On the Road Again

In between more trips halfway across the country this week, I thought I would pop in with some general thoughts swirling around my brain while I have some internet downtime courtesy of free airport wireless from Boingo! So what's happened since last I checked in here?

The Tournament. Damn. What an incredible run this time around, quite possibly the best March Madness in history if you're a fan of upsets and of the Little Guy. Everyone said there were no great teams this year, but by the time the tournament actually came around, I think it was pretty clear that Ohio State and Kansas at least were a cut ahead of the rest, with Duke pretty much right on their heels behind them. And yet somehow, the whole "no great teams this year" ended up proving out, as we have an amazing 11-seeded VCU in the Final Four, joined by 8th seeded Butler to accompany #4 Kentucky and #3 UConn. It's the highest sum of the four Final Four seeds in NCAA tournament history, and Saturday afternoon's VCU-Butler matchup will be the highest sum of two teams matching up in the Final Four in tournament history as well. It's the first time we've had no #1 seeds into the Final Four in a decade, and the first time with no #1 or #2 seeds in tournament history. Suffice it to say, these are four teams as befitting of the "there are no great teams this year" mantra as any collection you could find.

This Butler story is simply amazing. There are just no other words to describe a guy out of that tiny school, that unknown basketball program, and that weakass heretofore disrespected conference and make it to the Final Four. Twice. Consecutively. What Brad Stevens has done this year cannot be put into words, but go read my post about him last year if you want to know what I already thought of this guy's coaching skills after last season's run. Stevens' career has been on the upswing for years, and this latest run of back to back Final Fours could be just the beginning for who has got to be thought of at this point as America's best college basketball coach.

And enough with the talk about the Big East. The Committee hopefully learned something this year about parity, as they allowed in 11 teams that beat the crap out of each other for three months in to the big dance from the Big East, surpassing the Big East's own record of 8 teams into the NCAA Tournament back in 2008. I'm all for allowing in all the teams that deserved it, but frankly I did not think Marquette did quite enough to get in, and I though the way Villanova ended the season -- including losing in the first round of the Big East tournament to lowly South Florida to cap a horrible second-half slide to their year -- also made them prime ground to be bumped out for a more worthy squad. I mean, the Big East deserved to break that record this year, but they probably should have had just 9, or at most 10 teams in. Crushing the all-time record like that, and allowing in 11 of 16 teams in a conference as a result, was I think kind of a mistake. But don't be one of those clowns who points to the Big East only getting two teams into the Sweet Sixteen. That's just bogus. Number one, nobody ever said that inviting a team into the Big Dance means they are going to win the tournament, or win four games, or win two games. It is and ever was only a way of rewarding a team for a good season, and in that sense the committee let in who they thought deserved to be let in. They let the Ivy League winner into the Big Dance every year...does that mean they think Princeton has a legitimate shot at taking the whole shebang down? Of course not. So just because a lot of the Big East teams didn't last long, that really is not actually related at all to whether they deserved their bids.

Frankly, I think most of the pretty much bad Big East teams lost early, and that is just the way it should be. I mean, I just said up there that I probably would not have let in Marquette or maybe even Nova, but those decisions are defensible to me, and the fact that Nova, Georgetown and Louisville all got crushed early did not surprise me much. I profited from my expecting that in my pools, in fact. Same thing with Pitt and Notre Dame, who paying close attention to the Big East this year led me to have fairly low expectations for come tournament time. The thing with the Big East this year is that, while quite probably the deepest conference in college basketball history, it really was not in my view the best conference in college basketball history. Not by a longshot, really. I don't even think this year's Big East crop was quite as good overall as a couple of years ago, when Villanova and Pittsburgh had that amazing late-tournament showdown. That year, the Big East had about eight teams ranked in the Top 25 all season long, which was sort of like this year although maybe not quite as deep. But that year, the conference also had arguably three of the top four teams in the country in Nova, Pitt and UConn. We were looking at a conference with legitimately five of the ten best teams in the land all concentrated in it, and three or four tournament-worthy teams to boot as well. That was a crazy strong conference in my view. This year's Big East was crazy, crazy deep -- the conference's 9th place team in UConn is very close to winning the national title right now -- but at the top, the small handful of very best teams in the country at no point included anyone from the Big East, all season long. The closest anyone in the conference has come to being one of the country's best is right now, with UConn, who with Kemba Walker is playing as scary as anyone in the sport, but it's the first time all year. The Big East may have had 8 or 9 ranked teams through most of the 2011 season, but very rarely did we have anyone ranked in the top three or four, and not at all more than one at any point. And with soft Pitt and Notre Dame teams at the top of the conference by the time the seedings for the Big Dance were handed out, I did not pick either of those teams to make a deep run. The deepest I had any Big East team going this year was UConn, based on the way they played and the way Kemba Walker stepped up in the Big East tournament, although I did not pick any Big East teams to make this year's Final Four. Which makes perfect sense to me, and certainly does not mean that these teams did not deserve to be in the Big Dance to begin with, but I never thought the conference had a top-5 team in it all year, albeit having several teams in the 5-25 range on the national rankings.

Getting away from the tournament for a minute, the Phillies are heading into the 2011 season with a major whimper, as second baseman Chase Utley sounds to me like he is going to be sidelined for a good couple of month at least with a still-ailing kneee, Brad Lidge is looking like he will start the season on the DL as well, and even star pitcher Roy Halladay took a beaning line drive off the bat of Manny Ramirez right in the back of the head the other day. To this Phillies fan, it feels like the year has slipped away before it even started, and with the problems this team had scoring runs in 2010 as it is, plus the loss of 100-rbi man Jayson Werth's bat from the starting lineup, and Utley likely not 100% if in there at all for a good half the season, things are not looking good for this team to make it back to the World Series anytime soon, even despite their vaunted pitching staff. You heard it here first -- this Phillies squad isn't going to score enough runs to be as great as everyone thinks they're going to be.

Oh and let's not forget Survivor Poker, which is winding to a close here as we have just three players left: smboatdrinks and veryjosie from the original Team Fish, and muchtim from the original Team Donkeys. Since I last checked in about the goings-on at Donkey Island, the Fish fulfilled their plan of banding together as soon as they had snatched the majority back from the Donkeys shortly after the merge, and summarily eliminated the remaining Donkeys player by player by player, until certain members of Team Fish pissed off their own ringleader with backstabbery and deceipt such that their own elimination became more important than finishing off the Donkeys. Thus, muchtim has managed to squeak his way in as the remaining Fish alliance of josie and boat have eliminated their own would-be mutineers in turtle and xkm over the past couple of games. Now on Wednesday, we all have a chance to really impact the outcome of Survivor Poker, because whoever wins immunity out of josie, boat and muchtim gets an automatic pass into the final two, and they get to pick which of the other two remaining players to bring along with them. I think it's a safe bet to assume at this point that the two surviving fish would vote for each other if either of them wins immunity on the day, but the really interesting thing would be if muchtim manages to pull off that feat. Who will muchtim choose to bring along with him to the final heads-up showdown? The person he has been secretly allied with for weeks? Or the person he has been secretly working against all the while? Or are those one and the same person? Wednesday should be good times at the Dank at 10pm ET on full tilt, and I definitely expect to be there along with a nice crowd of bloggers. Take a big chunk of the stack of any of muchtim, smboatdrinks or veryjosie on Wednesday night, and you will be personally influencing the overall outcome of the series in a meaningful way, so hopefully I will see you there for the festivities.

Assuming I am back home in New York by Wednesday night, that is.

The Madness is Upon Us

That's right, it's that time of year again. This has got to be the sixth or even the seventh year that I've been writing here during March Madness. Although these first few days of college basketball's championship tournament will always be magical, this year they will get I think a little bit less magical, for two key reasons, both ultimately tied to money and broadcasting of the games.

When the NCAA went out to bid for their new broadcast contract recently, they managed to sign an all-time record deal, pretty amazing when you consider what the economy has been like for the past few years. How did the ever manage to sign for a new record, even as television ad sales are slumping, thus directly weakening the value of the same NCAA package as previous years when ad sales were more brisk? Simple -- they changed the historical NCAA telecast package. For the first time ever, tv brought four separate television networks together to make the historic rights bid for March Madness, and as a result, you'll get to see games this year for the first time not only on CBS but also on TBS, TNT and even TruTV, which I understand used to be the old CourtTV.

You might not think this will impact you much as you watch the games, but I bet you will notice the difference if you are someone like me who in the past has downloaded the special web viewer for all the games, and who stays up all night these next few nights watching those buzzer beater after buzzer beater moments that only the NCAA tournament can provide. First off, the idea of the four networks wasn't just to spread the huge money around that it costs to purchase the March Madness package from the NCAA -- it's also to spread around where the games are shown. You will have games on all four stations during the prime time hours tonight, simultaneously, which can be a positive or a negative depending on your perspective. Yes, you will technically have individual "freedom" to choose which game you want to watch, and to some people that is a big plus, in particular I guess those people with multiple large-screen tvs in their homes. But for me, I'm going to miss all of the switching windows, getting to just plant myself in front of tube, turn on CBS, and vegetate while CBS's producer determines which games to show me, and ends up supplying me with a buzzer beater here, then a last-second just-miss heave for the win here, followed by a ferocious last-minute comeback by the underdog down here, all one after the other after the other. Don't expect to see that this year anymore, because now it will be on you (not on CBS) to switch from one game to the next. And, you're going to have to know real quickly which station on your cable system is TruTV, and where TNT and TBS are. I have had my new cable system for about six months, and to tell the truth I couldn't tell you where TruTV is (or if I even have it at all), and frankly I don't even know for sure about TNT. TBS I watch The Office on from time to time on Tuesdays, so I know that one, but TNT and certainly TruTV are going to be a real problem for me, and even when I find them, it will take days for me to really memorize where each station is.

Also in the chase for the almighty dollar, the NCAA opted this year with their new tv package to switch around the timing of some of their games, in addition to the distribution channels on the television. For the first time, on each of Thursday and Friday, two games were moved from the mid-afternoon slots to the nighttime slots, which was specifically negotiated as part of the plan to increase the overall revenues from the games that are played, in addition to being able to sell ads throughout each individual game which will now be shown in full on the four different tv networks. Two games may not sound like much, but with their removal on Thursday afternoon and on Friday, combined with the more staggered start times the NCAA came up with to help to spread out the afternoon games a little better, those of you who have made a habit in the past of spending the afternoon watching the first two rounds of the NCAAs will I imagine notice the void this year. There should basically always be a game going on starting from shortly after noon through dinnertime, but an some points it will be just the one game, and at others two or three, but not the four or five we have gotten used to in the past. And this trend of moving the games to the prime time p.m. slots will only get more pronounced as the tournament wears on, as even the third and fourth rounds next week and weekend -- when there are far fewer total games to be played -- have been moved to mostly or all prime time games. Gone will be that second weekend of staying home and watching college basketball from 2pm onward on the East Coast as part of March Madness. Those games will still be played, but you'll be looking at almost exclusively night games in the East as we grind our way down towards the Final Four over the next 11 days.

So the games that make up March Madness will be fewer and farther between this time around, and you'll do a lot more flipping with your own remote while you watch because there is set to be a whole lot less of CBS flipping from game to game to make sure we are catching all the exciting endings to these early-round games. But it is still March Madness, and that will always be awesome, the very thing college football wishes it had but doesn't know how to get to given the way the Bowl Games have infiltrated themselves within the conference leadership's psyche by this point in time. Even with the changes this year, these next four days are about as exciting a time in sports as you'll ever find, and as far as I'm concerned noontime can't get here soon enough.

I thought I would give a few general thoughts on the games, the seedings and the tournament in general here before things get rolling in a few hours:

The best teams? Unlike last year, when I singled Duke out as having no shot at winning it all a couple of weeks before they did just that, this year I think Duke is better than most people think. They lost some big experience from the team since last year's National Championship run, but they got a lot bigger and badder on the inside with some of their new pickups, and this Duke team I think floated under the radar quite a bit this season because the ACC was so woefully weak in 2011. But I look for Duke to make a big run and this may be the first time in ages that I pick them confidently to reach the Final Four. Ohio State and Kansas also seem to me to be singularly more talented than all the other teams in their brackets, and should be odds-on favorites to win their regions and advance to the Final Four. And in the Southeast, I predict a wide-open look as many of the top-seeded teams have not been historically strong performers in the Big Dance. In all, it's a year where I think three or four teams have clearly distanced themselves from the pack, but at the same time, one where any one of probably 10 to 12 teams could pull it together and win it all.

Looking at the regions themselves, the toughest region in my view is the East, where top-seeded Ohio State has to deal with a very talented, albeit erratic, UNC squad, a tired but very accomplished and experienced Syracuse team at the 3 seed, and an underrated Kentucy team for the #4. Any one of those teams could come out of that bracket, and, frankly, any one other than OSU could probably lose in the first two rounds without anyone being all that surprised, but there is a lot of talent at the top in the East, moreso than in any other bracket the way I see it. The West is also a strong bracket, as Duke got a tough road to the championship from the Committee for a change, as even though I think SDSU is terribly weak as a #2 seed coming out of that conference, but with the flaming-hot UConn Huskies as the 3 seed and Texas -- who was ranked #1 for the first part of the season this year -- as the #4. The Southeast and the Southwest are really where I think there is a concentration of beatable teams -- in the Southeast, #1 seed Pittsburgh typically does not fare well come Tournament time, Florida is probably overrated as a 2 seed in what was kind of a down year for Billy Donovan's squad, BYU I think is definitely overrated as a 3 given their #2 player being removed for boinking his girlfriend, and the 4-seeded Wisconsin Badgers in this part of the bracket are just getting over scoring all of 36 points in being ousted from the Big Ten conference tournament by lowly Penn State. And the Southwest may be the weakest of all, as powerhouse Kansas got the easiest pass this year IMO with Notre Dame as the 2-seed -- a good team but nothing Kansas shouldn't be able to handle -- Purdue as their typically overrated selves at #3, and Louisville at #4, behind coach Rick Pitino who hasn't run deep into the NCAAs in several years now.

In terms of early-round upsets, I look again to those two weaker regions to see most of the likely action among the worse-seeded opponents, since so many of the top teams in those brackets are actually weaker than their seed would suggest. In the Southwest, I think Vanderbilt at #5 is probably not long for the tournament, and could fall to #12 Richmond in first-round action; and I think my beloved Georgetown team could be in trouble as a 6-seed against VCU who played their way in as an 11 seed after beating USC on Wednesday night. In the Southwest I think things could get even crazier, as I believe #1 Pitt will have their hands full against the winner of ODU - Butler in the first round, and I think both Wisconsin (#4) and Kansas State (#5) could face tough times in their respective first-round matchups against points-differential leader Belmont and tournament-seasoned Utah State, respectively. I also think St. Johns is likely to take down BYU in the 6-3 game if we get that matchup over the weekend as most people seem to expect, after St. Johns beat so many big teams down the stretch this year in the regular season. On the other side of the bracket, I like Marquette to beat Xavier in a close one, although that game is in Ohio so it's hard to get too excited about Marquette's chances there, and I like Missouri to beat Cincinnati in the 6-11 matchup in the West as well, as far as games where I think we could see a significantly lower seeded team making some noise in the early rounds.

I hope everybody enjoys the games today, and may your team go far as long as they aren't playing the Hoyas.

Another Ingenious Idea

And this one I dare anyone out there to tell me it isn't sheer brilliance.

So most of you have probably heard by now that the NCAA plans to expand the NCAA college basketball tournament from the current field of 64/65 teams out to 96 teams, most likely giving the top 32 seeds first-round byes, while the middle 32 seeds would compete with the bottom 32 seeds in a new round of play that would likely happen on Tuesday-Wednesday of the first week of the tournament prior to the resuming the regular 64-team format we are used to starting on Thursday of that week.

There will be many effects to this, most of which are in my view not good for the sport of college basketball. But of course one of the effects will be more games, which means more games televised on tv, which ultimately means more money for the NCAA as part of the highly lucrative broadcast deal it has secured for decades now for March Madness. But one other effect not talked about much right now is that expanding this field to 96 teams will effectively kill the NIT Tournament.

Now, I'm not someone who actually care about the NIT Tournament. It already means next to nothing, and when you thin out the talent on the teams involved such that we're looking at teams that are not in the top 100 teams nationally, I can't imagine anybody giving even the one crap that they might care about the NIT as currently constituted. No, if when the NCAA officially approves expansion of March Madness to 96 teams, the NIT Tournament as we know it will be done, finito, vamoose.

And this is where my ingenious idea comes in. Remember a few years ago when the ACC raided the Big East, stealing Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech in a football-focused money grab, totally throwing a wrench into the entire conference system in organized Division I college athletics today? What did the Big East do? Did they sit around and mope about this admittedly greedy and piggish behavior coming out of the littledicks in the ACC? Did they cry to mommy about how unfair life is and what a poor hand had been dealt to them? No. Instead, they stepped right outside of the box and shook things up more than ever by basically raiding other conferences, thereby in the span of just a few weeks building the greatest basketball conference this country has ever seen, and now the Big East is every year the best conference in basketball while the ACC -- let's be honest -- sucks the big one. In both football and basketball, lately.

I think the NIT needs to take a page out of the Big East's book. The NCAA Tournament is about to effectively kill the NIT Tournament once and for all. But for whoever the stakeholders are in the NIT brand, I have the best idea ever for them, one that will change the face of college sports forever and which could enable the NIT to snatch tremendous victory right from the jaws of defeat much like the Big East did in the face of adversity a few years back. The NIT should affirmatively cancel the annual NIT Tournament, but instead announce right along with that cancellation announcement the formation of a new national invitation-only college football tournament, to be played right after the BCS bowl games are finished every year.

That's right. The NIT College Football tournament. It's invitation-only, but unlike in basketball where the best teams already go play in the NCAAs, there is no college football tournament yet to speak of in college. The NIT could fill that void. They can wait until after the bowl games are done, after the BCS, and then they can invite the 8 best teams in the country -- using a committee comprised of university officials and NCAA and football experts to help make the tough choices, of course -- and finally we can have a national champion in that sport.

The NIT has a chance to take a huge step in the face of what is otherwise tremendous adversity. Now is the time.

March Madness

Happy Passover to all the tribe members out there. I had another great seder on Monday, including some of the most delicious and tender steaks I have ever made. Of course, the 6 inches of rain that fell in my area over the preceding day and a half put a little bit of a damper on my plans to fire up the Weber again this early in the season, but with the help of three good-sized pans and a nice stovetop, it all worked out great in the end.

The family spent a good deal of time sitting around talking about this year's NCAA tournament, which has really been an amazing one. In the end it comes down to a 5 seed playing a 5 seed on one side of the Final Four (Butler vs. Michigan State), and a 1 seed vs. a 2 seed in Duke vs. West Virginia on the other side. I don't remember the last time we had two seeds as low as 5 both battling it out on one side of the Final Four bracket, and frankly it's pretty damn rare that even a mid-major conference team like Butler makes any appearance in the Final Four these days. The thing that is so interesting about this year's tournament is not to me so much the teams that made it, but the teams that didn't. To think that in this of all years, Kentucky did not make the Final Four, Kansas did not make the Final Four, and Syracuse did not make the Final Four, that is truly amazing. That right there is like a third of all the first-round NBA draftable players in all of college basketball on those three teams, and not one of them could win four games in a row in the Big Dance. In a year where otherwise, the talent just seems to be spread much more thinly than in previous years.

Which brings me to the first point I was keying on with my family this weekend. This year, moreso than maybe any other year I can remember, the Final Four is truly not about the players. It's about the coaches. It could have been totally about the players, if John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins and Patrick Patterson from Kentucky were matching up with Wes Johnson, Andy Rautins and Scoop Jardine of Syracuse, or Sherron Collins, Cole Aldrich and Marcus Morris of Kansas. But instead, it's Butler, it's Michigan State, it's Duke, and it's West Virginia.

On the Duke and West Virginia side of the bracket, you're looking at coaching legend Coach K in his incredible 11th Final Four appearance in his 25-year career at Duke, going against Bob Huggins, the former Cincinnati coach who has led his alma mater back to the Final Four for the first time in some 60 years. Huggins has always been known as a guy who gets the absolute most out of his players, and now with bona fide star Da'Sean Butler leading the way, Huggins once again has one of the hardest-working teams in the country, with three players averaging around 7 rebounds and 3 more players averaging around 3 assists per game. Huggins went an amazing 379-113 in 16 years at Cincinnati, 46-24 in two years at Kansas State, and has now put up an 80-27 record in his first three years at West Virginia, for a combined head coaching record of 670 wins to just 240 losses, all of which were not at the top programs in the country with the ability to hand pick every recruit in the country like the Coach K's and the John Calipari's of the world. Huggins is the reason this team is where it's at right now, and the matchup with Coach K -- who himself is probably coaching the least talented of all his Final Four squads over the years -- should be an intersting one.

On the other side, first there is Butler head coach Brad Stevens. Although Stevens is in just his third year as an NCAA head coach, what an illustrious beginning that career has had so far. In his first year as Butler head coach, Stevens led Butler to a school and Horizon league record 30 wins, becoming the third-youngest head coach in NCAA Division I history to lead a team to 30 wins in a season, and the fourth winningest first year coach in NCAA history. Still as a rookie coach, his team won the Horizon League regular season and tournament championships, and went on to win one game in the NCAA tournament. During the year Butler was nationally ranked for a school and league record 19 consecutive weeks. Despite losing four seniors after the 2007–08 season, Stevens once again surprised the world by winning the regular season Horizon championship and taking Butler to the NCAA tournament as an at large selection. Stevens' 56-10 first-two-years NCAA record places him second only to Bill Guthridge (58) in total wins during one's first two years as head coach in the history of the league. Also during the 2008–09 season, Stevens became the sixth head coach in NCAA history to reach 50 wins in 56 games or fewer, earning Stevens the Hugh Durham Mid-Major Coach of the Year Award as well as the Horizon League Coach of the Year for his efforts. And now there is this year, which has seen Butler go 30-4 once again under Brad Stevens, including a perfect 18-0 in the Horizon League which they once again dominated, before beating UTEP, Murray State, #1-seeded Syracuse and then #2-seeded Kansas State to earn the Bulldogs the first Final Four appearance in school and Horizon League history. So while this guy's coaching career has definitely been short, it's started off about as good as anyone's out there. Literally.

But even after all that gushing about Butler head coach Brad Stevens, Michigan State's Tom Izzo simply has to lead the pack. 2010 is now Izzo's amazing sixth final four since 1999 -- six Final Fours in just twelve years. And the truly amazing thing about it is, he has done all of that with exactly one NBA lottery pick in that entire run -- Jason Richardson back in the 2001 NBA draft. During that same span, Duke has made four Final Fours, and has done so with 11 NBA lottery picks coming through its halls along the way. UNC has made five Final Fours in that time and had six players drafted in the NBA Lottery. But think about it -- can you even name anyone good who's played for Michigan State basketball in the past 12 years? Me either. And yet somehow, here we are again heading to Indianapolis, heading to another Final Four, and Tom Izzo is once again there. Six Final Fours in 12 years, with basically no talent to speak of. Tom Izzo is the new best coach in NCAA basketball, hands down.

So in my mind, with all the great, most-talented teams having gone down now in the 2010 NCAA Tournament, the Final Four is truly about the head coaches and not the players. And the other realization I came to this weekend, unfortunately, is that I don't think a Final Four about the head coaches and not the players makes for very interesting viewing. I mean, if Butler beats MSU and plays for the national championship, that in and of itself will have some excitement to it for me. Butler winning the national title would be in my mind about as big of a championship story as we've ever seen in the NCAAs. But if Butler goes on to lose to the ongoing wizardry of Tom Izzo, I really feel like the tournament was so good this time around, that by now it's kind of burned out and can only fizzle away from here. Once Syracuse lost late last week, and then the moment it become obvious with about 8 minutes to go in the second half that Kentucky simply was not going to come back against West Virginia this past weekend, the last burning embers of 2010 March Madness went out for me. And don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm saying I'm a Cuse fan at all (I am more of a genocide fan than a Syracuse fan believe you me), but rather just that those seemed to me to be the biggest, most captivating teams of this year's tournament. Kansas losing early was ok and I think the true craziness of the tournament could still have been preserved if we had some of these other strongly-talented teams still in the mix. But my guess is that, despite how truly great this year's NCAA Tournament has undeniably been so far, ratings for the Final Four are going to be down and down noticeably from the past few years. I guess only time will tell if I'm right about that one, but here's hoping that the Big Dance finds one or two more crazy miracles in 2010 and turns this coming weekend into one more for the ages.

Genius

OMG! In fact, strike that. Make it a "ZOMG!" Because if anything is worthy of the extra "z" on there, it was the first day of the 2010 NCAA Tournament. What an incredible day full of stories, shockers, and more than anything else, a whole mess of awesome games.

Seriously, think about this for a minute. In 16 games on Day 1 of the Tournament, we had one double-overtime game, two single-overtime games, three games decided by just 1 point, two games decided by 2 points, and three games decided by 3 points. Does it get any better than that?

Actually, it does. Some of the stories from Thursday's NCAA action are just sick. So many schools busted out with historical wins on Thursday, it's not even funny. I heard these on the radio this morning and I just don't have time to go looking it up right now, but I'm going to go ahead and butcher the stats anyways by trying to rememberguess the time periods. On Thursday, just going in the order the games occurred, BYU beat recent champion Florida in two overtimes to nab its first NCAA Tournament win in something like 26 years. Old Dominion beat Notre Dame to win its first Tournament game in 15 years. Murray State beat Vanderbilt on a last-second jumper for its first NCAA win in thirty-some years. The Baylor Bears pulled away from Sam Houston State as a #3 seed for their first NCAA Tournament win in sixty years! St. Mary's College beat Richmond for their first win in 20 years. Northern Iowa, their first NCAA win in almost 40 years. And of course, Ohio beat my beloved Georgetown to score their first win in the Tournament since the late 1970s if I recall correctly.

I most definitely do not ever remember a first day of the NCAA Tournament with this many fun upsets and this many great, historical stories. Last year as I recall was among the most boring tournaments in memory, so this year seems all the more special. We had enough down-to-the-wire, last-second and sudden death games with huge shots and small schools going crazy and storming the court just on Thursday to basically last us all the way through this tournament. And we're only a quarter of the way through the first weekend. Just incredible.

Oh, and that thing I said yesterday about the Big East? I'm a genius, what can I say. My feeling is that some of these Big East teams are just not taking these first round games seriously, and it shows in how they are playing. Villanova, the conference's only win on Day 1, had to hold on for overtime just to beat lowly Robert Morris on Thursday (seriously?), while a team like Georgetown came out just like they have against so many other bad teams this year and fell too far behind to be able to come back from. Notre Dame and Marquette were very predictable losers I think, but nobody in America who didn't graduate from Ohio could possibly pick Ohio to beat the Hoyas, an Ohio team who many people still don't know had to win the MAC tournament to even find their way into the Big Dance after a 7-9 in-conference record on the season. We'll see how the top Big East teams come out today in West Virginia and Syracuse, but I expect them to learn a lesson from the pussy play we saw from their colleague teams on Thursday to help stem the bleeding out of the best conference in the country heading into the weekend.

2010 March Madness Picks -- Elite 8 and Beyond

So here we are. March Madness is finally upon us once again. Thursday and Friday this week in particular have always been awesomely fun days for me, although I still as yet have never fulfilled my longtime dream of heading out to one of the big sports books in Vegas to sit and watch all 16 games today and all 16 games tomorrow, followed by all 16 games over the weekend in style (i.e., smoking and drinking for free). And betting on every one. Of course. Maybe someday, but I think one Vegas trip a year is just right for me these days, and that trip is looking more and more like it will be happening in early June. But more on that on another day; it's time to finish my 2010 March Madness picks.

First, I thought I would review some general trends I am trying to follow in making my picks this year. First off, I think it is a long-proven NCAA Tournament maxim that the teams that play the best competition all season long tend to run deepest in the Big Dance, and for that reason I am putting a lot of weight this year on the relative goodness of the big conferences in the country. I find myself weighting it this year more than I almost ever have before, because frankly there seems to be such a vast margin between the quality of teams in the couple of good conferences and the quality of those in all the rest, dramatically different than last year or any other year in recent memory.

Looking quickly among the power conferences, the ACC was just abysmal this year, as I mentioned earlier I am pretty comfortable saying this is the worst the ACC has been since I can ever remember. Duke is decent, but if you've watched them play the really good teams (the very few on their schedule this season), they've gotten abused and have no chance of winning it all. Maryland had a good year, but that's about it really. Virgina 5-11, UNC 5-11, NC State 5-11, BC 6-10, Georgia Tech 7-9, Wake and Clemson 9-7. There isn't a single other good team in the ACC other than Duke, and even though I fully expect a tough Maryland team to win a game or two this year, I am not picking a single ACC team to make a deep run in this year's tournament. This year more than any year I can recall, those ACC teams simply have not had near the gritty, high-powered experience of playing top-ranked teams again and again all season long down to the wire when it feels like everything is on the line. Usually, by the time a #20-ranked Maryland team makes the NCAA Tournament, they've played top-5 Duke twice, and top-five Carolina twice, and top-ten Wake Forest twice, plus whoever else is good that year in the ACC. This year? Maryland's schedule includes losses at neutral sites (just like the NCAA Tournament's games) against non-Tournament bound Cincinnati, plus Wisconsin and Villanova, and then in their first game of the ACC Tournament as well against Georgia Tech in Greensboro. This Maryland team lost a game to William & Mary for crying out loud. At home. And what big wins has Maryland had this year? What even big games has Maryland played in, what big-time experience have those players had this season? Beating a crappy Indiana team on the road back on December 1? Truly, the single solitary true good win on Maryland's entire schedule this year is the one against Duke at the end of the regular season. Otherwise, these ACC teams haven't even been tested, so we have no reason to believe they will succeed against the big boys. I'm not picking any of them to go far.

The Big 12, in stark contrast to the ACC, had a great year in 2009-2010. You've got seven legitimate good teams in the conference -- Oklahoma State (who's had a couple of huge wins this year and who I'm picking to win a few games in March), Texas (who was ranked in the top couple of teams in the nation earlier this season), Missouri, Texas A&M, #3 seeded Baylor (having their best season in ages and their first legitimate shot to reach the Sweet 16 I think in my lifetime), #2 seeded Kansas State (who turned a lot of heads this year with also their best basketball season in a long while), and of course #1 Kansas, who is ranked as the top team in the country heading into today's action. This conference is loaded with talented teams, and as I've discussed above that action feeds on itself because it makes these teams much, much better in the Tournament to have faced 9 or 10 games against tough competition this year already. And you will note, I am picking at least three teams from this conference to reach the Sweet 16 in this year's Tournament.

The Big East, I don't have to get into again. Suffice it to say that each of Syracuse, West Virginia, Villanova, Georgetown and Pittsburgh is a legitimate top-15 team in the country, and all but probably Pitt have a realistic shot to reach the Final Four this year. No other conference in America has quite the depth of the Big East, nor quite the strength at the top of the group (though the Big 12 is definitely close on both counts), and another especially impressive facet is the strength in the middle of the conference. Take the ACC for example, and once you get through Duke and Maryland, there is a significant dropoff until the next teams (Virginia Tech and Florida State), and then another big drop until the rest of the dregs. Not in the Big East, where even after the four legitimate Final Four contenders I mentioned above, it's still Pittsburgh (who is better than anyone in the ACC, including Maryland), it's Marquette, it's Louisville, and it's Notre Dame, all of whom have at least 20 total wins and all of whom won at least 10 games in the toughest conference in college basketball. You can only say that about four total teams in the ACC, and they play in a far worse conference to boot. This is why I am expecting a lot of early success for the Big East teams -- even the ones not playing so well down the stretch and who I therefore cannot pick to go to deep in the Tournament -- and why you will see a number of them in my Sweet 16.

The Pac-10 is having its worst year of my lifetime, hands down, no questions asked. Arizona is down, UCLA is down, Stanford's got nothing, USC is nowhere to be found, even the Oregon schools decided to completely take the year off. There are only three schools in the Pac-10 with more than 16 total wins on the season, and only three that finished over .500 overall if you remove Division II schools from the equation. That conference is unthinkable, as is picking any of those teams to reach the Sweet 16 this year for me. The SEC has got a few decent teams, although beyond Kentucky I don't trust most of those other teams to make it very far in March, and there really was not much depth beyond the three quality teams in the conference on the year. I've also heard some people say the Big Ten is having a good year. Well, those people are fools. While the Big Ten has certainly not been the worst major conference in the country in 2009-2010, the fact that so many of the traditionally strong teams are having down years again weighs on the ability of even the better teams in the conference to really make me think they have what it takes to step up when it counts in March. Purdue was looking good, easily the best of the bunch in the Big Ten this year, but the loss of Robbie Hummel has left that team looking like a shell of its former self, and I would not stake anything on picking this team to win even one or two games after I watched how badly Tubby Smith's Minnesota gophers trounced them at the start of the Big Ten Tournament. Beyond Purdue, Ohio State, Michigan State and Wisconsin all had decent years to round out the other quality teams in the conference, but none of them -- even the ultra-experienced Tom Izzo's Michigan State squad that played in the Final Four in 2009 -- have particularly wowed me, and I think a lot of it has to do with the absence on their schedules of big games with the likes of Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and even Illinois and Minnesota who each lost at least 13 games during the season. And as discussed above, this is not the kind of team I like to pick to go far in my bracket as a rule.

The other thing I should mention is that I also tend to like to pick teams who have not only played a lot of big games against strong teams and won a lot of those games, but also teams that have won some big games away from home. Big home wins are big, huge even in determining seeding and odds of success in the NCAA Tournament. But you show me a team that has traveled away from its familiar court, the cozy locker room and its thousands of adoring fans to take on a top-10 team in unfamiliar, often hostile, territory, and come away a winner, and I'll show you a team that's going place in March.

So, with all of the above in mind, let's take a look at my Elite 8 teams. In the Midwest, I have Kansas against Georgetown in what should be a matchup of two hot teams playing well and bringing a ton of talent to the court. Unfortunately, having watched many of the Hoyas' (and the Jayhawks') games this season, one thing I can say with certainty in my mind is that Kansas has been the model of consistency, while Georgetown has been among the most inconsistent teams among the nationally-ranked squads in the country. I can see exactly how this game is gonna go in my mind already -- Kansas jumps out to a sizable lead, something in the 16-4 range to start the game, and then by the time Georgetown gets off its heels, it just won't quite be able to come back and make up for the slow early start. Although it's clearly not where my heart is, I like Kansas to win the Midwest regional and advance to their billionth Final Four as a school.

In the East is probably the Elite 8 game that I am looking forward to the most heading into the NCAA Tournament: Kentucky vs. West Virginia. I have a ton of respect for Bob Huggins as I mentioned the other day here in the blog and I think his West Virginia squad is probably the most underrated, under-appreciated team in the nation. They always always always come to play for their coach, and they play sick defense and never give up. Unfortunately for them, after a nice run in March I just don't think they will quite have the firepower to stop John Wall and the Kentucky offense. Although John Callipari has proven himself beyond a shadow of a doubt to be one of the biggest scumbags involved in the game today, he's a scumbag who can Coach. I just don't see anything stopping Kentucky from plowing their way through the East and also appearing in the 2010 Final Four.

I have Syracuse matching up with Kansas State in the West regional Elite 8 game, and if you've read here during this season then you know I think the Cuse is destined for great things. I have a lot of respect for K-State and what they've accomplished this year in a very tough Big 12 Conference. But I'm not sure anyone in the country can stick with Syracuse's prowess on both the offensive and defensive side of the ball, and K-State is not the Kansas school that I think might have the best shot to do so, if you know what I mean. I feel confident that Syracuse will emerge from the West to stake its claim against the winner of Georgetown-Kansas on that half of the NCAA Tournament Bracket.

And lastly, the South, where the Tournament organizers decided to blow Coach K again by giving him easily the least difficult path to the Final Four, but where as I discussed yesterday I still don't think he's going to get there. Despite having the fewest truly good teams in the bracket, I think this is by far the most difficult bracket to pick, and I think mostly anybody doing a bracket this year is either picking Duke or picking a total crapshoot. In my case, I've decided to have Duke losing to Louisville, and Louisville eventually going on to lose to Villanova to make it two more Big East teams in the Final Four for the second straight year. Truthfully though, I am not confident about Louisville as they were so up and down this year, and I am not confident about Villanova either after the way they ended the season. I don't like Duke, and I just can't bring myself to pick Baylor to make their first Final Four in 850 generations. And lord knows I'm not picking Purdue at #4 to win anything this postseason. It's tough when you just don't trust any of the top four or five seeds in a bracket -- in the end I am picking Nova over Louisville but it could be almost any team in the bracket playing for the right to get spanked by Kentucky in the Final Four.

So my pre-Tournament Final Four includes Kansas playing Syracuse, and Kentucky playing Villanova. I think Kansas-Syracuse should be a game for the ages, but in the end if forced to choose right now without seeing how each team is playing in the tournament, I would go with Kansas, and on the other side of the bracket I have to pick Kentucky, despite their youth and the fact that its a Callipari team so you know less than 10% of the students will actually graduate or even probably ever go to class. I just don't like the way Nova ended the season enough to pick them to beat a team like Kentucky on this big stage. And when the season-long anticipation of Kansas vs Kentucky finally happens in early April, I'm going with the talent of Kentucky to complete a Carmelo-Anthony-with-Syracuse type of single-season run to a title in John Callipari's first year with the Wildcats.

Here's hoping we see some nice upsets and fun action in these first couple of rounds over the next few days.

2010 March Madness Picks -- Part II

OK so here is part II of my 2010 March Madness picks. In case you missed it, here is read Part I of my predictions where I contemplate the Midwest and the East brackets. In this post, I will provide my thoughts on the Western and the Southern regionals.

Starting with the West, this is the bracket that I think competes with the East as the toughest brackets in the field this year, again mostly because the West contains 3 solid teams among its top four seeds. Syracuse is the #1 seed in the West, and anybody who has watched the Cuse play more than a couple of games this season knows that this is a team with a ton of skill, seven quality starting players, they can shoot the ball very well, and most of all they play a 2-3 zone defense that for most teams will be perhaps the most "different" defense they have faced all season long. As if this weren't enough to propel the Cuse to the final two teams in their bracket, the #4 seed on Syracuse's side of the bracket is Vanderbilt, a trendy pick of late but not a team in my view that can stick with Syracuse, on either side of the ball. In fact, I expect Butler at #5 to beat Vandy in the Round of 32, but either way the Cuse should have little trouble dispatching with either team in the Sweet 16. On the other half of the bracket, Kansas State is a strong #2 seed, as is Pittsburgh at #3. Although there are some other teams on that half of the regional, it's nobody who I think will have much of a chance to upend either K-State or Pitt, and those two teams seem destined for a Sweet 16 clash as well, where I would guess that K-State will win as I have seen Pitt look entirely too beatable on one or two too many occasions this season.

So for the West regional, I think we are looking at Syracuse - Butler on the top half, and Kansas State - Pittsburgh on the bottom. The Cuse should have enough to overpower Butler (or Vanderbilt) to reach the Elite 8, where I would guess they will face Kansas State in what is probably that school's best basketball team in many years.

Moving to the South bracket, here is the one regional where I think the #1 seed (Duke) does not have a good chance of winning their way through and reaching the Final Four. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the ACC had the worst year in 2010 that I can ever recall that conference having. And that's not just words on a screen or monitor somewhere -- the bottom line is that, when Duke posts a record of 29-5 and 13-3 in the ACC, people cannot help but see that and identify it with some of the national championship-type of teams Duke has had in the recent past. But this team simply did not face even close to the day-in, day-out quality of competition that it is used to facing in most years, and I think this will show through come Tournament time. North Carolina, the perennial powerhouse, was horrible this year, and offered up two easy wins for Duke that normally require the Blue Devils to claw their way to one win the season series. Maryland was the only other team in the entire ACC to to have fewer than six conference losses, or fewer than 8 total losses on the season. While Maryland might have been up, UNC was down as I mentioned, as were Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, Clemson, BC, Virgina, NC State and basically every other ACC team. And outside of the conference, Duke beat bad Arizona State, UConn and St. Johns teams, they lost at Wisconsin and they got crushed by Georgetown, also on the road. In fact, throughout the regular season, this Duke squad was just 8-5 away from Cameron Indoor Stadium, and if you take out the three neutral-court wins vs. UConn, ISU and Gonzaga, they were actually just 5-5 in true road games on the year. Most dramatically, I read this past weekend that Duke finished the 2009-2010 regular season with exactly one win against the NCAA top 50 teams. That right there is all I need to know -- Duke will not go far this year and will fail to make the Final Four for the seventh straight season.

So who is going to beat Duke in the South regional this year? Well, the obvious choice is #2 seeded Villanova, not only because they are a more athletic team playing in a much tougher conference, but also because a very similar Nova team crushed a very similar Duke team in last year's NCAA tournament in one of the worst beatings of last year's Big Dance. But I actually think Duke will lose even before facing off against Villanova in the Elite 8, most likely I would guess to Louisville if they can get past their first match with Pac-10 denizen Cal.

Other than Nova and Louisville, however, the NCAA Committee really did Duke a major favor by putting them in what I think is easily the weakest of the four brackets in this year's Tournament. #2 Villanova ended the season on an extended losing streak, including losing in their first game in the Big East tournament, and the #3 seed in the bracket is the Baylor Bears, in whom I have very little confidence. And then the #4 seed is Purdue, who after losing forward Robbie Hummel for the year to injury went on to get utterly crushed by 27 points in their next game in the Big Ten tournament to a 13-loss Minnesota team. You can take Purdue out, because they are utterly, completely done for this season, and I would not be surprised at all to see them lose in the first round to #13 seed Sienna.

So the South looks to be the easiest bracket of the four, and yet I do not think #1 Duke will be around for the regional finals in the Elite 8, although I do think that #2 Villanova is likely to survive to play for the first to appear in back to back Final Fours. I do not feel comfortable with either the #3 or the #4 seed in this bracket, nor with any of the other teams on the top half of that draw, so I am leaning towards Louisville possibly busting out with a run to the Elite 8 under coach Rick Pitino who certainly has had success in this tournament in the past.

So my eight Elite 8 picks through all four regionals include:

Midwest: 1 Kansas, 3 Georgetown

East: 1 Kentucky, 2 West Virginia

West: 1 Syracuse, 2 Kansas State

South: 9 Louisville, 2 Villanova

Back tomorrow with my Elite 8, Final Four and National Championship selections.

2010 March Madness Picks -- Part I

OK so after having a lot of fun picking the over/unders for the 2009 Major League Baseball season and then again picking the NFL games during the 2009-2010 season, I am going to post my official picks for the 2010 NCAA Tournament for the first time here on the blog. It's a lot to get through in this first week, so I am going to spread the picks out over a few days here, starting today with the Midwest and the East brackets, whose respective champions will meet in the Final Four in a few weeks to decide who gets the right to play for the 2010 national championship.

For starters, I will say this year that I think we are looking at generally speaking one of the weakest pools of NCAA basketball teams in recent memory. While of course you've got the ever-present talking heads on the 24-hour sports tv channels and the myriad 24-hour sports radio and other media outlets endlessly debating which regional is the strongest and which is the weakest, the bottom line is that none of these four brackets strikes me as particularly tougher or easier than any other, and I think ultimately this stems from the fact that there really are not more than a handful of truly good teams in the game this year. By the time you get down to the 3 and 4 seeds, only about half of those teams strike fear into anyone's hearts as far as I'm concerned, and just about nobody below that level is really on anyone's radar screen.

Looking at the Midwest, this is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Kansas of course at #1 is the top team in the country, and is very deserving of that honor. They have destroyed the competition this year, and really didn't have any truly bad losses like so many teams have had on occasion throughout the season. They stepped up and won their conference tournament, so they're playing well, and they have one of the country's best basketball coaches in Bill Self. Kansas can be counted on I think to run deep this year, and frankly there is not much in their way to the Final Four in the Midwestern regional.

Despite all the hype coming out of the midwestern part of the country this year, this was a terrible year for the Big Ten, and I don't think much of Ohio State as a #2 seed. Sure I have Ohio State winning their first-round game, but I think a tough #7 Oklahoma State team takes the other OSU out in the Round of 32 after Oklahoma State dispatches with #10 Georgia Tech in Round 1. I also have tremendous respect for Tom Izzo, #5 Michigan State's coach, and even though his team has underachieved a bit this year, I see them upsetting #4 Maryland in Round 2 to advance to the Sweet Sixteen for the 85th straight season. The ACC is going to have a baaaaaad tournament this year me thinks, as this is pretty much the weakest I can ever recall the ACC being, in my entire adult life of following college basketball, and I think Georgia Tech and Maryland's early demises this year will be the first signs of that as each team fared pretty well in-conference in 2010 and yet will be exiting early from the Big Dance later this weekend in my estimation. And lastly, the #3 seed in the Midwest is my alma mater in Georgetown, who has a deceptively tough team that is strong both inside and out, is well-coached, and who had 10 losses despite recording 9 wins against tournament teams on the season (including Duke, Butler, Washington and Temple out-of-conference as well as Butler, Washington, Pitt, Louisville, Syracuse and Marquette away from home) and 5 wins against top-10 teams on the year. The Hoyas finished up the season strong, finishing only a ridiculous non-travel-call away from taking their first Big East title in three years, and I think should have little trouble handling Ohio, Tennessee or SDSU over their first two games.

So in all, I think Kansas is obviously a very strong top seed in the Midwest, but I am not impressed with #2 Ohio State and do not expect them to be a threat in this year's tournament. I do like Georgetown at #3, but then Maryland again at #4 I think is weak, and there are not any other teams in the bracket that I consider a threat. Thus, I am expecting a matchup of Georgetown and Kansas in the Elite 8 to determine the winner of this regional just a couple of weeks from now.

Turning to the Eastern regional, I suppose I think this is probably the toughest of the brackets, but even then only because I think three of the top four seeds are quality teams with a real shot to make some noise in their bracket before all is said and done, while most other regionals I think only have two quality teams among their top four seeds as I think with the Midwest per the above discussion. In the East, I love Kentucky as the #1 seed, and like with Kansas in the Midwest, I think it is going to be very difficult to find a team to challenge Kentucky when push comes to shove in this regional. Although, if there was a #2 seed that could push this young Kentucky team to the wall (pun intended), it might be #2 seeded West Virginia, who showed in the second half of this season and then especially in the Big East tournament just how tough and solid they really are. Some people don't even realize that Bob Huggins -- the old Cincinnati coach -- landed a few years ago at West Virginia, and just like he did at his former school, he has quickly built a perennial basketball powerhouse as he preaches his unique brand of ball to a new audience.

New Mexico as a #3 seed is the most questionable upper seeded team in this bracket in my view, and even though UNM had a great season in their own right, I just think in this year more than any year in recent memory, there is really very little good college basketball being played west of Kansas. The Pac-10 is, like the ACC, having perhaps its worst year in recent memory, with somewhere between zero and one team actually deserving a bid in the Big Dance, and the WCC, WAC and MWC all also seem a bit lighter than they have been in past years. New Mexico has almost zero quality wins on their schedule unless you count wins over fellow westerners like BYU and UNLV, and given the chance I am going to go with the teams with quality road wins over teams with just 4 losses but no games against real competition any day in the NCAA Tournament. So while I will pick UNM to win their first game against Montana, I don't expect them to be around much longer after that as a #3 seed in the East regional. At #4 in the East is Wisconsin, one of the few teams I do have a little respect for out of the Big Ten this year. Although most of Wisconsin's success has come on their home court this season where they have been almost unbeatable, I do expect Wisconsin to win their first game before having a great matchup with A-10 champion Temple, one of four teams in this year's Big Dance from the state of Pennsylvania (the others being Pitt, Villanova and Lehigh). I would guess that Wisconsin pulls that one out in the Round of 32, but it doesn't matter much because either team is I think easy fodder for Kentucky in the Sweet 16.

So in the East, I love Kentucky at #1, and I also like West Virginia quite a bit at #2. I expect #3 New Mexico not to run deep in the tournament, and I think the #5-#4 matchup is interesting but ultimately will fall to Kentucky next weekend. I think this one shapes up quite nicely to feature an Elite 8 matchup of Kentucky vs. West Virginia in one of the two brackets this year that I see coming down to a 1-2 battle to decide the winner of the regional.

Tomorrow I will be back to preview the West and the South brackets, finalize my Elite 8 teams, and then on Thursday I can post my pre-tournament Elite 8, Final Four and Final winners.

Reflections on the Madness

Well, the 2009 NCAA Tournament went out with a real whimper on Monday night, as UNC came to play, took a huge lead early over the well over-matched Michigan State Spartans and simply never took their hands off of MSU's collective neck from that point on. It was a truly impressive performance, albeit not very compelling television, as UNC blew through every single competitor it faced in six tournament games by double-digits, the first time that has happened since Duke's national title back in 2001. In the end it was a very solid 89-72 win for the Tar Heels, who nabbed their fifth national title by 17 points for the largest national title game margin of victory in 17 years.

To completely understand what a beating Monday night was, the Spartans led one time in the entire game, at 3-2. That lead lasted exactly 19 seconds, until the Heels went up 5-3 on a 3-pointer and just never even considered looking back. Carolina was quickly up 10 points after just 4:04 into the game. That lead ballooned to 15 points after just 7:03. By just 9:38 into the national title game, MSU was already down 20 points. After heading into halftime with a 21-point lead, the Tar Heels never allowed MSU to get closer than 14 points, keeping the lead between 17 and 23 points for almost the entire second half of the first half and almost the entire second half of the game. There was never that run, or even in my view any concern about a run from MSU, and you got the sense from watching that Carolina could have easily ran up 120 points if they had needed to in this game. Carolina outshot Michigan State from the field 46% to 40%, 41% to 30% from 3-point land, and Carolina took 11 more free throws and made seven more than the Spartans. Carolina also tallied nine steals to just one from MSU, and perhaps the most damning stat of the game for the Spartans given UNC's scoring prowess, North Carolina generated 21 turnovers by MSU, while making only seven turnovers themselves. It was about as thorough of a beating as I can recall in the NCAA finals since that glorious day when that sick UNLV team in 1990 lambasted Duke 103-73 for the biggest crush in NCAA Finals history.

When I think about what happened on Monday night, what it really comes down to in my mind was Carolina elevating itself to among the elite NCAA tournament teams of all time. UNC was the consensus #1 team coming in to the 2008-2009 season, and despite some hiccups and even starting 0-2 in ACC play, they ended the season showing everyone just what had been expected of them before college basketball began some five months ago, so it's not like this team came out of nowhere or played above its head at the end here. No, UNC came into the title game expected to win, but what they did in drubbing MSU so badly from start to finish is cement this 2009 squad as having one of March Madness's all-time greats.

Consider this: in the 2009 NCAA Tournament, each of UNC's six victories was by double digits -- the first time that has happened since eight years ago. In fact, this was only the sixth time in history that a team won all of its NCAA tournament games by at least 10 points (Indiana 1981, UCLA 1967, Michigan State 1979 and 2000, Duke 2001, and UNC 2009). That 2000 Michigan State team won every game by double figures, but its largest victory after the first round cakewalk game was 17 points, while Carolina's last four opponents fell by 21, 12, 14 and 17. The 2001 Duke national champions also won all six of their games by at least 10 points, but they trailed Maryland in the Final Four by a whopping 22 points before powering their way back to victory. What's more, UNC's 55 first-half points on Monday night are a new title-game record, to go along with their record 21-point halftime lead.

UNC's average margin of victory over all six of its NCAA Tournament games this year was 20.2 points -- the fifth largest in NCAA history, and the largest average margin of victory since Kentucky in 1996, whose average margin of victory was 21.5. But that Tony Delk-, Antoine Walker- and Ron Mercer-led Kentucky squad's Final Four game was won by just 7 points, and the National Championship game by just 9 points, both reasonably close games. Carolina beat Nova the other day by 14 points to make the finals, and then with a 17-point victory in the title game, I believe this makes what UNC did this year stand out among all NCAA tournament runs since the expansion to 64 teams back in 1985. With a combined margin of victory of 16 points over its last four games in this year's Tournament, against No. 4, 2, 3 and 2 seeds, this team truly took on all comers and more or less crushed them all.

As I said, in a way it's unfortunate how badly Carolina took it to Michigan State to end the 2009 NCAA Tournament, because as far as tv goes, that was about as low as it gets. Not only did the game end in a blowout, but it even began in a blowout, and the blowout was administered by exactly the team everyone was expecting to administer it. But between the lines, Carolina put the icing on another terrific season, and on an NCAA Tournament for the Ages with its 17-point drubbing of MSU to win its fifth national title in Detroit.

The Final Four

Well the Final Four is set for Detroit this coming weekend, and it does not include a couple of the teams that most people had assumed would be there. The Big East did get its two teams into the Final Four, both fully deserving, but those teams do not include either Louisville or Pittsburgh, perhaps the two most-often picked teams to win it all this year based on their regular season schedules. Instead, UConn and UNC plowed through their brackets as #1 seeds, not really being hugely tested along the way, including Carolina pretty much dismantling Oklahoma despite another awesome performance by Blake Griffin, easily the best player in the country this year.

Oh yeah, and don't you just hate when this happens to you:



God, I remember the first time I smacked my fucking temple on the backboard during a live basketball game. Dam did that ever smart.

Anyways, Villanova took down Pittsburgh on Saturday to gain its spot in the Final Four in what probably will go down as the best game of the whole tournament this year. I know I wrote about this as the tournament was beginning a couple of weeks ago, but Jay Wright, what can you say about him. He is just a great coach, and he has the Villanova wildcats playing about as well as you could ever expect to see them play. With 46 seconds to go in that game, Nova held a four point lead as Pittsburgh inbounded the ball, and then Pitt fought back until a last second drive did them in and ended their chances at defending their #1 seed in Detroit this year, in just about the most entertaining 46 seconds of basketball you will ever see:



And still I have left the best for last, as Tom Izzo's Michigan State Spartans broke down all-around #1 seed Louisville on Sunday afternoon, just two days after Louisville utterly demolished Arizona 103-64. I mean, even though Arizona clearly has no business playing on the same court as most of the teams remaining in the Sweet 16 in the tournament given how bad their regular season was this year, to take a tournament-experienced team like that and trounce them that bad, you couldn't deny that Louisville was the best, hottest team in the country after that beatdown, but MSU simply clamped down on the Cardinals and just would not let them score when they needed to. After Louisville took the lead early in the second half, Michigan State went on a little run, built their lead back up, and then refused to look back, shocking the world in the process.

Which leads me to my overall point about this year's Final Four -- as with many years, this is really a celebration of great coaching as much as it is about great players. On the one side you've got Jim Calhoun, having led UConn to two national titles and a 35-12 record in the NCAA tournament, including 4-0 in the Final Four, and having taken a UConn program that was nowhere, completely non-existent in 1986 and built it into an absolute powerhouse, year in and year out over the past 10+ years. This is Calhoun's third Final Four appearance, the first two both resulting in national championships.

Then you have Roy Williams, who made the NCAA tournament in his last 14 consecutive years at Kansas, averaging nearly 28 wins per season, before leaving for Carolina where he has once again made the Big Dance in every season since his arrival in 2003. Williams won the AP coach of the year award in 1992 with Kansas and again in 2006
with UNC, making him only the second coach to ever win this award with two different teams. He is third all-time in NCAA Tournament wins with 49 and has an NCAA postseason win percentage of .731, fourth-best among active coaches. Eight of his teams have been seeded No. 1 in a region in NCAA play, and he has coached a team to 30 or more wins eight times, which is the second-most in NCAA history. He has won 20 or more games 18 times in 20 years (winning 19 in his first seasons at Kansas and North Carolina), including 14 straight seasons at Kansas, a streak that equaled the third longest in NCAA history. Williams has been to eight Final Fours over his 21 year coaching career.

Jay Wright, clearly the youngest of the bunch, coached at Hofstra from 1994-2001, culminating in three consecutive postseason appearances from 1999-2001, before being named head basketball coach at Villanova in March of 2001. Under Wright, Nova has improved dramatically since the 2001-2004 teams, including making the Sweet 16 four times in the past five years. His coaching resume is nothing compared to the other three coaches left in the Final Four, but he is young and has only coached at a premiere college basketball program for the past eight seasons, and those of you out there who follow the sport will know that he is a great gameday coach, and has managed to get quite a bit out of less talented teams than many of his peers.

Tom Izzo has been the head coach at MSU since 1995, and in 14 years he had lead the team to 12 consecutive NCAA tournament appearances, the 5th longest active streak in the nation, six Final Fours and 26 NCAA tournament wins, second only to Duke's Coach Ghey who has tallied 29 wins over the past 12 seasons. The difference is, Coach Ghey and Roy Williams have accomplished their impressive tournament records by routinely splitting up the 5 or 6 best, most talented high schoolers in the country every single year. Tom Izzo, on the other hand, hasn't even had a single player that I would describe as truly "great" in his entire run. Shawn Respert is probably the best player MSU has ever had during Izzo's tenure running the team, and of course most of you out there are probably thinking to yourself, "Who?" Exactly. Nobody, and I mean nobody, consistently does more with less talent than Tom Izzo, period. I mean, Mateen effin' Cleaves? Zach Randolph? And yet somehow, every single player that Izzo has recruited and who completed their full eligibility has gone to at least one Final Four under Tom Izzo. Not sure how anybody in the country can beat that when it comes right down to it.

So these are the four men who will battle it out in the lovely paradise known as Detroit, Michigan in a week's time. Although Rick Pitino would have been a great addition to the roster of Final Four coaches this year, the bottom line is that we are looking at one of the best conglomerations of truly talented, deserving coaches I can ever recall meeting to decide college basketball's national championship.

The Wicked Witch is Dead

It's a wonderful day in the neighborhood, folks.

I mean, my bracket is shot. After hanging in there through the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament, Thursday saw me lose two of my Final Four teams in the span of about 10 minutes, obliterating my picks and removing me from contention in any pool worth its salt. But despite my brackets crumbling and going straight into the wastebasket, I have to say I am in a great mood here nonetheless. So why am I so happy after my bracket got shredded on Thursday?

Duke is gone. Again. And they did it this year in spectacular fashion, by hanging close to Villanova in the first half but then getting completely crushed all throughout the second, eventually losing by 23 to yet another Big East heavy.

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead
The Wicked Witch
The Wicked Witch
Ding Dong the Wicked Witch is Dead!

I could easily go 850 years without seeing another shot of that a-hole Coach K screaming on the sidelines, yelling at the ref for calling a foul after one of his players slammed another guy in the back of the head during game play with an obvious intent to injure. That butthole Steve Wojihowski slamming the floor from the bench and yelling "De-FENSE!" The idiot Dukies bopping up and down in the stands, every last one of them honestly believing they are the smartest, most clever sports fans in the history of the world. As hateable as the coaching staff surely is, and the fact that the school consistently brings in the very best players in the country year in and year out in a form of legalized unfairness, I think it's the asshole fans who really give Duke the reputation that they have earned over the years. I mean, these guys make Cowboy fans look like only fucking losers, but nothing worse. So seeing them get their comeuppance, whenever it finally happens every year, is always a great thing. The fact that the team has now not made the Elite 8 since 2004 with the best talent in the country refreshing itself on a yearly basis is just a bonus as far as I'm concerned.

The Big East went 3 for 3 so far on Thursday in the biggest story so far of the NCAA tournament. If overall #1 seed Louisville manages to win on Friday, then we'll be looking at four of the Elite 8 teams all coming out of the Big East, which hasn't even come close to happening ever before. And that's assuming that the hated Orange of Syracuse don't also come up with a victory to make it five of the Elite 8 teams. There aren't many people stupid enough to have decried what the Big East has already accomplished in the Tournament, but presumably the few morons out there who have done so will now finally stop embarrassing themselves by keeping their haterism quiet(fat chance). I've heard about an east coast bias, a Big East bias, and even the unthinkably idiotic claim that all these Big East teams making the Sweet 16 means nothing because they were all seeded highly enough that they were "supposed to win", so who cares if the entire last four rounds of the Tournament are more like the Big East regular season schedule than the Big Dance. I will never understand people I guess.

Enjoy the rest of the Big East Tournament II everyone. I will be back on Monday with my regularly scheduled posting.

March Madness, Monday Update

Well the first weekend of the Madness that is March has come and gone, and what a first weekend it was. As I said last week, there really is nothing to compare these first few days of the NCAA basketball tournament to, with 32 games on Thursday/Friday and then another 16 over the weekend. There is just important, interesting, emotional basketball being played all over the country basically all day long, and as an avid sports fan, I have to say it's pretty effin' awesome.

So what did we learn over the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament so far? First and foremost, we learned I think that the Big East really is That Good. This shouldn't be a big surprise to anyone, but right here a week ago I complained that the Selection Committee took a supposedly unbiased look at all the power conferences, and came up with 7 entrants from the Big East, 7 from the ACC, 7 from the Big Ten and 6 more from the Pac-10, with the latter two conferences having indisputably down years and each lacking any serious threat at the top of the national rankings. Although the ACC lacked any real depth, at least they had stalwarts Duke and UNC, plus Wake and Clemson, to go along with the three crappy teams they somehow got in to the Big Dance here in 2009.

But the Big East really flexed its muscle this weekend, you have to admit that, going 6-1 in the first round of the tournament, and 5-1 in the second, as only West Virginia lost its opener and Marquette fell in a tough battle on Sunday by four points to Missouri. For the first time in history, the Sweet 16 contains five teams from one conference, with #1 seeds Louisville, UConn and Pitt joining #3 seeds Villanova and Syracuse in comprising nearly a third of the remaining 16 teams in the field. I think I recall four Sweet 16 teams from the Big East or the ACC before, but five I know has never happened before, so in that sense we are looking at conference domination of historical proportions here. Meanwhile, the ACC and its 7 teams ended up 5-5 over the weekend as compared to the Big East's 11-2, with only Duke and Carolina remaining the Sweet 16. The Big 10 went 5-6 in the first two rounds, sending just Michigan State and Purdue, its top two teams, to the Sweet 16, and the Pac-10, ironically enough, has only Arizona, who indisputably did not even belong in the tournament, remaining as its lone representative heading to Round 3 this coming weekend after that conference ended the first two rounds at a 5-6 clip as well.

So here's your total breakdown of the big conferences so far through two rounds in the 2009 NCAA tournament:

Big East: 11-2 (5 teams in Sweet 16)
Big 12: 9-2 (3 teams in Sweet 16)
ACC: 5-5 (2 teams in Sweet 16)
Big Ten: 5-6 (2 teams in Sweet 16)
Pac-10: 5-7 (1 team in Sweet 16)
SEC: 1-3 (0 teams in Sweet 16)

The remaining three Sweet 16 teams are #4 Gonzaga out of the West Coast, who played probably the game of the tournament so far in beating Western Kentucky on a last-second (literally) layup in the Round of 32, #4 seeded Xavier out of the Atlantic 10, and of course #2 seed Memphis from Conference USA who looked solid through two games so far this past weekend.

Some random thoughts on the tournament so far:

1. UConn looked as good as anybody in the field in blowing out its first two opponents in the tournament, although one can't be thrilled with coach Calhoun being forced to miss a game due to unspecified "illness" for the second time this season. The point guard was back on the court for their second game this weekend, and looked quite good overall I would say, after getting some early jitters out in his first appearance on the court in nearly two weeks.

2. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that, since Arizona lasted through two rounds, they obviously "deserved" to be the field of 65. They didn't, and their success is not really relevant to the point. The Wildcats beat up on a Utah team that played uncharacteristically sloppy ball on Thursday, and then they had the fortune of facing #13 seed Cleveland State in the second round after they upset overrated ACC heavy Wake Forest in the first round, the highest seed to fall overall in the event. I'm not taking anything away from Arizona who has obviously earned their right to be in the Sweet 16 at this point after being outright gifted a berth in the Big Dance, but so they beat Utah and Cleveland State. That could easily be St. Mary's, or Providence, in that spot, and both of those teams surely deserved the chance moreso than Arizona. So I don't care how well the Wildcats have played so far. Based just on logic, there is not an actual relation between the play of one team and their right to be there in the first place. Someone else should have been given that chance, and could certainly have had the same success as Zona but from a much more deserving team.

3. This marks the second straight year where lots of chalk has made it through to the Round of 16. In fact, this is the first time in at least 30-some years that all four of the #1 seeds, #2 seeds and #3 seeds have advanced to the Sweet 16. If you add up the seeds of all the Sweet 16 teams, that total number is 49, which is the lowest total seeding for a Sweet 16 in history. We've got seeds 1 through 4 in the East, and again 1 through 4 in the South, while the Midwest four Sweet 16 teams include seeds 1, 2, 3 and Arizona at #12, and the East features #1, #2, #3 and #5 in Purdue, who outlasted a ferocious rally from Pac-10 best Washington to hold on to nab the final spot in that region.

4. My bracket is smack in the middle of the pack in the pools I have entered it, as my penchant for picking at least some upsets this year has cost me given the chalk-walk described above, but at least my focus on the Big East and the strong ACC teams helped me to nab 12 out of 16 Sweet 16 teams. But in a year of this much chalk, 12 of 16 isn't even close to cutting it, and in the end has me lounging just below the midpoint in most of my pools. In fact, my bigger issue is that I've already lost two of my Elite 8 teams, as West Virginia's first-round defeat and Arizona State's loss on Sunday leave me with only 6 candidates left to make some noise in the Big Dance, although all of my Final Four teams still remain alive and are playing fairly well.

5. As far as the #1 seeds, I thought UConn looked the best as I mentioned above, although I read this weekend that of the three teams in history that averaged a wider margin of victory through their first two March Madness games than UConn did last week, one of them lost in the Elite 8, and the other two failed to win their Sweet 16 game. But UConn overall looked great. Louisville looked a bit shaky at times, going down 12 early to Siena and actually being behind by four points with less than 10 to play, but then they put on the exact type of run that the #1 team in the country is used to doing and ended up winning that game by a comfortable margin. Overall they've done roughly what I expected them to and have not seen anything too concerning. Pitt, however, has concerned me a little, having trouble with both East Tennessee State and Oklahoma State before winning both games, but I continue to pick them as probably the first #1 seed to fall. Carolina in the South absolutely crushed Radford in Round 1, but then allowed LSU to claw their way back into the second half of their game on Sunday, ceding a four-point lead before putting on one of their famous runs to seal the victory.

In all, it was a great 48 games over four days, and I look forward the next 12 games this weekend and then the Final Four in lovely Detroit in a couple of weeks. Oh, and F Syracuse!

The Madness is Upon Us

Man, is there anything better than this day, all across the country? I mean, March Madness is the event that attracts the casual, or as I like to describe them, the "female" fan more than any other sporting event we got, except for perhaps the Superbowl, which for a one-time event has the most cache among the chicks of the country I would think. But pretty much everyone loves March Madness, from the old dude in the mailroom in the basement of my office building, to Hammer Wife who couldn't tell you the difference between a bounce pass and a free throw, and even to the younger generation who fill out brackets for their parents' office pools, etc. And these first couple of days, they just can't be beat in terms of non-stop excitement, can they? 16 awesome games a day for Thursday and Friday....damn. If ever there was a day that makes me jealous of those among you who get to live in Las Vegas year-round, this is the day.

I actually like my brackets this year, moreso than in most years. Unlike in most years, this year I found myself going with a general theme, whether I did so consciously or not, of consistently picking winners from those teams that have played the most other strong competition throughout this entire season. This means focusing primarily on the Big East and the ACC teams who have performed the best over a long schedule riddled with quality competition, while generally trying to avoid the Big 10 and Pac-10 teams that in some cases didn't face a truly great opponent all season long. In the Midwest Regional, I like most of the chalk, with Louisville, Wake Forest and the always excellently-coached Michigan State making my Sweet 16, but I'm throwing in a gritty West Virginia team to upset a very young Kansas squad in the Round of 32, as WVU always seems to be hanging around after a game or two in the tournament lately, don't they? In fact, I'm picking WVU to upset Michigan State in the Sweet 16 and make a surprise appearance in the Elite 8, where I have them squaring off with conference foe Louisville, who is my pick to Advance to the final four from this regional.

In the West, I am all chalk as far the Sweet 16 goes, with the top 4 seeds all advancing despite my picking a few upsets in the Round of 64 (most notably UNI as a 12 seed to take down a typically overrated Purdue squad). I'm not a huge Missouri fan, but they're a good little team and I opted to go with them over Marquette in the second round due to Marquette's injury issues at this point in the season. Even though I have my hesitations about both UConn and Memphis, I ended up going with both of them to advance to the Elite 8, probably my favorite matchup in that round if all goes as planned, and I have decided grudgingly to go with Memphis to reach the Final Four out of that bracket. I have a ton of respect for John Calipari and what he has managed to do in his career coaching NCAA basketball. First building an abysmal UMASS program into constant domination, and now doing the same thing with a beaten-down program in Memphis State some years ago, Calipari has clearly earned the respect of all of his peers and in my view has earned my nod in the Elite 8 over UConn, which I am picking mainly due to Memphis's overpowering defense, which I believe is one of the very best in the country heading into the Big Dance.

Up in the East Regional, I once again went with chalk to the Sweet 16, seeds 1 through 4, although again I am picking some upsets in the earlier rounds to go against this trend. I originally had Duke losing to Texas in the Round of 32, and then I switched that but had them losing to Villanova in the Sweet 16, but the more I think about it, the more props I give to Duke for putting together a pretty good lil' season this year, in particular since making a switch among their starters and especially with Henderson playing so big and strong around the basket for the perennially soft team, so I actually think they will beat Villanova in the Sweet 16 and reach the Elite 8 in one of the biggest games for that program in several years. That game, however, will not be a matchup with regional #1 seed Pittsburgh, however, as I am making my first stupid decently big upset call in picking Xavier, a good little team, to take down Pitt. I simply do not think Pitt has the offensive guard play nor the depth to win six straight games in this thing, and since I can't bring myself to pick Duke to beat them, I opted to go with Xavier, which will bring a 4-seed to play against Duke for the right to make the final 4, where I think Duke will return in early April this year.

Lastly, in the South, I picked 1 seed Carolina to win easily to the Sweet 16, facing off against Gonzaga who I believe will be able get by either winner of the Western Kentucky - Illinois game, where I am picking the Hilltoppers after Illinois played an uninspired season in the highly uninspiring Big Ten this year. On the bottom half of that bracket, I like Oklahoma and their player of the year candidate Griffin, but the one big exception to my general theme is that, as a big-time Georgetown guy, I simply cannot bring myself to pick the Syracuse Orange to make the Sweet 16, even as a 3 seed. Instead I am going with Arizona State, my one and only Pac-10 team I think is worth anything in this year's tournament, to upset the Cuse in the Round of 32 and reach the Sweet 16 as a 6 seed. In the end, I think Carolina beats down on an overmatched Gonzaga squad, and I'm going again with ASU to best Oklahoma, who was very inconsistent this year, to reach the Elite 8 before losing to Carolina who really should walk through this bracket into the Final 4.

So my Final 4 is really fun, with Louisville facing Memphis on the one side, and an awesome Duke-Carolina showdown on the other side. After beating Duke twice during the regular season this year, I think the Tar Heels ought to stick it to Duke again in the tournament, advancing to the finals where I have them facing Louisville. I love John Calipari's Memphis team, especially on defense, but I just can't find a way to pick against Louisville, the team that won the Big East regular season and then won the Big East tournament as well, the hottest team in the country and totally peaking at the best possible time.

A Louisville - Carolina final will surely be a spectacle, featuring two high-profile programs with rich basketball tradition, and two former national champion coaches with plenty of experience in big games and in March Madness pressure. In the end, following the same logic as above, I just can't find a reason to get away from Louisville as my national champion. Louisville has been so amazingly strong down the stretch, they have an awesome, proven coach, and Carolina has had more than one or two moments of real inconsistency this season. I just think the Cardinals have the best squad in the country this season, in particular if their guards are playing well. The Big East schedule will serve Louisville very well this year, having played several games against top-5 and top-15 opponents all season long, and we all know how Roy Williams like to F up in the tournament. So I'm going with the Cardinals of Louisville, and Rick Pitino, to hoist the trophy when all is said and done in a few weeks in the pit of hell Detroit.

Anybody dare to challenge any of these immutable picks?

March Madness is Here

Well, what I was saying could happen on Friday actually happened over the weekend -- for the first time since the NCAA tournament was expanded to 64 teams, we have three of the four #1 seeds coming from the same conference, in this case the Big East. Although this is hard to swallow for many longtime college basketball fans out there, three Big East teams are firmly entrenched in the top 5 of the rankings, and the Big East in general this year is pretty widely accepted as being the greatest conference of all time in college basketball, with 6 teams in the top 20 at season's end, and with the conference having received three #1 seeds and another two #3 seeds, indicating roughly that 5 of the nation's top 12 squads originate from the conference. So even though three #1 seeds from one conference rubs some people the wrong way, I actually think it is very defensible given the way this year broke out and, more specifically, the kind of competition faced by these best of the best Big East teams all through the 2008-2009 season thus far.

Looking beyond the top seeds, the common wisdom here today seems to be that the Selection Committee for the NCAA tournament did a pretty unassailable job in choosing the teams and their respective seedings for this year's March Madness tournament. I, however, think they made some egregious errors, some general and some more specific to individual teams or leagues.

First and foremost, talking generally here, the Selection Committee in its infinite wisdom, awarded bids to seven teams from the Big East, seven from the Big 10, seven from the ACC and six from the Pac-10. This is bad for a number of reasons. First of all, as discussed above the Big East was far and away the best conference of this or any other season, and awarding the same number of tournament bids to all four of the major power conferences this year was a mistake from that front. The ACC is fairly solid near the top with UNC, Duke and Wake Forest, but the middle of that conference drops off dramatically, and in order to get seven ACC teams into the tournament, the Committee had to invite some teams that flat out do not belong (more on that later). Similarly, the Big 10 got at least one if not two or three bids that it simply did not deserve, and the Pac-10 received probably the biggest joke of a bid of any team in this year's tournament, also requiring shenanigans of some kind to find even six Pac-10 teams worthy of playing in the Big Dance this month.

The other general mistake made by the Selection Committee this weekend relates to the above: they completely forsook the mid-major conference in favor of the big power conference teams, even in very dubious situations. The mid-majors are where the teams have come from that have made this tournament so exciting over the past several years -- the Davidsons, the Valparaisos, the George Masons, originally even Gonzaga some years ago -- and as recently as 2004 saw 12 mid-major teams in the 65-team NCAA field, but this year, we're looking at just four at-large bids going to mid-major conference teams. That is a real bummer in general given what I have seen over my lifetime of watching March Madness, and also in terms of some of the specific comparisons to large power conference teams that did manage to find their way into the field.

Which leads to some of the more team-specific issues I have with this year's tournament selections. First, the ACC. The ACC, despite having a down year compared to most other years top-to-bottom, got 6 teams into the Big Dance, the most embarrassing and inexplicable of which was Maryland, who flat out stank this year. Maryland ended the season 7-9 in a weak ACC and 20-13 overall, presumably based almost exclusively on their early-season wins against Michigan State and Duke. But in putting this subpar team into the tournament, and thereby crushing the deserving hopes of several promising mid-major teams, the Committee overlooked Maryland's embarrassing loss to a shitty Georgetown team, 75-48 at a neutral site, as well as losses this season to Morgan State, at Miami and then at Virginia in the last game of the regular season when Maryland knew they needed to beat the abysmal 4-12, 10-18 Cavaliers to reach .500 in a down year in the ACC. They then won two games in the ACC tournament before succumbing to eventual tournament winner Duke, bringing their total conference record this season to 9-10. To think of all the teams that lost bids because of this gift from the Committee, it is just wrong. I mean, I like seeing Gary Williams sweat through his entire suit on the sidelines in a game as much as anyone, but that just does not make sense.

The Big 10 is another conference suffering a major down year -- only Michigan State was ever ranked anywhere near the top 10 through any significant portion of this season -- and yet who somehow managed to nab 7 NCAA tournament bids, many of them quite inexplicable. In a nutshell, the Committee ended up awarding bids to the top 3 teams in the conference, then shutting out the 4th and 5th place Buckeyes and Nittany Lions, and then awarding bids to the #6 Badgers, #7 Golden Gophers and even the #8 Wolverines despite scrooging the 4th and 5th place teams in the conference. Both Ohio State and Penn State, who failed to get bids, ended the season 10-8 in the Big 10 (22-10 and 22-11 overall, respectively), while Wisconsin did manage to sneak in with a 10-8 record despite having literally zero big wins on its entire schedule otherthan a couple of victories over a down Michigan team, a win on the road at NIT-bound Penn State and a win at home against Illinois. Even worse, Minnesota got a bid at 9-9, 22-10, seemingly solely on the strength of a big win over overall #1 seed Louisville a couple of months ago, and despite losing to Northwestern (8-10, 17-13) earlier in the year and especially despite losses at Ohio State, at Penn State, at Michigan, at Illinois, and then again vs. Michigan in going 4-6 in its last 10 games before this weekend. What ever happened to the Committee paying special attention to teams on streaks heading into March Madness, and to teams that can win big games on the road near the end of the season? Oh wait, who just took over as Minnesota's head coach a few years ago? Of that's right, Tubby Smith, a perennial Selection Committee favorite since back in his Kentucky days. So there you go, Minnesota got in because the Committee likes their coach, even though the team did essentially everything within its power to prove that it did not deserve a bid in the final few weeks of the regular season. Even Michigan nabbed a bid to the Big Dance this year, after posting a 9-9 Big 10 record and an embarrassing 20-13 overall, this including losses at Maryland, as well as defeats vs. Wisconsin, vs. Ohio State, at Penn State, at Ohio State, at Iowa (5-13, 15-17) and then again at Wisconsin in going 7-10 in its final 17 games, including 5-5 in its last 10. The Big 10 was probably only truly deserving of three bids this year -- Michigan State, Purdue and Illinois -- and to the extent that one or two more teams were going to get in, allowing squads like Minnesota and Michigan in given their paltry conference record in one of the worst seasons for the Big 10 in recent memory and all of those terrible losses in crunch time in their seasons is just sick and wrong.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the absolute worst example of the Committee catering to a historical favorite like I mentioned above with Tubby Smith -- Arizona. Coming in to this season, the Wildcats had the nation's longest streak of consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances at 24 straight years, and we all saw that streak coming to an end after Arizona lost in the first game of the Pac-10 tournament for the third time this year to rival Arizona State, and then when USC, who would not have made the tournament otherwise, won the automatic bid from the Pac-10 tournament, people who understand shit knew there was no way Arizona could make it as a 6th team from the downtrodden Pac-10. 'Zona finished the year 9-9 in the Pac-10, and 19-13 overall, an abysmal record for any at-large team in any year, good for 6th place overall in their conference. Arizona lost at home against Conference-USA also-ran UAB, at Texas A&M, at UNLV, at Cal, at Stanford (6-12, 18-13), at USC (9-9, 21-12), and the only big wins I see on their schedule are over Gonzaga, and then conference opponents Washington and UCLA, and I already mentioned the three losses to state rival ASU including in the Pac-10 tournament. Even worse than this, the Wildcats lost 5 of their last 6 games heading into Selection Sunday, including a loss to Washington State (8-10, 17-15) during that stretch, as well as the loss in the opening round of the Pac-10 tournament. This team did everything you could possibly ask of them to prove they do not belong in the tournament, and the Committee decided to doff their caps to history and extend 'Zona's consecutive Big Dance streak to 25. Just sad.

As I mentioned, the teams that got the most burnt by the Committee's clear fuckups this year were the mid-major conference teams that in the past few years have gotten the bids and even won some games in the Big Dance. Creighton finished the season 14-4, 26-7 in the Missouri Valley Conference, won by Northern Iowa, whom Creigton beat in addition to sweeping recent March Madness fixture Southern Illinois on the season. Creighton did not have many significant out of conference wins, and losing 73-49 to Illinois State in the MVC tournament surely did not help their case, but if I'm in charge, Creighton is surely going in to the tournament with their #40 RPI ranking over the likes of Maryland, Arizona or Minnesota or Michigan. San Diego State, out of the Mountain West conference, is another mid-major team arguably deserving of an at-large bid, certainly moreso than the last few power conference teams to sneak in to the 65-team field. SDSU was 11-5, 23-9 on the season, including wins against tournament teams Utah (12-4, 23-9) and BYU (12-4, 25-7) plus bubble teams UNM (12-4, 21-11) and UNLV (9-7, 21-10) three separate times, plus an RPI of a whopping #34 in the country. I'll take them over the bottom half of the power conference teams any day of the week. St. Mary's in the West Coast Conference -- Gonzaga's stomping grounds -- is the team probably most often cited as the worst rooking among those teams not to make the Big Dance this year, as Randy Bennett's team missed the tournament despite an RPI of 47 and a final record in the WCC of 10-4, 26-6, even though Maryland's pathetic season left them with an RPI of 55, and Arizona put up a lowly 62 in nabbing their tournament bid.

But the team that I think got rooked most of all by the Selection Committee this weekend is one that you don't even hear mentioned on ESPN or any of the other major sites out there, and that is Big East upstart Providence. Now, as a Georgetown guy, I am no kind of Friars fan, but let's be fair here. PC went 10-8 in the Big East, 19-13 overall. Now I know that 19-13 is no great shakes, but apparently it was great enough to get Arizona into the tournament with a 9-9 record in a conference that couldn't hold a candle to the Big East this season. I'm not one of those guys who believes that a winning record in any major conference should mean an automatic tournament bid -- see my comments on the various Big 10, Pac-10 and ACC tournament teams above -- but in this case, this year, in this season's Big East, in my view anyone who even sniffs a winning record deserves a shot in the Big Dance. And it's not like Providence only beat up on the bad teams in the Big East but lost to every good team it played -- PC posted wins this year against URI (11-5, 22-10), a sweep against Cincinnati, and then in the latter stretch of the season vs #3 seeded Syracuse and then #1 seeded Pittsburgh. How Providence is kept out of the tournament while fonkteams like Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota and Maryland are in is simply beyond me.

All that said, I am seriously looking forward to what is pretty much always the best time of year for any serious sports fan, starting with Thursday's massive 16-game slate where I get to do almost no work. Get those NCAA March Madness On Demand logins working early and often this week!