off having a few upsets early (#12 over #5 has happened in 14 of the past 15 years) and then picking a sleeper team that falls in the #6 to #10 range to make it to the Sweet 16, (like Utah and Texas Tech last year) but nothing more than that.
Look at it this way: If you pick a big upset and it doesn’t pan out, you’re brackets will be crippled. If the upset does happen, it won’t kill you since nobody else in your pool is likely to pick it anyway.
Keep the upsets to a minimum and choose your Sweet 16 teams carefully, peppering in a #7 or #10 seed (at least one #2 seed has been upset in the second-round in every Tournament since 1996) along with a mostly chalk bracket. This leads me to the next tip…

- In the later rounds, ignore seedings. #3 Florida is a fine team, but in a game against #4 Boston College on a neutral floor, the Gators would be a considerable underdog. Same goes for a potential UNC-Tennessee meeting.
A handy rule is this: If the seeding difference is three or less, an upset it’s not, I must profess. (Sorry, I’m on a bit of a Dr. Seuss kick.)
Gonzaga has been ranked higher than UCLA all season, yet some might consider it an upset if the Zags win in that Sweet 16 match-up. In actuality, it will just be one good team beating another.
This is similar to the next rule:

- Don’t be scared of picking numerical upsets, particularly in first round #8/#9 and #7/#10 games. A few years back Maryland, as a #5 seed, played College of Charleston (#12) in the first round. At the time Maryland was ranked #22 in the nation while Charleston was #14 in the polls. This is an extreme example (CoC won, mainly because Gary Williams spent the entire week complaining about the match-up), but oftentimes you’ll find #10 or #11 seeds who are more highly regarded than the #6 and #7 seeds they are playing.
One week ago, Texas A&M and Syracuse were both bubble teams. Thursday, they’re set to meet in a 5/12 match-up. I’m no fan of the Aggies, but their game with the Orange is probably more evenly matched than a lot of 8/9 and 7/10 games. A Texas A&M win would be considered a gigantic upset, even though the teams probably have an equal talent level. Remember: Don’t fall into that seeding trap.
(Vegas apparently agrees: The 12 seeds in the other three #5/#12 match-ups are getting an average of 6.5 points. Syracuse is only giving up one against the Aggies.)

- Pick three out of the four #1 seeds to make it to the Elite Eight. This used to be a very safe bet, but it actually hasn’t happened in three years (Duke and Washington were knocked off before the Regional Finals in 2005), so I think I’m going to retire this one. But, from 1997 to 2003 there was only one year when less than three top seeds advanced to the final eight. As it is, you have to pick at least two #1’s to make it that far (in the 21 year history of the 64-team field, at least two #1 seeds have made it to the Elite Eight in every Tournament).

- Buck conventional wisdom. Let’s tie this tip into the last one. Memphis, like St. Joe's a few years back, has become everyone’s favorite bracket punching bag. On ESPN.com 85% of people believe Memphis won’t make the Final Four.
This is reminiscent of what happened to St. Joe’s two years ago. But, the Hawks showed they were worthy of their lofty ranking and came within a Jameer Nelson jumper of advancing to the Final Four.
Think of how much it will help your cause if you pick Memphis to go to the Final Four and they end up making it. You’ll have a huge advantage in your pool since everybody else probably will have them losing to Kansas, Pittsburgh or Gonzaga.
It’s funny – if Memphis was a #3 seed in this region and UCLA and Gonzaga moved up a seed each, the Tigers would likely be considered a sleeper. But because a lot of people are turned off by their high seed, John Calipari’s team is thought of as overrated.
That won’t matter once the ball is tipped. Memphis has as good a chance as any to make it to St. Louis. If you pick them to make it, you could find yourself rolling in the dough Indecent Proposal-style in three short weeks.

- Go out on a limb. I won $300 in a college football bowl pool earlier this year because I picked Texas to beat USC in the Rose Bowl. Whether I really thought Texas would win or not was irrelevant. I figured the Longhorns were a better play, as most people were likely going to pick the Trojans. It worked, and I was able to spend $300 on Patron shots one cold night in January.
Pick your Tournament the same way. Even if you think UConn is probably going to win, consider having another team beat them in the Finals. Think of it this way: If you pick the Huskies, you'll probably be joined by at least 50% of the people in your pool. That means you have to have more Final Four teams, more Sweet 16 teams and more first-round wins than a whole bunch of people. But if you take Kansas to beat UConn in the Finals, that will probably be all it takes for you to bring in the dough, first-round results be damned.

- But remember, conventional wisdom is also a good thing. The prohibitive favorites for the 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2004 Tournaments were Michigan State, Duke, Maryland and Connecticut, respectively. I don’t need to tell you who won those four tournaments.
Last year, most analysts believed that North Carolina and Illinois were the two teams to beat and would likely meet in the NCAA Finals. They did.
There’s a reason why Connecticut and Duke are the overwhelming favorites this year: Because they are two of the best teams in Tournament.
My point: Don’t get cute with these picks. UConn 27-3 for a reason. Duke didn’t go 17-2 in the ACC by accident. They’re great teams. Even if you don’t believe in the invincibility of Duke (like me) or think that UConn’s lack of a go-to guy makes them vulnerable (like me), the first two rounds aren’t the time to test that theory. Play it safe and move those two to the Elite Eight, at the very least, even if you think Shelden Williams is the most overrated player in the history of college basketball and has the smallest ears of any man alive. At that point, you can go nuts.

- Put at least one sleeper into the Final Four. Michigan State (#5 seed) in 2005, Georgia Tech (#3 seed) in 2004, Syracuse and Marquette (both #3) in 2003, Indiana (#5) in 2002, Maryland (#3) in 2001 and North Carolina and Wisconsin (both #8) in 2000 are recent examples. LSU, Kansas, Pittsburgh, Nevada and those Spartans, again, are just some of the middle-seeded teams with a good shot of playing in Indy.

- Beware of trendy picks. Trendiness is for suckers and Sarah-Jessica Parker. I have been espousing the virtues of a unique offshoot of anti-trend philosophy since I began this blog 26 months ago, and my theory was proven correct this year in the NFL when I told you to stay away from the bandwagons of the Arizona Cardinals, Nate Burleson and Drew Bennett at the beginning of the season.
The NCAA Tournament is a little different. Trendy teams tend to be highly seeded, and I’m obviously not going to tell you to stay away from the pocket square of the basketball world, Connecticut (by the way, my mom has a picture of me rocking the pocket square when I was four. Now Rick Reilly wears it in his goofy ad for SI.com and I can’t pop one in my breast pocket without looking like a tool). Anyway, try to avoid mid-seeded teams that a lot of people are picking to advance far.
Boston College comes to mind, even though I like Craig Smith and Jared Dudley. LSU is another team that has had to open up the second-level of its bandwagon, so watch out for them.
Both are streaky teams that could lose in the first round or advance to the Final Four. Be wary.

- Don’t read anything into the conference tournament losses. The only thing conference tournaments are good for is determining who is hot. Boston College, for instance, is one of these teams. Yes, I said beware of them above, but they had a solid run through the ACC Tournament and seem to be playing their best basketball at the right time.
On the flip side, Connecticut, Villanova, Ohio State, Texas and Tennessee all suffered tough losses in their respective conference tournaments, but won’t be any worse for the wear come Thursday. Except for Tennessee. Because they’re the worst #2 seed in the history of the Tournament. Hell, they’re probably the worst #3 seed in the history of the Tournament, I’m just too lazy to look it up.

- Ignore the polls and the RPI. If you want to look at numbers, check out a team’s defensive efficiency and their cheerleaders. The defensive efficiency will give you insight into a team’s true defensive ability, by removing pace of play factors from statistics and focusing on a team's per-possession average instead. Looking at the cheerleaders will allow you to look at the cheerleaders.

- Under no circumstance should you ever listen to Dick Vitale. In fact, you should probably look at Vitale’s bracket and pick the exact opposite of what he does. (Note: Shockingly, Vitale picked Duke to make it to the National Championships. Amazingly, Vitale also has Duke winning his NIT pool and J.J. Redick beating Mandisa on American Idol.)

- Beware of hyphenated schools. Sure, Wisconsin-Milwaukee might look and sound like a great pick (“well, I love eating wheels of cheese and Laverne and Shirley was my favorite sitcom involving sexually-ambiguous female roommates, so that team MUST be good!”), especially considering their run last year, but think about all the hyphenated celebrities you loathe. These include the former Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (I wasn’t even married to John Stamos like her, yet I still have considered taking Uncle Jesse’s last name. Come to think of it, how great would it be if her name had been Rebecca Romijn-Katsapalous) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (let’s just say that my Philosophy grade sophomore year would have benefited if Mr. Anti-Private Property had kept his frog-thoughts to himself).
I even dislike people with hyphenated names that I’m supposed to like, like Nik Caner-Medley. I remember the first time I saw that tall drink of water I thought to myself, “man, I would hate this guy so much if he went to Duke.” And then I saw Lee Melchionni for the first time and realized how right I was.

- When in doubt, pick the team you like less. et’s say I pick Duke to go the Final Four. Now, I don’t like Duke. Some might even go so far as to say that I hate Duke. Others would say that I believe, along with North Korea and Drew Rosenhaus’ office, Cameron Indoor Stadium is the most evil place on earth. A select few might venture a guess that if I had to choose between watching Duke win the Final Four or having my eye gouged repeatedly by Carl Krauser, I’d put my ophthalmologist’s number on speed dial.
But I digress. I don’t like Duke, but if I’m having a hard time figuring out whether to put Duke or Texas to get to the Final Four, I’ll pick Duke. That way, if those stuck-up, ref-baiting, bad-poetry-writing preppies win, I can take consolation in the fact that it might end up winning me money. And if they lose, then I won’t be at all upset about losing money because it will mean that J.J. Redick will cry himself to sleep on the shoulders of Greg Paulus, and knowing that makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
Maybe Chris Carawell can send them a box of tissues when they lose, unless he’s not done crying about Duke’s 2000 loss to Florida. (A quick note: The day after that game (which was a Sweet 16 match-up) I went to visit a friend at Duke – I was a freshman at Wake Forest at the time. (And yes, I had a friend that went to Duke. I was in therapy for two years dealing with this, so I’d rather not go there.) Anyway, I borrowed my buddy’s Florida Basketball t-shirt and wore it to Durham and didn’t take it off for the entire weekend. (Note: I’m not a Florida fan, but was that weekend because anybody who beats Duke is cool with me.) Once on campus I would walk up to people, with my Florida t-shirt in full view, and ask how I could get Duke Final Four tickets or where I could buy a Duke Final Four hat. Other times I would run up to random people and, insinuating that I hadn’t seen the result, ask them if they knew the score of the game.
Amazingly, not one person said anything remotely creative or derogatory to me after my snide comments. Some even laughed. The worst I got were a few dirty looks and some mumbled comments as I walked away.
Now, if those Cameron Crazies were actually crazy, they would have chased me off campus, pocket protectors in tow. Instead I had the run of those losers for three days and they didn’t even break out a “how many national championships has Florida won?” comment. What a bunch of pansies. But I digress.)
This rule works also for teams you like also. I want Georgetown and Kansas to do well in the Tourney. Sure, it’d be sweet if they both made it to the Finals and I predicted they’d be there. But if I’m not sure, I’ll pick, say, Pittsburgh and Boston College instead.
So, if the Hoyas and Jayhawks make it to the Championship, I’ll be happy enough that it won’t matter if my brackets are screwed up. If they don’t, then I’ll still have a chance at winning some money. If I pick my favorite teams and they end up losing, then I’m doubly screwed.
Let’s call this the “Cut Your Losses” method.

- Don’t pick more than one school without a state in its name to be in the Final Four. This means, if you have Villanova, Memphis, Syracuse and Wichita State coming out of their respective regions, you better get back to work.
Most years the Final Four is dominated by schools with states in their name like Michigan State, Connecticut, Kentucky and North Carolina. In fact, Duke, Marquette, Syracuse, Stanford and Louisville are the only non-state named schools to make the Final Four since 1992. I bet you don’t find that statistic on ESPN.com. Take that Joe Lunardi!

- Don’t expect Boston College to be playing on the second weekend. Al Skinner-coached teams have never advanced past the second round. Which is ironic, because Skinner's forehead usually makes it to the Sweet 16 by this Wednesday.
Also, in a little known piece of movie-trivia, Wesley Snipes’ famous line from Passenger 57 - “Always bet on black” – was originally scripted as “Never bet on Billy Donovan in the Tournament”.

- Try not to get too cute with your picks. Yeah, its fun to pick Xavier over Gonzaga because you hate wispy mustaches and it might be nice to put Penn in the Sweet 16 because you hooked up with a chick from there during Spring Break '89, but try to ignore those thoughts.
Picking upsets is overrated. Cinderella’s are great for the Tournament, but the clock always strikes midnight and if you’re stuck on the dance floor when your spiffy Sean Jean tux turns into that pit-stained Schweppes t-shirt you stole from a girl streaking the quad, you’re gonna lose your pool entry fee and all your self-respect if you let a red-headed, Syracuse-born Irishman win your pool (not that I’m bitter, Tim O).
Remember, it’s rare that a team seeded lower than #5 makes it to the Final Four (it’s happened only thrice since 1992). So try to limit your upsets to the early rounds and don’t knock off any team you think has a good chance of advancing far.
If the mood to get sassy with your picks should strike you, try this method instead – fill in the teams you think will be in the Sweet 16 first. Then, work backwards and if you see an upset possibility in the first round, pick it.
For instance, if you think North Carolina is going to win its second round game regardless of whom they play, then consider taking George Mason to beat Michigan State. Since you have the Heels in the Sweet 16 anyway, you won’t lose too much if MSU should win the first round game, but you’ll get a nice leg-up on the competition if Mason springs the upset. It’s a nice risk-reward play.
This is especially key in pools that reward upsets. Which leads me to the next tip…

- Take a look at how your pool is being scored. Everybody has a different method for scoring. Some pools emphasize the Final Four so much that 1st round games are left relatively meaningless. In these pools, try to have as much of a chalk bracket as you can. In other pools, the points aren’t staggered nearly as much between the 1st Round and Final Four, so every game counts. In these, pick a few upsets and take a risk by advancing one of your sleeper teams to the Sweet 16. Other pools greatly emphasize upsets. When filling out brackets for this kind of pool, work backwards from the Sweet 16 like I suggested above. And if you’re in the kind of pool with filters and chlorinated water, make sure to wear floaties.

- Pick a #1 seed to win the whole thing. In ten of the last 14 years, a number one seed has hoisted the Championship trophy on the first Monday in April. North Carolina righted that trend last year, after two non-#1’s had won in 2003 and 2004. (Connecticut won with a #2 in ’04, following Syracuse, who won with a #3 the year before.) Before that Connecticut, Michigan State, Duke and Maryland made it four straight years that a #1 seed went all the way.
If you don’t pick a #1 seed to win it, at least have two #1’s in the Final Four.

- If you can't figure out a specific matchup:
1) Compare the coaches. Example: Duke vs. Texas. Mike Krzyzewski vs. Rick Barnes. One has three National titles, the other gets stopped in the airport by people who think he’s John Grisham. Need I say more?
2) The tougher the mascot, the tougher the team. This is also known as the “Scott Van Pelt Theory”. The SportsCenter anchor, and Maryland alum, says when in doubt, figure out which mascot would win in a no-holds barred brawl. Example: N.C. State Wolfpack vs. California Golden Bears. It's tough, but I think I'd definitely give the slight edge to State on this one. After all, Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf could definitely beat up Jack Nicklaus.
3) Ask yourself… What Would Uncle Jesse Do? Between Billy Donovan and Joakim Noah, I'm guessing Jesse Katsopolis would be a Florida man.
4) Look for signs. If you channel surf past HBO and see Wilford Brimley starring in Cocoon, you know the Penn Quakers are the pick over Texas. Maybe you open Sports Illustrated and read a story about the biggest NBA busts. If that’s the case, then Duke becomes your choice. And if your phone rings and it’s God calling to see if you want to meet Him for lunch at Taco Bell, then you best be riding Oral Roberts all the way to the promised land.

- Don’t let your picks take away from your enjoyment of crazy upsets. If Albany is up late on UConn and you have the Huskies winning the whole thing, you still have to root for Albany even if it destroys your bracket. This is a law in 37 states and the District of Columbia. There’s nothing worse than not enjoying the celebration after a buzzer beater because you’re checking to see what it does to your brackets.

- Avoid listening to any bracket tips from people in your pool. If those tips were any good, why would they be giving them to you? There's nothing worse than switching a pick because of a 'sure-fire' tip from a friend and then watching that team lose to your original winner.

- To all four of my female readers, don’t listen to any advice from guys. We are a manipulative, repulsive and deceitful gender, and any tip you get from us will likely be geared towards one day seeing you naked.
When you ask Frank from Accounts Payable who he has in the Atlanta bracket, here is the way the conversation will sound to you:

You - Who do you have winning Duke’s region?
Frank, from Accounts Payable - Well… (long pause)... Duke is alright, but I’m going with Texas. Their point guard is quick on the dribble and the way, um, Buckbeak runs screens can trip-up defenses that don’t like playing a triangle-and-two.
You - Wow, that's sounds great! Thanks Frank.
Frank, from Accounts Payable - No problemo.

Now, here’s how the conversation plays out in Frank’s mind.

You - "Who do you have winning Duke’s region?"
Frank’s, from Accounts Payable, Inner-Monologue - Oooh, she's talking to me. And Tournament questions, no less. She needed a sports question, so she came to the most athletic guy in the office (adjusts cell-phone belt-clip). I don't blame her, I am studly (runs hand through thinning hair). I always knew she wanted me, but this confirms it… Bravo Frank, bravo you sly dog. You better do some laundry so you have clean underwear for later. And where did I put my going-out shirt? I hope it's not that crumpled up thing I saw in the hamper today. Shoot, I might have to buy some more Downey Wrinkle Release. And cat food. Oh crap, she’s waiting for an answer. Well, how should I play this? Do I act all aloof like I don’t care or dazzle her with my non-existent basketball knowledge? Well, she’ll never know if I’m just BS’ing her, so lets go with that.
"Duke is alright, but I’m going with Texas."
Oh crap, I don’t know any players on that team. Why couldn’t I have gone with Syracuse, I know Carmelo Anthony… Maybe it’s because an anagram of Texas is “At Sex”… Oooh, that’s a good one, Frank. Remember that one at lunch today. Oh damn, she’s still waiting. Just make something up.
"Their point guard is quick off the dribble and the way..."
DAMN! What’s that one guy’s name? The white guy. Sort of looks like an albino. Starts with a Buck. Joe Buck? No. Jack Buck? Crap. Um... BUCKBEAK!
"Buckbeak runs screens can trip-up defenses that don’t like playing a triangle-and-two."
WHEW! That was pretty good, I don’t know if that’s his real name though, but it’s do. Wait, Buckbeak? That’s – Oh man, that’s the thing from that Harry Potter movie that’s always on HBO. Hopefully she didn’t notice it. And thank goodness I played NBA Live with my roommate last week or else I never would have known that triangle-and-two stuff. I bet she’s impressed. She is smiling. Oh man, she so wants me. I definitely have to go gloat over in advertising. Alan's gonna flip when he finds out I'm gonna be hookin' up with (your name). OK, checklist for tonight: Barry White CD, wash my sheets, hide adult DVD’s, class up my fridge by replacing Natty Lite with Miller Lite. Ooh, that’s a good one. Frank, you handsome bastard, you are about to score. Act cool though. Act natural.
You - "Well, that sounds good. Thanks Frank!"
Frank’s, from Accounts Payable, Inner-Monologue - Time to ask her out. She wants you to ask her out. ASK HER OUT DAMMIT. Who asks an NCAA question if they don't want a little Frank-lovin'. And remember three months ago when she asked to borrow white-out? That was a sign! You're destined to be together. White-out! Come on! That's such a hint! Alright, do it. DO IT! Ask her out and don't say anything stupid.
"No problemo."
NO PROBLEMO? What is this, 1986? Why didn't you ask her out? You pansy! It's all over for you now. Why don't you just get it over with and propose to J.J. Redick you loser. You blew it again. Way to go.
Alright, now that you've ruined this, try to save some dignity for a later date proposal. Let's walk away like you own the place, you know, save a little face.
(Frank runs into a file cabinet, spilling hundreds of papers on the ground.)

Anyway, that’s what’s likely to happen if you ask some guy his opinion on the tournament. He won’t know what he’s talking about and you’ll not only have a new stalker, but terrible brackets.

- Come up with a clever team name for your entry. Anything that involves your last name, mascot of the college you attended, numbers, using a Z instead of an S (i.e. Boyz) or the words “fo shizzle” will not be tolerated.

- Most importantly, ignore everything you’ve just read. I haven’t won a pool since 1994.

Region Run-Through

East (Washington D.C.)

First Impressions: My disgust (yes, disgust) over Tennessee’s #2 seed was well-documented yesterday, but I’m still in disbelief. Compounding my shock is the fact that North Carolina, the rightful #2 seed in the East, is being shipped to Dayton for their opening round games while Tennessee takes the Heels deserved spot in Greensboro. Again, Tennessee has lost four of six and didn’t advance in the SEC Tournament. North Carolina, on the other hand, has won 11 of 13, including victories over three Tournament teams. If the selection committee were responsible for choosing the Oscars, let's just say that David Arquette would have a few statues on his mantle.

Best 1st Round Game: #6 Michigan State vs. #11 George Mason
Tony Skinn’s suspension for jewel-throbbery puts a damper on Mason’s chances, but in an otherwise boring bracket, this is the most intriguing opening-round contest.

Best Upset Possibility: #15 Winthrop over #2 Tennessee
Maybe I'm being too subtle about my thoughts on Tennessee. (Even though I don't think it will happen, Air Force could give Illinois some trouble. Bruce Weber can’t be happy about all the bad press Air Force’s at-large berth is getting. No matter what he tells them, his Illinois team will be dismissive of the Falcons' chances thanks to the beating they're getting in the media.)

Best Possible 2nd Round Game: #2 Tennessee vs. #7 Wichita State
Don’t be fooled by the history; a match-up of Connecticut and Kentucky in 2006 isn’t all that great. But the Shockers frontcourt power versus Tennessee’s press should present an interesting contrast of styles.

Worst Possible 2nd Round Game: #1 Connecticut vs. #8 Kentucky
Kentucky was swept by Vanderbilt, people. The '96 team, they are not.

Early Final Four Prediction: North Carolina
I very well might switch this pick to UConn by Thursday, but I’m wary of the Huskies lack of a go-to guy. They have six great players, but nobody I’d feel totally comfortable with in a late-game situation. Every team that wins a National Championship needs to have their rock. I don’t think UConn has that.

Midwest (Minneapolis)

First Impressions: With the exception of Florida and Oklahoma, I wouldn’t be surprised if any of the top 7 seeds makes it to Indianapolis. Villanova is the clear favorite, but Ohio State, Boston College, Nevada and Georgetown all have a legitimate shot of putting together a four-game run.

Best 1st Round Game: #7 Georgetown vs. #10 Northern Iowa
In another “too coincidental to be coincidence” bracketoid: Three of the four teams from the MVC play Big East schools in the first round. The other (Bradley) plays Kansas. If I were in a cheesy ‘80s sports movie I’d say, “MVC, it’s time to put up or shut up,” but I’m not. So I won’t.

Best Upset Possibility: #14 South Alabama vs. #3 Florida
UW-Milwaukee over Oklahoma won’t be an upset since beating a Kelvin Sampson-coached team is about as difficult as beating a toddler in checkers. Florida will likely handle South Alabama because of their interior size, but Billy Donovan teams have been known to flame out of the tourney early before. (See 2003... And all those other times.)

Best Possible 2nd Round Game: #4 Boston College vs. #5 Nevada
BC will likely be the trendy pick out of this region (despite Al Skinner’s Prosseresque Tournament record), but they could face trouble in the form of Nick Fazekas and Nevada in the second round. This game would take place in Salt Lake City at altitude, something that won’t bother the Wolf Pack, but could affect a BC team playing their fifth game in eight days.

Worst Possible 2nd Round Game: #3 Florida vs. #6 Oklahoma
One of these teams is losing in the first round, but if they should somehow both advance, the world will be treated to poor shooting, poor coaching and Joakim Noah’s hair.

Early Final Four Prediction: Villanova
I picked ‘em in October and I’m picking ‘em in March.

South Region (Atlanta)

First Impressions: 1) GW got hosed.
2) The winner of that GW/UNC-W game could give Duke some trouble.
3) Syracuse is the Jay Cutler of Tournament teams.
4) And they’re lucky they play Texas A&M, a school I wasn’t even aware had a basketball team.
5) Southern Illinois got jobbed.
6) But maybe West Virginia did too.
7) Between Iowa and Syracuse, this is the “peaked one week too soon” bracket.
8) N.C. State: Whoo, they don’t look too good.
9) Texas is terribly overrated, yet could easily sneak out of this region.

Best 1st Round Game: #8 George Washington vs. #9 UNC-Wilmington
GW’s stifling press could cause fits for the Seahawks, who feature senior John Goldsberry, a player whose first (and only) brush with fame came three years ago when he went 7-7 from three in a first-round game against the defending National Champs (Maryland).

Best Upset Possibility: #13 Iona over #4 LSU
If you’re sensing that I’m not a big fan of the SEC this year, keep up the good work.

Best Possible 2nd Round Game: #1 Duke vs. #8 George Washington
Even though I’m probably picking UNC-Wilmington to beat the Colonials, I’d love to see Greg Paulus try to bring the ball up against GW’s tenacious press. Without the benefit of ACC officials to ignore the clearing out he does every time he puts the ball on the floor, Paulus would likely get rattled after an early offensive foul call, which would cause the Wojo-wannabe to push Pops Mensah-Bonsu, only to have Dick Vitale claim he did it in celebration.

Worst Possible 2nd Round Game: #1 Duke vs. #8 George Washington
Then again, the officials will probably let Paulus bring a stun-gun out onto the court with him, allowing him to break the press to free up J.J. Redick who’d be wide open on the corner each and every possession.

Early Final Four Prediction: Texas
I don’t think you understand how much I dislike Texas. Rick Barnes isn’t a very good in-game coach, Brad Buckman can’t get a rebound without cutting out an opponent’s knees (maybe the Denver Broncos should draft him to play on their o-line), LaMarcus Aldridge (like Rudy Gay) started believing his hype too early and seems to get lost for long stretches of the game, the backcourt of Daniel Gibson and Kenton Paulino is solid, but they don’t distribute the ball well and, frankly, I can’t trust a team that has lost games by 31, 17 and 21 points this season and had one game where they only scored 43 points total. There’s no way a team like that can win the National Championship. Yet, I think the South is going to look like a war zone one week from today and Texas will be able to tiptoe into the Final Four. But I reserve the right to change my mind by Thursday.

West Region (Oakland)

First Impressions: Why is there a regional being played in Oakland? Did Al Davis threaten to move the Raiders to Inglewood if the NCAA didn’t play here? What gives?
Basketball-wise, this might be one of the worst brackets I’ve seen in a few years. Memphis is a deserving #1 seed, but when’s the last time a team that hadn’t played a good opponent since January made it to the Final Four. (Dare I say, UNLV in 1991?) UCLA and Gonzaga have all the hallmarks of upset victims, Kansas is still one year away, Pittsburgh is Pittsburgh, Indiana has a lameduck coach and Dwyane Wade hasn’t been at Marquette for three years.

Best 1st Round Game: #8 Arkansas vs. #9 Bucknell
Who would have thought Bucknell would be the most imposing #9 seed in the Tournament.

Best Upset Possibility: #16 Oral Roberts over #1 Memphis
One day it’s going to happen. And Friday is as good a day as any.

Best Possible 2nd Round Game: #4 Kansas vs. #5 Pittsburgh
I’m pretty sure Pitt presents match-up problems for Kansas, but it’s getting late in the afternoon and my back feels about the same as Tony Soprano’s abdomen, so I’ll look into that for Thursday instead.

Worst Possible 2nd Round Game: #3 Gonzaga vs. #11 San Diego State
Why do I have the feeling Steve Fisher will try to make an under-the-table offer to Adam Morrison before this one.

Early Final Four Prediction: Pittsburgh
A four seed or lower is going to come out of at least one of the brackets. The smart money is on the West. Of course, I haven’t won an NCAA pool since 7th grade, so what the hell do I know.

Tomorrow: How To Fill Out Your Bracket
Wednesday: Final Bracket Thoughts
Thursday: Tournament Predictions For All 63 Games

Instant Bracket Thoughts

Working on the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Selection Committee is a thankless job. No matter how good a job you really do, there’s little chance of Billy Packer saying “nice work” in the requisite post-bracket interview. Some teams will always feel snubbed and the inclusion of others will always leave analysts scratching their heads. This happens every March even though, on the whole, the committee has done fairly well at organizing the NCAA Tournament in recent years.
But tonight, committee chair Craig Littlepage got the verbal beatdown he deserved from Packer and Jim Nantz. Littlepage’s committee did a horrendous job in nearly every aspect of the brackets this year. Their field of 65 is littered with hypocrisy, baffling seeds, more hypocrisy and Air Force.
Every bit of criticism going the committee’s way until Thursday (because, let’s face it, nobody’s going to care whether Missouri State got in once the Tournament tips-off) will be self-inflicted. They screwed up big-time.
Air Force? Seriously?
Some instant bracket thoughts:

* George Washington as an #8 seed is a joke. And not a "ha-ha" joke like the one about the Pope and Raquel Welch. I realize the Colonials strength of schedule was low, but an #8 seed? They lost two games! Arizona lost 12 and they’re also an 8. The committee probably wanted to send GW a message (as in, schedule some teams and actually look at a transcript or two) but dropping them to an #8 is like Tony Soprano ordering a hit on Bobby Bacala for getting him a capicola sandwich instead of one made with pancetta. It's a bit much. (Now that’s timely humor, folks.)

* How does Syracuse move from a bubble team to a #5 seed just by winning the Big East Tournament? I mean, that’s an impressive run they had, but can you really put 'Cuse ahead of Marquette and Georgetown, each of whom finished a full three games ahead of the Orange in the regular season? (And, by the way, when talking-up the résumé’s of Seton Hall and Cincinnati, beating Syracuse just isn’t that impressive. Just because they got hot this weekend doesn’t mean besting them in January, when they were terrible, is a great win.)

* Southern Illinois got the shaft with their #11 seed. But The Wolfman still plans to pick them to go to the Elite Eight like he did in 2003. (When the Saluki’s lost in the first-round.)

* Wake Forest might have had the most effect on the Tournament of any non-invitee this weekend. FSU went from in to out after losing to the underachieving Deacs and N.C. State dropped from a #5 or #6 seed to a #10 after their quarterfinal loss to Wake in the ACC Tournament. Way to go Skip Prosser! You might have a solid coaching career ahead of you yet!

* I’m no fan of Texas, but are we to believe they’re the worst #2 seed in the Tournament? One would think the committee would put that team (cough, Tennessee, cough, cough, Tennessee) in Duke’s bracket instead of putting, arguably, the best #2 seed in that position. That could be Ohio State, but they’re not with Memphis either, so I'm not quite getting this. (By the by, Tennessee isn't just the worst #2 seed, they'd be the worst #3 seed and the worst #4 seed as well. How they got a #2 is simply dumbfounding. It makes me think everybody on the committee stopped watching college basketball when the Olympics started.)

* Memphis isn’t making it to the Elite Eight. That’s a gut-feeling. Of course, I did have a capicola sandwich earlier, so it could be that.

* How are seven of the ten committee members from mid-major conferences, by the way? How did Digger Phelps let that happen?

* Kansas/Pittsburgh would be a great second-round game. But every time we look ahead to a great second-round game, one of those teams loses in the first round (ie, the much-anticipated, and never-matieralized, Syracuse/Michigan State match-up from last season).

* So Gonzaga goes out and schedules nearly every quality team in the NCAA this season and gets rewarded with a #3 seed? I suppose next year Mark Few will be forced to go ahead and play the Spurs if he wants to get anything higher.
It’s not the Bulldogs fault they play in the WCC, so why hold it against them? I mean, I realize Gonzaga is no Tennessee, but still! The Zags' seeding either means the committee does, indeed, look at past Tournament performance (which they always claim not to) or are incompetent hacks. I’m thinking it’s a little from column A and a little from column B. OK, more from column B.

* UCLA as a #2 seed is a joke. John Wooden’s 1968 team could have won the Pac-10 this year. Tennessee could have won the Pac-10 this year. Wait, now I'm getting carried away.

* Kentucky/UAB as the #8/#9 game in the East (again, I refuse to call the regions by their location. What purpose does this serve again?) further lets me know the committee thinks about past Tournaments when filling in their brackets. UAB, you’ll remember, beat Kentucky in the second round of the 2004 Tournament when the Wildcats were the #1 overall seed.

* Utah St. missed a game-winning layup at the buzzer last night against Nevada that would have put them into the NCAA Tournament.
I have three rules in life: 1) Never trust a hippie. 2) Always pass to the left. 3) Whenever you miss a game-winning layup at the buzzer last night against Nevada, you deserve to play in the NIT.

* Oh, where to begin with Air Force. (Deep breath…) If, as Craig Littlepage would have you believe, strength of schedule is the end all, be all, of the selection committee’s criteria, then how do the Falcons, they of the TWO-HUNDRED-AND-SIXTY-SEVENTH RANKED NON-CONFERENCE SOS, get into the Tournament? Gonzaga gets a #3 seed because their SOS was #105. GW gets an #8 seed because their NCSOS was #323. FSU doesn’t make it at all (not that I’m complaining, they should have beat Wake if they wanted to get in) because of their equally low NCSOS. But Air Force gets a pass? Let me, if you will, run down Air Force’s non-conference opponents: Northern Arizona, Miami, Washington (bonus points), Colorado Colo. Springs (huh?), Western State, Arkansas Pine-Bluff, Texas Pan-American, Northern Colorado, St. Mary’s, Lamar, George Tech and IUPUI Fort Wayne. That looks more like a list of schools Britney Spears could get into and less than that of a Tournament-worthy team. Sure, Air Force won their last six regular season games, but they lost in the quarters of their conference tournament to a team that didn’t even make the Tournament (Wyoming). The only explanation for their inclusion is the following... No. There’s no explanation for this.

* I’m glad George Mason got in, but hasn’t Hofstra beaten them twice in the past 20 days?

* Tennessee might have been a #2 seed back in mid-February. But they’ve lost four of their last six including a stinker to a stinker (in the SEC Tournament vs. South Carolina). How in the name of Bruce Pearl’s sweat glands does that make them a #2 seed while Gonzaga is a #3? Or UNC? Or Iowa. Or Boston College, Kansas, LSU and Illinois. Or the Barbazon School of Modeling? What, just because Tennessee beat an equally-overrated Florida team twice they get a #2? Did Zack Morris secretly go to Tennessee and thusly downloaded a Bo Revere song filled with subliminal messages about the Vols greatness onto Littlepage’s iPod? Was the committee looking at the AP preseason football rankings when they assigned Tennessee a #2? Could they just not get "Rocky Top" out of their heads?

* Continuing evidence that the selection committee’s relationship with strength of schedule is the Pamela and Tommy Lee of college sports: Arizona as an #8 seed.
The Wildcats, for lack of a better term, suck my ass. They’ve lost to Houston, Oregon, Oregon State and USC and have only Kansas and Virginia on their list of impressive non-conference wins. Virginia, you may remember, is NIT-bound and that win against Kansas came in October, when the Jayhawks weren't very good at all.
'Zona has exactly two wins against the RPI top 50 to go with seven losses. They feasted on bottom-feeders, winning 11 of their 19 games against teams ranked #101 and below in the RPI. But, Arizona’s non-conference SOS was ranked #1. That they didn’t beat any good teams in that #1 rated schedule (except Kansas who, again, lost to many teams early in the season) doesn’t seem to matter. I think I’m more baffled about this one than Air Force because nobody is talking about it. But then I remember Tennessee got a #2 seed and I'm torn once again.

* Nevada/Montana should be a fun game. For The Unabomber. Actually, it really should, but I’m a sucker for Unabomber jokes.

* Ohio State looks ripe for an upset. Why, you ask? Watch Thad Matta’s reaction after Indiana blew their chance to win their Big Ten semifinal match-up against the Buckeyes. He and his coaches celebrated like they had won the National Championship. And any team that celebrates that exuberantly for a win in the Big Ten semifinal on a non-buzzer beater clearly has low expectations for the future.

* Man, I'm excited. I thought the absence of Wake Forest would minimize my enthusiasm for the Tournament, but now I'm saved from devoting one full day of Tournament-play to my hatred of Skip Prosser and can concentrate on all the madness instead. With only three "great" teams in the Tournament this could be one of the more unpredictable March's in recent memory.

Come back all week for wall-to-window (I get claustrophobic if I’m in a room with all walls) coverage of the NCAA Tournament:
Tomorrow: Even More Bracket Thoughts
Tuesday: Bracket Tips (How To Fill Out A Bracket)
Wednesday: Just When You Thought I Couldn’t Have Any More Thoughts About The Brackets, BAM! There They Are!
Thursday: Full NCAA Tournament Predictions
Friday: Day One Recap

ACC Basketball Season Review/Tournament Preview

If ACC Commissioner John Swofford were a conductor, he’d want to add a xylophone solo to Beethoven’s 9th. If he were an artist, he’d almost certainly think the Mona Lisa could be improved if she had a mustache. And if John Swofford had directed The Godfather, he probably would have cast David Cassidy as Michael. John Swofford isn’t satisfied with perfection, which is why he tinkered with it and, as a result, ruined the greatest basketball conference in the country.
It used to be so perfect. A conference schedule where every team played a home-and-home series. A membership with geographic proximity. An end-of-year conference tournament that was the crown jewel of the college basketball season. Perfection. And
John Swofford destroyed all of it just to get one lousy football game that couldn’t even sell-out. I guess the basketball gods assumed Swofford had done plenty of that by himself.
Playing with 12-teams for the first time in its illustrious history, the ACC had one of the most forgettable seasons in recent memory. Mediocrity was the new standard in the expanded ACC. Teams ranked highly in the preseason struggled (Maryland, Wake Forest), newcomers with stacked rosters failed to live up to expectations (Boston College) and, for most of the season, the only captivating story line was “how much worse can J.J. Redick’s poetry get?”
Florida State’s loss to Wake Forest (holla!) yesterday could mean only three ACC teams will get an invite to the NCAA Tournament, an embarrassing total in a year where the vaunted Missouri Valley Conference could get as many as five. Sure, I guess technically the ACC will get four teams in when you include Boston College, but that would be capitulating to John Swofford and it will be a cold day in hell before I ever bow down to that fascist pig.

All-ACC First Team

G – Sean Singletary, Virginia
G – J.J. Redick, Duke
F – Craig Smith, Boston College
F – Tyler Hansbrough, North Carolina
F – Shelden Williams, Duke

This is one of the easiest years to pick an All-ACC team in recent memory. Usually there’s two or three great players who are shoo-ins for the team followed by seven or eight guys on the next level who all have a valid argument. This year, only Singletary is a question mark, but he’s easily the top point guard in the conference and belongs on the list.
I’d love to argue that Shelden Williams doesn’t belong on the first-team because of his overrated defense and that fact that in big games he’s as funky in the paint as an old batch of collard greens. But leaving him out would just be petty (besides, I can use that argument next week when I leave him off my All-America team). Not that I’m averse to being petty, mind you, but I choose my spots.
The rest of the team is pretty easy: Redick and Hansbrough are no-brainers while Smith was the best player on the team that finished fourth in the conference. Again, it was tough for me to admit Boston College is actually in the ACC, but when I realized my next best option was Eric Williams, I had to bite the bullet on this one.
(If you go by the numbers alone, Williams actually has a better case for first-team honors than Smith. But if you go by the numbers alone you’d think Eli Manning was a terrible quarterback. And that’s just preposterous!)

All-ACC Second Team

G – Justin Gray, Wake Forest
G – J.R. Reynolds, Virginia
F – Al Thornton, Florida State
F – David Noel, North Carolina
C – Eric Williams, Wake Forest

It says a lot about a coach when two players from a 3-13 team make the all-conference squad. That’s like the four-minute mile of coaching. (The more I watch Wake play good basketball (like they did in the second-half yesterday, the more I become convinced that one day they will write books about Skip Prosser. And not the good kind.)
With Hansbrough becoming a dominant force in Chapel Hill people have sort of forgotten about Noel, but his contributions on both ends of the floor have been crucial to the Heels success. Thornton is the opposite of Shelden Williams; he puts up his best numbers in big games. In four of the Seminoles’ most important games this season - at BC, at Duke, vs. Maryland (a must-win late in the season) and vs. Duke – Thornton averaged 31.8 points and 9.8 rebounds.
J.R. Reynolds got the nod over Guillermo Diaz. who would highlight a theoretical third-team, because his season was a success while Diaz’s has to be looked at as a failure. Some prescient minds picked Diaz to win conference player of the year, but instead he put up garbage-time stats and never seemed to make a big play. I can’t remember a player ever averaging 17 points per game by doing so little. Oh wait, yes I can. His name is Justin Gray.
Diaz would be at the top of my third-team though, but those are so depressing so I’m just going to save myself from talking about Nik Caner-Medley and move on.

ACC Player of the Year
J.J. Redick, Duke

The bouncing basketball echoes through the gym,
But maybe it’s merely my heart.
Fans cheering, coaches yelling, players running,
And me: The Napoleon of the court.
I soar like a condor. Free. Freer.
But my soul is brittle. Like peanuts.
Or an old person’s bones.
Why do they hate me?
Fear of nominal alliteration?
My Caesar haircut?
Or can it be they love me?
My passion, my inspiration, my commitment.
My soul is filled to bursting.
Bursting!
Bursting!
Bursting!
Parting! Which is what I now must do.
Chris Collins is knocking on my door.

ACC Freshman of the Year
Greg Paulus, Duke

Oh wait, this is my ballot, not Dick Vitale’s. Tyler Hansbrough is the run-away winner of this award. It’s merely a precursor to next season when he’ll be the unanimous winner of the conference player of the year. And this will hopefully give us more shots of that blonde sitting next to his dad.

ACC Coach of the Year
Roy Williams, North Carolina

What, you were thinking Skip Prosser maybe? And if Roy doesn’t win National Coach of the Year, that’s a travesty. Just because Bruce Pearl appeared to be a lock to win the award three weeks ago doesn’t mean he should be now. He’s done a great job at Tennessee, but Roy has taken a team full of freshman and bench-warming seniors and turned them into a title contender.

All-ACC Disappointment Team

G – Justin Gray, Wake Forest
G – Guillermo Diaz, Miami
G – DeMarcus Nelson, Duke
F – Ilian Evtimov, North Carolina State
F - Sean Williams, Boston College

Gray and Diaz might have made the all-conference teams, but anybody who thinks their respective seasons were a success probably thought I was serious about Paulus a little ways back.
DeMarcus Nelson is the all-time leading scorer in California high-school basketball history. This season, he averaged the same amount of points per game as Todd Galloway. If Nelson were even half the player Coach K thought he’d be, Duke would be the favorite to win the National Championship. But without a legitimate third scoring threat, the Dukies are one poor Redick shooting performance away from an early exit.
Sean Williams needs to find some better weed apparently, because he’s as overrated as Daniel Vosovic. And Ilian Evtimov didn’t have a terrible season, but for an eight-year veteran, one would think he would have had a bigger role on a solid Wolfpack squad.
Note: Chris McCray would have been on this team but he can’t spell disappointment.

Game of the Year
Florida State 79 – Duke 74

If only because it led to this unbelievably-(even-for-them)-haughty article in the Duke student newspaper. If the ’96 Bulls played the Blue Devils, I’m guessing Alex Fanaroff would think a Chicago win would be due to Michael Jordan’s desire to prove, once and for all, that he is a better player than Lee Melchionni.
Seriously, read the whole thing. It gives a keen insight into how the mind of a loser with an inferiority complex operates.

ACC Tournament Picks

#1 Duke vs. #8 Miami
It’s tough to imagine Duke going into the NCAA Tournament with three straight losses, so all signs point to a big win against the Canes. The x-factor, as always, is how Redick can cope with his emotional fatigue. Normally players need 4-6 weeks to recover from that injury, but Redick tried to expedite the process by watching Fried Green Tomatoes before the game. (Note: As I write this, Redick is 0-4 to start the game. Dammit, he just hit a three, literally at the moment I typed “Note”.)
Pick: Duke

#4 N.C. State vs. #12 Wake Forest
Between Chris Paul’s crotch-shot last year and Tony Bethel’s punch in the season finale, officials might want to search the players for shivs before tip-off.
Pick: Wake Forest (why? why? why do I do it to myself?)

# 2 North Carolina vs. #7 Virginia
Nine days ago, Carolina beat the Hoos by 45 points.
Pick: North Carolina

#3 Boston College vs. #6 Maryland
Gary Williams always complains about the unfair advantage all the Tobacco Road schools have whenever the ACC Tournament is played in Greensboro and repeatedly tells this to his team. Somehow, I think Gary is going to need a new motivational ploy against a team from Massachusetts.
Pick: Maryland

Semi-Finals
#1 Duke over #12 Wake Forest
#2 North Carolina over #6 Maryland

Finals
#1 Duke over #2 North Carolina

Nothing Says "ACC Tournament" Like Clemson vs. Miami at Noon on a Thursday

Thursday at the ACC Tournament used to be a subdued affair. A small crowd gathered in the early evening to watch a single play-in game, usually involving either N.C. State, Florida State or Clemson, with the full-knowledge that the winner would be offered up as sacrifice the following afternoon to the Tournament's #1 seed.
Now, because of the madness of King Swofford, Thursday consists of four games between the worst eight teams in the conference. I'd call it an orgy of mediocrity, but that'd be a compliment to Skip Prosser. He embraces mediocrity like J.J. Redick embraces terrible poetry and Steve Wojciechowski: Passionately.
Since I refuse to accept reality, I'm choosing to act as if today's four play-in games don't exist. Oh, I'll watch them, make picks (Clemson, Wake Forest (I've been wrong about the Deacs all year, why stop now), Virginia Tech and Maryland) and yell vociferously at Trent Strickland for being a disappointment on par with Crystal Pepsi, but my heart won't really be in it.
Come back tomorrow (the first day of the real ACC Tournament) for a full preview, as well as Chris's Sports Blog ACC Year in Review.
And if you're here to read about Dick Vitale, scroll down a bit and bookmark the page if you'd like. There's plenty more Duke-bashing where that came from.

An Evening With Dickie V

All season long I’ve been waiting to spend an evening with Dick Vitale. Though he’s called more than a dozen Duke games since November, I held off, knowing that even when Vitale was at his Duke-loving best (last Wednesday at Florida State, for instance), nothing would compare to how excited he’d be at Cameron Indoor Stadium on the night J.J. Redick played his last game in front of the Duke faithful. Oh, how sweet it would be.
But once again I out-thought myself. Just like last year, when I forgot that the first Duke/Carolina tilt was blacked-out on ESPN in ACC country, I failed to remember that Brad Nessler, and not Mike Patrick, is Vitale’s partner on ESPN’s primetime weekend telecasts.
It seems like a minor point, but without Patrick by his side, Vitale always dials it down a notch (from 11 to 10.9). Nessler is a consummate pro and lets Vitale’s Duke-love flow, but never encourages it. Patrick, in recent years, has actually jumped on the Blue Devil bandwagon and is now the vice-president of the of Broadcasters for Always Loving Duke Society (BALDS), just under Vitale who is dictator-for-life.
Not having Patrick in the booth with Vitale was a major disappointment, to be sure (and certainly cut down the amount of material to work with). But since all ACC Tournament games on ESPN are blacked-out here as well, I had to press on for the good of the country, nay, mankind as a whole.
Without further interruption, an evening with Dickie V:

9:06 PM Tip-off in Durham. After eight seconds the officials stop the game and gather at half-court to review their game-assignments, including who will administer throw-ins on the far side of the court, who will be responsible for calling goaltending and interference violations and who will be in charge of asking Coach K when he wants a foul called on Carolina.

9:07 PM Vitale blames Redick’s struggles over the past three games to emotional, not physical, fatigue. I suppose this is to be expected as many college seniors experience a sense of general malaise prior to graduation. In Redick’s case, however, he’s just going to miss the pre-game backrubs from Chris Collins.

9:08 PM Redick converts a three-pointer on his first attempt of the game. ESPN4 focuses in on Vitale’s boner.

9:09 PM Redick is 2-2. “I guess he’s answering all those critics that had that theory about fatigue,” Vitale shouts. Um, wasn’t that your theory, Dick?

9:09 PM Redick hits his third consecutive shot to start the game. Vitale says, “somebody call the fire chief,” which is his subtle way of telling us Redick is flaming.

9:12 PM Vitale breaks out his patented “Redick shot that from (insert nearby city)” line. The man is like a modern-day Rand McNally. Assuming Rand McNally loved schools with overrated academics, hypocritical basketball coaches and a student body filled with losers, geeks and this guy:

9:14 PM As Brad Nessler is talking about Johnny Dawkins, Vitale jumps in and says, “we define him as Mr. Class.” Breaking out my trusty Vitale-to-English dictionary, I discover that phrase means: “I’m an idiot.”

9:16 PM When Greg Paulus dribbles he always carries the ball with his dribbling hand and clears out with the other. His ballhandling is more illegal than Eddie Sutton’s blood alcohol content.

9:19 PM Redick misses his second shot in-a-row. Vitale puts his cyanide capsule under his tongue.

9:20 PM Erin Andrews says Shelden Williams told her he once wanted to play basketball like Michael Jordan. Instead he settled for looking like Ken Griffey Jr. when he was on The Simpson's.

9:21 PM Gotta give my old buddy Zac Cooper credit for that one, by the way.

9:25 PM David Noel just let Lee Melchionni take him off the dribble which is sort of like losing to Stephen Hawking in a footrace.

9:28 PM ESPN covers Southern Utah as part of their Pride of the Program celebration. The Thunderbirds, it should be noted, have exactly one less national TV appearance this season than the Cameron Crazies.

9:30 PM Earlier on ESPN Gameday J.J. Redick said he’d want Heath Ledger to play him in a movie of his life. And there I was, bereft of fish, barrel and gun.

9:33 PM ESPN2 has turned their above the rim cam into a J.J. Redick cam. LOGO runs a simulcast.

9:34 PM Vitale: “Duke is different because they have the desire to win the whole thing, not just make it to the Tournament.” That one’s true. There are no other teams in college basketball besides Duke that aspire to win the national championship. Top-notch commentary, Dick.

9:40 PM UNC takes its first lead, at 23-22. Vitale begins fashioning a noose out of his blue tie.

9:41 PM Redick misses his fifth straight shot but gets bailed out with a late-whistle from the officials. Redick is to zebras as Jane Goodall was to gorillas.

9:45 PM Shelden Williams commits his fourth foul of the game yet has only been called for half that number, confirming my long-standing assertion that you can figure out how many fouls Williams will have at the end of the game by dividing his total number of actual fouls by two. The inverse happens to his test grades in sociology class, by the way.

9:47 PM Melchionni dives on the floor, recovers the loose ball and slides four feet with it. Vitale is unconcerned with why this wasn’t called a travel because he’s too busy maxing out the audio levels on his mic with praise for the “gutsy, hard-nosed, PTP’er who is absolutely crucial to this program, baby.” And who’s also averaging 6.3 points per game.

9:49 PM I now feel better about hating Kobe after he’s given me permission to do so in his Nike commercial. Maybe Redick will do that in a poem for me one day.

9:50 PM In a promo for the 47 halftime shows ESPN has running on various networks, we see Jason “Jay” Williams live in Chapel Hill with the dude who won Dream Job. Williams arrived in Chapel Hill on Friday, just in time to give a driving lesson to this guy.

9:51 PM Redick has missed six straight shots, but Duke regains the lead on a Sean Dockery runner. Vitale says, “You can’t let Duke get a lead in a game like this or they’ll stick it right in your heart.” (Deep breath… You don’t have to make every joke… Just let it go… Let it go.)

9:52 PM Cal Ripken is shown in the crowd and looks a little nervous. After all, J.J. Redick is only 2,626 consecutive missed shots away from breaking his record.

9:58 PM Halftime. Duke is up 38-37. Vitale runs into the locker room to play a calming cello concerto during Coach K’s halftime speech.

10:04 PM Hoosiers is on one of the Encore channels. I bet if Ollie were on Duke, Vitale would vote him third-team All-ACC.

10:16 PM Redick hasn’t made a field goal in 23 minutes. It’s a good thing he’s had plenty of experience with not being able to score.

10:17 PM Redick just missed everything on a three-point attempt, barely scratching the bottom of the backboard. Vitale screams, “that’s not J.J. Redick!!” Since Vitale once called the real Redick a “shooting Shakespeare” I can only assume he thinks the Redick on the court at Cameron right now is actually Christopher Marlowe.

10:17 PM Shelden Williams just fouled out. And by “fouled out”, I of course mean, “hasn’t been charged with a foul in nine minutes of game time.”

10:18 PM Shelden Williams just fouled out of an NBA game. I’m just kidding of course. I meant NBDL.

10:22 PM Vitale says Duke has to get Redick a good look, which seems to indicate Redick’s eight straight misses have been the result of Carolina’s stifling defense and not Redick’s erratic shooting. I’d made a Dick Cheney joke here, but you’ve heard them all so I’ll just move on.

10:25 PM If Shelden Williams is The Landlord than Tyler Hansbrough has a rent-controlled apartment in the building.

10:28 PM Redick makes a long shot to break his string. Despite his foot clearly being on the line, the official signals for a three-pointer. As this was taking place, I was talking on IM with my cousin George. The transcript, which took place over a span of 32 seconds, is below:

Me: tha'ts a TWO
Me: THATS A TWO
George: 2
George: 2
George: 2
George: 2
George: REWINGF
George: REWIND
Me: i will on commercial... this is ridiculous
George: WAS IT?
George: OK
Me: they wont show it i bet
Me: here we go (the replay is shown)
Me: THATS A TWO
George: OH OH OHAOSFH'ASOUIDHF'SADOUIFG
George: F---
Me: holy s---!
Me: holy s---!
Me: this is unbelievable. totally believable, of course, but totally unbelievable. (the replay is shown again)
George: WOW
George: WIWIWIWIOWG
George: IPwehg
George: wipEJWbr
George: e[
George: i wonder how peter is enjoying his movie
(Note: Peter is George’s brother and my cousin. He was also sitting in front of a television Saturday night, except his was not tuned to any of the networks of the ESPN family. Instead, he was watching Corpse Bride with his lady-friend. This led to heckling, taunting and a plethora of name-calling the following afternoon. I'm pretty sure I also punched him.)

10:30 PM Nessler, to his credit, actually mentions something about Redick being over the line on the “three”. He stops mid-sentence when Vitale activates his morphine-drip.

10:36 PM Williams gets his 7th foul.

10:36 PM Williams gets his 8th foul. Jeez, even Kyle Visser could be defensive player of the year if he got 10 fouls to work with per game.

10:42 PM If this game were being played in one of 22 other states, Tyler Hansbrough's abuse of Shelden Williams in the paint could be classified as a hate crime.

10:48 PM Williams actually gets called for a fourth foul. In other news, Satan has his hands on the thermostat ready to turn the temperature down should Williams foul out of this game.

10:48 PM All the chairs on the UNC sidelines have DUKE written on them, although Roy Williams’ chair has a piece of tape over the writing. I don’t have a joke here, I just thought it was interesting.

10:52 PM Vitale: “If you think about it, Duke has really been an overachieving team this season.” Ninety minutes ago he said Duke had the best duo in the nation in Redick and Williams. Now they’re overachieving with, again, the best duo in the nation???!!! Dick, all the Duke students might be overachievers, but the only overachieving that’s done by the basketball team is on draft night.

10:53 PM Redick goes diving into a mass of male bodies scrambling for a loose ball. I’m thinking this incident will inspire a poem… Maybe two.

10:54 PM Redick is 5-19 for the game and 23 of his last 78 overall, but it’s not his fault Duke’s losing, Vitale says. He is… wait for it… emotionally fatigued.

10:56 PM With Duke down eight, Vitale sounds like his dog just died. After being shot by Billy Packer.

10:58 PM Hansbrough nails a three and the camera cuts to a shot of the hot blonde next to his dad jumping up and down. I only mention this because she’s, once more, a hot blonde jumping up and down.

11:01 PM Vitale: “It’s a rough night for J.J. He’s had a brick-laying day. It’s sad in a way.” Why is it sad, Dr. Seuss? That his really poor play, has made students pray, that their night won’t be gray, and it will turn out OK, with a win on display and they’ll have a soiree, where they’ll be able to say, that Derek Jeter’s gay?

11:02.10 PM If Redick throws up any more bricks, the NCAA might have to investigate whether or not he’s making any money on the side as a stonemason.

11:02.30 PM If Redick throws up any more bricks, he might manage to knock the ugly out of some of those Duke co-eds in the student section.

11:02.50 PM If Redick throws up any more bricks, Duke will have to dedicate a new building tomorrow.
OK, that’ll do.

11:03 PM Duke has quickly cut UNC’s lead to three with 1:37 left. Vitale is screaming, “this is phhhhennnnomenallll, baby! I was trying to be quiet, let people enjoy the crowd. But ohhhhhhhhh, what a great night!!!!”
To recap: When UNC is playing lights-out basketball and morphing from a young team with potential into a battle-tested team with championship aspirations, Vitale barely peeped. But Duke makes a little run at home on Senior Night to get within three points of a team left for dead in the pre-season and all of a sudden he’s as excited as Don King on fight night.

11:04 PM Redick has a chance to tie the game with a wide open three. He misses short. Vitale says he “must be tired,” but fails to mention why Redick would be any more tired than, say, all other college basketball players who play lots of minutes. Did I miss something here? Redick is the only one who exerts effort in a game? Redick is the only one who doesn’t get much rest during the conference schedule? Just because he plays on Duke are we supposed to believe he tries twice as hard as everyone else all the time? I’d go on, but I’m too emotionally fatigued from hating Redick for four years. You understand, right?

11:06 PM Vitale: “Redick always makes sure Melchionni gets lots of touches.”

11:08 PM Coach K yells at the refs demanding to know why the hell they let him use a seven-man rotation all season.

11:10 PM Sean Dockery just shoved Tyler Hansbrough in the face. Seriously, he just took a whack at his face. Not surprisingly, he isn’t assessed a foul nor does Vitale choose to mention this exercise in bitchery. “When Lee Melchionni was stepped on in the VT game,” writes The Wolfman, “you’d have thought he was shot.” But maybe Vitale has a point. I hear involuntary arm-flailing is a side-effect of extreme mental fatigue.

11:11 PM Game over. North Carolina wins. Vitale goes to Chapel Hill to drive his SUV into a big crowd on Franklin Street.

LaVar Leaves

I'm still trying to recover from a Saturday evening spent with Dickie V and will share a vivid account of my evening later, but in the mean time I have to quickly address the news out of Redskins Park that six-year veteran linebacker LaVar Arrington has been released in exchange for a $4 million payment to the team.
Although this move has been expected for much of the past 18 months, it's jarring nonetheless. Arrington has been one of the few constants for the Redskins in the early part of the century (only Jon Jansen had a longer tenure with the team). His buoyant personality endeared him to fans from day one, even as he struggled through injuries, erratic play and an ongoing contract dispute with the team.
Arrington's benching early last season seemed to make his return in 2006 all but out of the question, but a strong second-half and raucous support from Redskins supporters (who helped make Arrington's #56 jersey the most popular in D.C.) gave fans a glimmer of hope that LaVar could possibly come back. It wasn't meant to be though. Even with a solid relationship with Joe Gibbs, Arrington's difficulties with defensive coordinator Gregg Williams and linebackers coach Dale Lindsey were apparently too much, as was LaVar's unwieldy 2006 cap number (which the team will have to take a hit on anyway if no new CBA is signed).
After the great start LaVar had in Washington, it would have been impossible to imagine his time here ending this way. He was the most popular athlete in the nation's capital and the heart of the Redskins defense for six seasons. The tears he shed when the team clinched a playoff berth, his first, on New Year's Day in Philly were real. Lavar loved being a Redskin. And Redskins fans loved having LaVar. The memory of him knocking Troy Aikman out of the league will be forever etched in the memory of Washington fans, as will his season-changing interception return for a TD the next season which jolted the Redskins out of an 0-5 start and started an unprecedented five-game win-streak that evened their record at 5-5.
Football-wise, his release hurts mostly because of his big cap number. Arrington's on-field play has suffered over the past two seasons in Williams' structured system. But nobody can doubt the intensity and fire LaVar Arrington brought to the Redskins defense whenever he stepped onto the field during his tenure with the team.
His release is painful for many reasons, but it could get worse before it gets better. If LaVar signs with an NFC team, particularly one in the NFC East, it's difficult to imagine him not being so motivated to prove the Redskins wrong that he'll have a Vince Carter-like resurgence when he puts on a new uniform. And that will be the most bitter pill of all to swallow for all those fans who will still put their burgundy and gold #56 jersey on in 2006.

If A Tree Falls In The Forest, Could It Beat Brett Favre At Lambeau?

You know when people are defending Michael Vick and start rattling off an unimpressive list of facts and statistics that invariably includes "he beat Brett Favre at Lambeau"? Considering how the Brett Favre Michael Vick "beat" (as if this were a game of one-on-one) is nothing like the Brett Favre of old, why is that win a big deal? I mean, I guess when you're a mediocre quarterback people have to stretch when coming up with compliments, but still.
I'm struggling today so I'll stop here and instead recommend a great piece on Malcolm Gladwell written by my buddy Jaffe.

Bloody Thursday

This is all so stupid. The NFL salary cap has always been an exercise of inefficiency, but this is ridiculous. Over the past few seasons, teams have operated under the assumption that a new CBA would be in place by today and signed players accordingly. Now, because of ineptitude not seen since FEMA, many NFL teams will have to gut their rosters to comply with a cap they had not anticipated having.
Salary caps are good idea in theory, much like Communism. In execution, however, they can be a total joke. The whole point of a cap is to keep teams from outspending others in free agency, an effort to level the playing field, if you'll excuse the tired cliche. The NFL's cap has done this, but it has come at a cost. Teams frequently have to cut star players whose cap numbers become unwieldy in the later portions of the contract. Well-run franchises actually get hurt by the cap when their past draft picks become stars and, thus, price themselves out of their team's price range. The salary cap was never intended for that. Teams shouldn't have to get rid of the players they developed. The NBA has rules in place for this and allows teams to retain such players. In the NFL, you almost get penalized for draft day success.
The salary cap became a joke when teams began inventing ways to circumvent immediate cap hits with prorated signing bonuses, incentive clauses, etc. At that point, an immediate overhaul needed to take place, but with everybody getting rich from TV deals and revenue slices, nobody wanted to admit the cap wasn't working as originally intended.
Supporters of the cap in its current form often use the "parity defense" which, basically is: Going into every season, all 32 NFL teams have a chance to win the Super Bowl. Baseball, which has no cap, only has a handful of teams that can have serious World Series aspirations, they'll argue.
It's a very convenient argument, but it ignores the main reason each NFL team has a shot to make a playoff run: The length of the league's season.
As I've contended many times on this site before, most NFL team's seasons hinge on a handful of plays. If, for instance, the Washington Redskins hadn't burned Roy Williams twice in Dallas or if Josh Brown had made a game-winning field goal in the Seattle game, they wouldn't have been in the playoffs and everybody would have been ridiculing Joe Gibbs for coming back and tarnishing his legacy. Conversely, if Casey Rabach doesn't commit an idiotic holding penalty against Oakland and the referees correctly ruled Mike Alstott down in the Tampa game, the Redskins would have been 12-4 and had a home divisional playoff game.
Every team can point to four or five plays that end up being the difference between a high draft position and a playoff berth. The brevity of a 16-game schedule lends itself to flukes. In baseball, the best teams always advance to the playoffs because over 162 games luck plays less of a factor. The Washington Nationals were in first-place entering last July, mainly on the strength of their unbelievable record in one-run games. It was obvious the team couldn't keep winning such contests at an 85% clip and in the second-half of the season, as was expected, they fell back in the pack. There was one 16-game stretch in August where the Tampa Bay Devil Rays had the best record in the A.L. East. Had that occurred in a football season, they would have been a shocking playoff entry. In baseball, it was just a nice run by a bad team.
NFL parity is a myth. When free agency began everybody said there would be no dynasties anymore. The Dallas Cowboys and New England Patriots have proven the opposite to be true. Teams with good front offices and good coaching will always be ahead of the pack, salary cap or not.
NFL owners just broke off talks with the union, meaning Bloody Thursday begins now. It's a major mistake and, unfortunatly, it's likely to be one of many over the coming months.

- Man, I blew it last night. I didn't remember Duke was playing at FSU until about 7:15 and missed an opportunity to spend an evening with Dickie V. Now I'm going to have to do it on Saturday night which pretty much kills my evening (although with my back in the condition its in, maybe that's not such a bad thing.) Duke's loss proved the point I've been making all season: Athletic, quick teams can run with the Blue Devils. But it wasn't missing out on writing about Duke's loss that made me upset. Or blowing a chance to call Coach K a classless bitch for pulling his starters off the floor after the FSU fans rushed the court before time expired. (Coach K can say all he wants about player safety, but what did he expect to happen, a sharks and jets style knife-fight? A guy in a wheelchair pulling out a glock? And if he was so concerned about his players, as he says he was, why did Coach K leave five scrubs out on the floor? Are their lives not as valuable as J.J. Redick's? Does the fact that they don't write terrible poetry somehow make their safety any less important? No, Krzyzewski pulled his starters off the floor for the same reason he does everything else: To mindf--- the ACC. Since the BC game, Duke hasn't received as many calls as they usually do and Coach K needed to get his team some sympathy from the ACC. With his sob story about fearing for his players lives, he'll do just that. All I can say is I hope wheelchair guy goes to Greensboro for the ACC Tournament and runs over Coach K's toes. Repeatedly.)
Anyway, the main reason I was upset that I missed out on chronicling the night was that Vitale and Patrick were at their Duke-loving best last night and were writing material for me. I'm sure they'll be just as good with the Cameron Crazies on Saturday (did you hear ESPNU is showing a live shot of the Cameron Crazies all game? Like those tools need any more contributions to their God-complexes), but when Vitale is spouting lines like "Redick just gave that guy a facial!" I could very well be rueing the day I stood up Dukie V.

The Tuesday Two (On Wednesday!)

- The lead story on ESPN.com for most of yesterday afternoon was the announcement that Villanova forward Curtis Sumpter would take a medical redshirt for this season and was thusly ineligible to come back to the Wildcats this year. As is customary, the ESPN.com poll dealt with the site's top tory and, in this case, the question was: Can Villanova win the NCAA Championship without Curtis Sumpter.
I usually vote in the polls just to see which way the wind is blowing on a topic and, more often than not, it's fairly easy to guess how the vote will break down. Yesterday, I obviously selected the "Yes" option for the Sumpter question and figured I would be in the vast majority of respondents. I think 80/20 in support of 'Nova's chances was what I guessed. You can imagine my surprise when the final tally was 70/30 against Villanova winning the title without Sumpter.
This led me to two conclusions:
1) Seventy percent of people who read ESPN.com are idiots. How can anybody say that Villanova cannot win the NCAA Tournament without Sumpter? I mean, it's one thing to say they won't win, but the question didn't ask that. They were only asking if Villanova could win, which is a much different query. Of course they can without him, they' ve already knocked off Connecticut, Georgetown and other top teams without Sumpter. To say they can't win is remarkably short-sighted and must be caused by:
2) Seventy percent of people who read ESPN.com not knowing Curtis Sumpter hasn't played a minute for Villanova this season. This can be the only logical explanation. The ESPN.com headline didn't mention Sumpter hadn't played this year, which must have led most people to assume this was a new injury. Allen Ray twisted his knee in the most recent UConn game, so maybe people confused the two. Either way, the only thing more ridiculous than that poll was the fact that I just wrote 329 words about it.

- Jerry Colangelo and USA Basketball made some fine choices for the preliminary U.S. basketball team which will represent the country in this year's World Championships and the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
Allen Iverson was a surprising omission from the initial list of 22 players but, while I've loved A.I. since he was a freshman at Georgetown, I have no problem with him being left off the team. Iverson is a prolific scorer and tenacious defender, but his age and game make him an obvious candidate to stay home, especially with the team's new focus on fundamental basketball. Iverson's game is suited to the fast-pace of the NBA, but in the slower defensive-minded international game with its trapezoidal lane, Iverson becomes less effective. His shoot-first mentality isn't what Team USA needs, particularly with Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Dwayne Wade shoo-ins to make the squad. It's like having too many cooks in the kitchen, if by cooks you mean basketball players and by kitchen you mean a court in China surrounded by 20,000 screaming Communists.
I love the selections of Chris Paul and Josh Howard, obviously, but am a little puzzled over the inclusion of Luke Ridnour (token white guy) and Brad Miller (white guy for other token white guy to hang out with and listen to country music).
My roster of 12 is below. I'm including Kobe, LeBron, DWade and Bowen because they seem to be the most obvious selections off this list (with Redick, because if freakin' Christian Laettner made the original Dream Team you know Coach K isn't letting Redick get bumped for Michael Redd), even though I don't think I'd pick Kobe for the same reasons I wouldn't select Iverson. The U.S. doesn't need Kobe throwing up 25 shots a game, they need balance. And non-criminals. Oh, and it goes without saying that if Shaq decides to play, a roster spot immediately opens for him.
My list:

Chauncey Billups
Chris Bosh
Bruce Bowen
Kobe Bryant
Dwight Howard
LeBron James
Shawn Marion
Greg Oden
Chris Paul
J.J. Redick
Amare Stoudamire
Dwayne Wade

Holy crap, that was a lot harder than I anticipated. I wasn't even close to letting Josh Howard on the team, even through I wanted to put him on it and probably would have if including Kobe wasn't a must. (As it is, I took Bowen over Howard because of his D and just to see if he'd learn other languages so he could trash-talk to players on other teams.) Clearly some big stars didn't make it (Carmelo Anthony, Gilbert Arenas, Paul Pierce, Adam Morrison), but the 12 I picked all play on both ends of the court, with the exception of Redick who is only on the team to give it some color, appease Coach K, shoot the three and introduce terrible poetry to Eastern culture. Redick's inclusion kicks out another Dukie, Elton Brand, who should (and probably will) make the real team.
I was a little wishy-washy on including Oden, but if he turns out to be half as good as everyone says he'll be, I imagine they'll keep a spot for him.
The Wolfman is lobbying for that autistic kid to make the team and I've volunteered to lay down a Gillooly on Redick so it can happen. (How awesome is that story, by the way. I get goosebumps every time I see it on ESPN. My favorite part of the video is the reaction of the bench. They're in such a frenzy every time McElwain hits a shot. It's clear they're genuinely excited for him and by him. It's not some phony Mark McGwire hugging Sammy Sosa thing, everybody in that gym is thrilled about what's taking place on the floor. I just hope they don't mess up the story with a crappy movie. Nothing can be better than the grainy, shaky video of the real thing. Well, except for the headline on that ESPN.com article, I suppose.)