Sports nuts, rejoice! The best time of year is near! Okay, so I wish there were more chatter about the college basketball season around here, but really, how many people who follow college football avidly follow college basketball all season long? 10 percent? Fewer? I find it fascinating that in college basketball, all of the games (minus the NIT, CBI, and CIT) involving the 340+ division 1 teams are somehow all connected and building up to the national championship game. College football can't say that. That midweek November game between Miami (OH) and Bowling Green had no tangent effect on Alabama-Notre Dame. Two conferences started their tournaments yesterday and a handful of others begin today. Some teams will punch their ticket to the dance as early as Saturday. Personally, I find Championship Week to be better sports entertainment than the NCAA Tournament. Take it from someone who is a fan of a team for whom going dancing isn't a foregone conclusion every year: there is nothing better than fighting for an opportunity to be a part of this big thing that the entire nation is fixated on for several weeks. If you want to see pure amateur sport at its finest, watch the Summit League championship in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on March 12. Or the MEAC championship in Norfolk, Virginia on March 16. FOCUS: March Madness 2013. Who's going to win it all? Which fanbase is going to send death threats to its team's coach when they are bounced in the first round? Who's your team and what do their postseason prospects look like? As for the big dance itself, some people may thing that lack of a dominant team, like Kentucky last year, makes for a boring tournament. I think it makes it far more interesting. I think any of Indiana, Duke, Kansas, Arizona, Michigan, Miami (FL), Michigan State, Syracuse, Georgetown, Louisville, and Gonzaga could win it all. I may even be forgetting someone.
Georgetown being ranked fifth (fourth next week, since Indiana lost?) is terrifying for me. The defense has been great, and Otto Porter has been one of if not the single best player in college basketball this year, but (1) we know damn well we're not this good. Starting out unranked was a travesty, but this is not a #1 seed kind of team. Top ten team, maybe. Definitely top 15. But a potential number one seed? (2) It is just setting us up for terrible disappointment, which has been our tournament specialty. Gonzaga hasn't beat anyone. They have victories over the tremendously inconsistent OSU and KSU teams, but also losses to Illinois and Butler. Sure, Kelly Olynyk looks great, but they're playing Pepperdine for Christ's sake. They've basically landed at the number 1 spot by default. My money is on Duke and Indiana. Tremendous talent, some degree of consistency, tested throughout the season, and without excessive dependence on one player. Other teams I like this year are Michigan and Michigan State, and relative to their current rankings, Marquette, Arizona, VCU, and UCLA. Everyone stopped paying attention to UCLA after their early losses, but that team is starting to "get it" and Shabazz is playing at an All-American level. Minnesota and Illinois have been competitive against elite teams, which is always a good sign for upsets. UNC is pulling it together at the exact right time. It wouldn't shock me if UNC actually beats Duke to close out the season. They'll likely get underseeded, and will be a really tough matchup for someone. Kansas has some serious talent, but also youth/consistency issues, which doesn't bode well for winning the six straight games necessary for a title. Louisville doesn't have the offensive talent (watch, Russ Smith is going to go 4-19 in a game at some point in the tournament). Florida looks great on defense and in transition, but when forced to run half court, they've been borderline unwatchable in the games I've seen. Ugly and confused. Syracuse rolled over poor opponents for the first 15 games, but that squad just isn't good enough and it's showed recently.
<a class="postlink" href="http://dystnow.com/2013/03/06/breaking-news-syracuse-head-coach-jim-boeheim-asked-to-retire/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://dystnow.com/2013/03/06/breaking- ... to-retire/</a> How unexpected... Also, Nova beating Georgetown by 10, shooting 28 more free throws and only making one basket in the last 14 minutes... That officiating.
Welp, don't need to worry about that anymore. As a Marquette fan, March is shaping up interestingly. They are maddeningly inconsistent (see a terrible start against Cuse last week and being down 12 to fucking Rutgers at half on Tuesday) but when they play well, they can beat almost anyone. They struggle with long and fast teams (Florida and Louisville are terrible matchups and evidenced by how poorly those games went), but they have impressive depth. Buzz Williams teams have seemed to peak in March, so pending matchups, it could be another Sweet 16 kind of year. Not a good 3 point shooting team, but the few games when they've been hitting, watch out. ND nearly got blown out of the gym by that happening in the first half last Saturday. Around the rest of the country, the inconsistency of so many great teams makes things interesting. Indiana is so talented, but Crean is a fairly mediocre in game coach and thats where alot of their inconsistency derives from. Michigan is another team I really like but they go through stretches where you just scratch your head. Kansas is great, but for a star, Macklemore doesn't seem to want the ball in his head come crunch time (see the OSU game). I think potential higher seeded teams (outside of 1-4) to make a run include St Louis, Villanova, Colorado, and Akron (provided they win the MAC). Akron is interesting cause they've had 2 TERRIBLE losses, but they have a dominant big man and good role players (we saw what that did to Mizzou last year with Norfolk State).
JWags, for someone who hasn't seen them, mind spelling out the case for Akron a bit more? Because I'm seeing a very mediocre team. The "dominant" center is averaging 13 and 7, I don't see a truly impressive win, and losing by 14 to an under-0.500 Miami team is pretty bad. Their strongest point seems to be almost beating a good team (OSU).
I don't know if there is a "case" to be made. I certainly don't think they deserve an at large bid. But I would look at them as a dangerous 13-14 for sure. Zeke Marshall is just one of those long guys inside that causes alot of problems. He blocks a ton of shots, he's a slightly less talented Jeff Withey. He's had spells where he disappears a bit offensively and is a bit consistent, but he was big keying their comeback against Ohio U the other day and he just alters the game when he is in. The MAC is a bit weaker this year, but its still a top 15 conference and until basically running out of gas at Buffalo, they rampaged through it. The OU games showed alot cause they had to fight back in both of them. Its just kind of a feel I get that they could cause some people problems.
Yeah, about Akron... http://www.ohio.com/news/break-news/zips-point-guard-abreu-suspended-following-arrest-1.379390 Usually, it's not good for your starting point guard to get caught trafficking a kilo. Sucks for them. Their mantra all year has been their talented bigs, but you need a guy to get the ball to them, and abreu is a real pain in the ass if you're playing against them.
Why did Georgetown fans rush the court when they are the higher ranked team? A Syracuse player apparently forearmed a Georgetown student in the face too.
Duke vs UNC tonight, UNC on a 6 game streak with home court. Spread was less than 3 points when I called my bookie this morning, should be a good game.
Nothing to do with rankings, it's the history involved. It's like winning the last Yankees-Red Sox series ever.
But both teams have said they are going to continue to play each other. Also, the UConn Huskies are the Yankees of the former Big East.
They're more like the Red Sox. That program wasn't much of anything until Calhoun got there and then they hit their stride in the mid to late 90s. Whereas GTown and Cuse had decades of success before that.
Erm, I'm not one to think there are "rules" to court storming. Gtown-Cuse might be the meanest, pure hate rivalry in college hoops. Ohio State fans always rush Ohio Stadium when they beat Michigan. I say go with the moment. Speaking of Syracuse, I'm in the area for work and just took a walk around their campus. The Carrier Dome is....not a charming building. How about the Liberty Flames winning the Big South? They were the #5 seed (out of 6) in their division (basically equivalent to a #10 seed overall) and won four games in the conference tourney to go dancing. They are 15-20 and three of those wins are against non-DI teams. Started the season 0-8 and 0-10 against DI schools, and now they are dancing. Sure, they'll be one of the play-in games, but it's still awesome for them. Lot of strange things happening already. Robert Morris goes down at home in the NEC semifinals. Loyola Marymount goes into the WCC Tournament with a 14-game losing streak and gets three wins. Valparaiso and Belmont both looked like they were finished. Can't take anything for granted.
The players loved it, the fans loved it, the coach loved it, the coach's dad loved it. There's always one...
Can we get some bracket posting up in this bitch? My Final Four is looking like: Louisville, Ohio State, Georgetown, and Miami. Unsure about good upset picks though.
I've got Louisville, Florida, Indiana, and Wisconsin (I always go for a surprise pick in Final Four) with Louisville over IU in the final. As for upset picks, I have three pretty big ones I think could happen: 1) South Dakota State over Michigan. Nate Wolters is a beast, and most mid-majors that advance in the NCAA tournament ride the hot hand. Wolters dropped 50 in a game earlier this year. 2) Belmont over Arizona. Belmont can absolutely stroke it from beyond the arc, they go to the tournament almost every year, and they are extremely disciplined. This is one of the most offensively efficient teams in the country - don't sleep on them. 3) Montana over Syracuse. I honestly don't know much about Montana, but the Orange haven't been playing their best ball lately. Plus if it weren't for bad officiating, they very well could have lost to UNC-Asheville last year when they were a #1 seed. They're ripe for the picking.
Re: Re: March Madness 2013 I have this picked as well, Michigan didn't impress me much this year. In my fan bracket I have the team that shall not be named winning. In my money bracket I have Florida, Wisconsin, Louisville and Indiana winning it.
Wisconsin is a team built for the B10. They grind it out and can grind it out better than any team in that league to make up a talent differential. That just doesn't work in the tournament. Their talent gap comes back to haunt them. A team that is willing to adjust their pace and attack the fact that UW refuses to play zone can beat them. That is also a team who lives and dies by the 3. Nice run in the B10 tourney, but when their 3s weren't falling, they lost to Purdue and needed a buzzer beater to beat fucking Penn State in their last 2 regular season games. I see them losing a dogfight to KSU in Kansas City. I like Louisville, Georgetown, Miami, and New Mexico. If Syracuse plays like they did until the second half of the BE championship game, then they could knock of IU and Miami as well. At this point, Louisville looks scary good. I think my other long shot FF team would be St Louis. They are tough as hell.