It's the most wonderful time of the year (NCAA tourney, baby!)
 

Seems like the first Friday is always the day for upsets in the tourney. Two 12 seeds and two 13 seeds won their first game (all in Tampa at one location - how I would have loved to have been there), a couple on dramatic buzzer beaters in OT.

Duke is right now on the ropes, down 11 to West Virginia with only 3 minutes to play.

Greatest sports event every year.

Soo much traffic... i don't really like Basketball though.. but I made a small mention of it in the news yesterday though.

I'm not really a big fan of NCAA Basketball - but something about Final Four time is awesome...

Still boring overall, but gotta love UCLA decimating Mississippi Valley. Mississippi mad 13 field goals. UCLA blocked 13 shots. Damn.

Boring???? Boring????? That Stanford-Marquette game today was simply SWEET! Duke getting upset in the second round? Two 13 seed and two 12 seeds winning? And you say BORING?!?!?!?!?!

Please check your pulse.

Boring. Amateur players making amateur plays where the most exciting moments are about pure luck. Yawn.

Yeah, I just can't find the excitement in college basketball. But if that's your game, then cool. We all enjoy the things we enjoy.

The funny thing for me this week was that on Thursday a coworker started trash talking me about the tournament and picks, etc. And always being game I was doing some trash talking back with what little knowledge I have about this year's participants (not a lot but I absorb stuff). Anyway, late yesterday she did again and finishged with something about me being in last place in the pool. So I had to say "what the heck are you talking about?" I didn't even know there was a pool going at the office. There's a Greg in the office with my last name. Turns out the only thing she noticed was the last name and thought it was me.

So, apparently even though I didn't even know about their pool, I trash talked it pretty well.

Well, to each their own, GD.....I love this stuff. Much more exciting than professional sports.

I'm so disgusted by Gonzaga giving away the game yesterday. Bad playing, bad coaching and bad calls all around. They deserved to lose.

But your WSU Cougars look good!

Consider it payback for all your baseball posts ;)

Truthfully, I'll watch post season of just about any sport. I just find the "madness" behind March Madness overblown.

I also admit to being a fair weather fan in that I only care about MM at all if UCLA's in it. And boy are they in it this year. It would have been easy for them to roll over in the second round, coming out soft after the laugher against Miss Valley. But now they've won in two radically different ways. I'm liking their odds.

Is baseball even a sport?:p

So, you admit you like cougars?;)



I'm glad for the Cougs, but in college b-ball I am a Zags fan- it's our family alma mater. I was so pissed at the end of that game- the only thing I could think was that something happened with the players the coach had benched and wasn't using, like maybe they were being punished for partying or something. It defied logic- even the commentators were like 'wtf'? They showed a shot of Morrison on the sidelines (his hair is really long now- looks a bit like Jesus) and he looked absolutely disgusted.

Holy Guacamole!

What a couple of great games! Tennessee beats Butler in OT, and Davidson shocks the world by beating Georgetown....they were down 17 in the second half and came back to win by four. I love this game!

I was about to call them Cinderella, but has anyone else seen the "There are no Cinderellas" commercial? My new favorite commercial of all time.

I can watch a post-season college basketball game and get drawn into it. What I don't understand is why early round post-season games were on the radio preempting critical sports talk. Who would listen to a game where you have no idea who any of the players are?

Also, NCAA basketball has taken a giant step down in relevance to me as 1) more and more of the best players went pro earlier and earlier or skipped "college" entirely and 2) talented foreign players infiltrated the pros.

I find that the departure of the hugest talent makes it all the more interesting because it has balanced the talent pool (or made it more balanced) between the major programs and the mid majors, giving the schools like Sienna, Western Kentucky, and Davidson a better opportunity to beat the bigger schools.

Woot! Go Stanford!

Baron Davis, Stephen Jackson and Lamar Odom played all 53 minutes of last night's Warriors/Lakers overtime game, and Kobe played almost 52. Now, that's ballin' by men. That's madness.

And when is the Sweet Sixteen? Some time next week, right?

Sweet 16 play has four games Thursday and four on Friday. Final Four determined with two games on Sat and two on Sun.

One thing that makes me sad about the growing popularity is the price of tickets. I looked into getting some tix to the games in Phoenix on Thursday and Sunday and they are running over 100 per ticket per game. 15 years ago or so I went to the first two rounds in Tuscon - a total of 6 games - and paid 35 total for the 6 games. In 1998 or 1999, when a regional final was hosted in Phoenix, I got all three games for 75 or so. Too expensive.

God I hate full court press.

Or rather, I hate that college teams tend to be so susceptible to it. The 2nd half of the UCLA/Western Kentucky game is exactly what I mean by "amateur". There's a reason you don't see NBA teams continually full court pressing except when absolutely necessary. Because it's ineffective, 99% of the time for professionals it just means your defense isn't going to be back in time. But in college? Oh yeah, it'll screw with an offense big time. So all you get is a game of alternating between sloppy turnovers and break away baskets as the press is either effective or defeated over and over. y-a-w-n.

On the plus side, 3rd win, 3rd style of win for UCLA. It's gone 'cakewalk', 'come from behind', 'nearly squander lead and hang on'. I wonder what next round's win will look like.

See, I love the full court press. It can be used to speed tempo, slow tempo, take teams out of an offense, create turnovers....I love defense in general, and I love when teams makes other teams pay for pressing.

Xavier will present an interesting challange for them, I think. Very athletic. I am envious of my boss who will be there (I wasn't going to shell out $110 per ticket - yikes!).

Oh, it's a perfectly intelligent strategy in the context, I just think it points out a flaw in the context (as I amended, I don't hate that it's done, I hate that it works). It's not so much good defense as exploiting crappy offense and sloppy ball handling skills. Implement a full court press against non-amateurs and you'll get burned every time.

Now, if the whole team could move the ball the way Love does, it'd be a different story. The kid's got skill.

Depends on how you utilize your press and the goals of it, but I see your point.

I suppose the main reason I love it is that I consider defense to be the great equalizer. EVERYONE can play D, and if you are a good athlete without a lick of offensive skill you can make an impact.

Which is exactly why a fan of a #1 seed might be susceptible to bemoaning the existence of full court press defense.


Cause and effect, GD. Full court D forces bad offense and crappy ball handling skills as much as it reveals them. Ever see a full court press fluster John Stockton and force him into turnovers? I have.

Oh sure, it can be a very effective weapon on occasion. But the vast majority of the time, and NBA team is going to blow right past a press. That's why you rarely see it except in just the right situation.

There's a huge difference between going to the press in pressure situations to force a rare mistake vs. pressing the entire game because you know that the few easy breakaways will be far outweighed by the copious unforced errors (yes, I call them "unforced" because a team SHOULD be able to get past a press) that will result.

And it's not just sour grapes re:UCLA. It's prevalent in all of college basketball and one of the main reasons I don't watch the sport, no matter who's playing. I don't really enjoy watching 40 minutes of sloppy passing.

I coach HS ball, and I know snoppy passing. College ball is nothing.

I don't know what a snoppy pass is, but I do know how you feel when we talk Oscars every year. Snore.
:)


And it's not the whole 'gay men don't like sports thing either'. Ralphie watches UCLA games and loves them. And I even watched the whole Super Bowl this year.
:)

Good Lord....OK, GD, I'm with you tonight. Beyond boring tonight. Yikes. Two games, one with a 20 pt half time margin, the other with a freakin' unbelievable 30 pt half time margin. Ick.

Kansas has a player named Sasha Kaun!


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Yeah, tonight's games suck.

Oh man, these Elite 8 matchups are tasty.


Xavier* vs. UCLA 3:40pm
North Carolina vs. Louisville* 6:05pm


Sun:

Memphis* vs. Texas 11:20am
Davidson vs. Kansas* 2:05pm




*My lead-pipe cinch, five diamond winners. Accuracy not guaranteed nor realistic. No refunds.

Gotta stick with my original final four, being UNC, Kansas, Texas, and UCLA.

Have to say I think Xavier has a legit shot at UCLA, and I'm standing by by Texas pick, even though Memphis sure looked good yesterday. I think Texas is athletic enough to deal with Memphis's athleticism, and they proved they can handle big bodies when the handled Stanford rather easily.

Would love to see Davidson beat Kansas, though.....I love a good upset.

I don't see anyone beating UNC. They have it all.

Or not.

4th style of win, and not a bad time to finally have a win where they controlled the game beginning to end.

But you'll note I stuck with my original final 4 picks in my first sentence, which included UCLA.

I really, really want to see a UCLA - UNC final. We'll see how good Love really is. He's good, but I heard a commentator say there will be no one in San Antonio that can match up with him. I disagree.

And you should be picking on Sac. He flat out picked Xavier. I just said they had a shot.:)

Damn, is this still going? Couldn't they have this over with in a week?


They're all young and full of hops. Surely they could play 5 games in 7 days?

It would be 6 games, and they need the weekend sports viewer ratings.

Still one more glorious weekend to go.

Why? More than half the games in the tournament, including the final game, are held on weeknights. Almost three weeks seems excessive for playing even six games.

But mostly I'm just burned out and sick of the constant chatter about it while waiting for everybody to join conference calls.

Don't know. But I love it.

Well yesterday's games weren't half as good as I thought they'd be. Hopefully today's games will be more exciting.

The UNC Louisville game was pretty good.

Well, all I needed was one of Kansas, Memphis, or UCLA to not make it to the final four. That's all. Now, the best I can do in my pool is come in second.....to my 8 year old son. Do you know how much that sucks?

I still have to cheer for him to keep the money in the family, but what is my son going to do with $250????? If UNC wins it all, or UNC loses to Memphis in the final, he wins and I get second.

I'm thinking he has a great shot. I am almost certain UNC will beat Kansas, and Memphis looked really, really dominant again.

I'm still alive in my pool. My official Final Four picks (as opposed to the picks I made for the weekend games) are:

Memphis over UCLA
North Carolina over Georgetown (oops!)


Memphis over North Carolina 71-70



Four #1 seeds should make for an exciting Sat/Mon finish. I'm almost hoping for a classic UCLA/North Carolina matchup in the championship game.

I'd like to see UCLA v. UNC as well - primarily to see Love and Hansbrough battle one another (I was going to say "go at it", but knowing this place, it would have been twisted into something I didn't mean).

Congrats on still being alive in yours. It's been several years since I've had a chance to win after the final four was finialized.

The second half of this game should have been 20 minutes of Love in the paint. They weren't even trying to get it in to him and when he did handle the ball, all he did was pull up for 3s. What the hell were they thinking?

I think the bigger guards of Memphis made it very difficult to get Love the ball.

Watched the game at a bar called sharkeez in Newport beach- fun!

But it didn't look like they were even trying. It's not like they tried a few interior passes that got knocked away, they gave up on it before they even tried. And with 2 of their big men with 3 fouls from the get-go, they should have been lobbing it down there every single possession.

They just conceded the size difference and it cost them the game.

I have never witnessed a stranger game. Down 28 15 minutes into the game , to cut it to 4, to lose by 20. Very odd indeed.

Now this is a game, baby.

Not that I care, but can somebody explain to me why Memphis didn't foul Kansas in the last ten seconds. If they fouled in the backcourt and the guy chucked up a shot from 50 feet, would they have given him three free throws?

Also, there shouldn't be TV timeouts in the last two minutes.

On to the women's final. Not.

I would have fouled, but I understand their desire to keep the clock running. Also, Kansas hadn't been hitting from 3 (they were something like 3/14 on the night?) and they had been hitting from the line.

Wooohooo! We're in the money...we're in the money! :D

Mr. Swanie won his office pool with the Kansas win. The best part is that he gets to tease the guys that his wife and oldest daughter also beat them all. We all had Kansas taking it. :evil:

swanie

I would watch it if I could. Go Stanford!

My 8 year old son took second in my office pool. He's loving that I took third and beat me.