Its the Big East Show!

SkyHog

SkyHog

Touchdown! Greaser!
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March Madness! Well, for most of you at least. We're NIT Bound.

What did you all think of the tourney committee selections?
 
I don't like the 72 teams now. There are a couple of bubble teams that probably shouldn't be there. Conferences don't need 7,8,9 teams in the tourney. A #10 or worse has never won it, so I look at teams like Penn State, and Michigan State and think, "really?" As I stumbled through the bracket, I ended up with a Final Four of Puke, North Carolina, BYU and Kansas, with Puke winning it all vs Kansas. Ugh. I won't be watching any of it.

Crazy picks:
George Mason over Ohio State
UCLA over Florida
Memphis over Arizona
Princeton over Kentucky

And in the Southeast Bracket my bracket is upside down
wins by Utah State, Gonzaga, Belmont, and Old Dominion beating Belmont to go Elite Eight.
 
EdFred said:
I don't like the 72 teams now. There are a couple of bubble teams that probably shouldn't be there. Conferences don't need 7,8,9 teams in the tourney. A #10 or worse has never won it, so I look at teams like Penn State, and Michigan State and think, "really?" As I stumbled through the bracket, I ended up with a Final Four of Puke, North Carolina, BYU and Kansas, with Puke winning it all vs Kansas. Ugh. I won't be watching any of it.

Crazy picks:
George Mason over Ohio State
UCLA over Florida
Memphis over Arizona
Princeton over Kentucky

And in the Southeast Bracket my bracket is upside down
wins by Utah State, Gonzaga, Belmont, and Old Dominion beating Belmont to go Elite Eight.
Click to expand...

I'm not just saying this because UNM is in it (you know I know my basketball), but the NIT looks like it might be a more exciting tournament this year. That never happens, but I think the selection committee did such a terrible job, the NCAA is going to be rife with upsets everywhere except in the 1, 2 and possibly 3 seeds, meaning we'll have a final four of #1s, and the overall winner will be Kansas (the #1 overall seed).

edit: FYI, there's 68 teams now, not 72. I don't like having the 11s earn their spot, I think they should have just added 3 #16 play ins instead. Not my decision though.
 
There were some questionable picks, some teams have legimate claims that they should be in over other teams that did get chosen. That happens every year, though.

I haven't looked at the brackets very closely yet, but it looks like there were some really strange seedings, too.

And OSU was the #1 overall, KU was #2. Although, sometimes the pairings don't show up that way.
 
Matthew said:
There were some questionable picks, some teams have legimate claims that they should be in over other teams that did get chosen. That happens every year, though.

I haven't looked at the brackets very closely yet, but it looks like there were some really strange seedings, too.
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USC and UAB????

Why not Viriginia Tech and Colorado? Those blow my mind. St. Mary's? That'd be a good one. So many weird picks this year, I have to wonder if maybe the problem is that with over 320 Division I schools, maybe the Selection Committee just can't keep up anymore. Perhaps we need fewer Div I schools playing College Basketball.
 
SkyHog said:
USC and UAB????

Why not Viriginia Tech and Colorado? Those blow my mind. St. Mary's?
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Those were the teams I was thinking about, too.

Somebody made a point yesterday that I though was intereseting. The tournament added extra teams this year so the mid-majors would have a better chance of getting teams in. )That was the story, at least, I think it was more about the $$$.) But then the NCAA selection committee got stuck - they'd have to pass over some better power-conference teams in order to let the mid-majors in, and it looks like that's what happened.
 
Matthew said:
Those were the teams I was thinking about, too.

Somebody made a point yesterday that I though was intereseting. The tournament added extra teams this year so the mid-majors would have a better chance of getting teams in. )That was the story, at least, I think it was more about the $$$.) But then the NCAA selection committee got stuck - they'd have to pass over some better power-conference teams in order to let the mid-majors in, and it looks like that's what happened.
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Well, look at it this way:

The most any conference has ever entered into the tourney is the past is 8 teams. This year, the Big East got 11. 3 more teams than ever before.

This year, there are 68 teams instead of 65. 3 more teams than ever before.

Coincidence?
 
SkyHog said:
Well, look at it this way:

The most any conference has ever entered into the tourney is the past is 8 teams. This year, the Big East got 11. 3 more teams than ever before.

This year, there are 68 teams instead of 65. 3 more teams than ever before.

Coincidence?
Click to expand...

That's another thing I saw, too. I haven't looked at the bottom 3 picks from the Big East to see how they stack up against the other at-large teams. 11 from one conference is about 3 too many - that means that somebody is getting in with a losing conference record.

It would be interesting to see the affiliations of the selection committee members. Plus CBS has the broadcast and, at least according to most of us folks here in Big-12 country, has a Big East bias.
 
SkyHog said:
USC and UAB????

Why not Viriginia Tech and Colorado? Those blow my mind. St. Mary's? That'd be a good one. So many weird picks this year, I have to wonder if maybe the problem is that with over 320 Division I schools, maybe the Selection Committee just can't keep up anymore. Perhaps we need fewer Div I schools playing College Basketball.
Click to expand...

Follow the money.

Look who is on the selection committee. You think they have incentive to keep their teams strong & discourage other teams from succeeding? After all, George Mason saw their recruiting improve exponentially after the Cinderella season. Read the comments of the head of the selection committee (from Ohio State....) about why Virginia Tech wasn't chosen.

As I said, follow the money.
 
I'd like to see a 20 win minimum for all non-AQ schools to get into the tourney.
 
wsuffa said:
Follow the money.
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Well that's the reason that college athletics exists anyway, right? More success, more alumni donations, more applications, more notariety, more prestige, more TV appearances, more ticket sales, MO MONEY.
 
Anthony said:
Well that's the reason that college athletics exists anyway, right? More success, more alumni donations, more applications, more notariety, more prestige, more TV appearances, more ticket sales, MO MONEY.
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IOW, a pro league with unpaid players.

Maybe the folks running the NFL Players Association could find fertile ground... :incazzato:

Just call it pro and be done with it.
 
wsuffa said:
IOW, a pro league with unpaid players.
Click to expand...

At about $20K to $40K (of more) per year of free tuition and room&board for the guys that aren't walk-ons, I'd say they are getting some benefits. What they do with it is up to them, and what the school allows them.

About 25 years ago our local paper did a "what ever happened to..." story about a couple of high school athletes that went to big colleges. One of the guys, a football player, got a full scholarship to play at Alabama. He thought, great, now I can get that engineering degree. The school said no, THESE are the classes you will take, no exceptions. They couldn't afford to put scholarships and elegibility at risk for a student to take a "hard" subject and possibly not make the grades. He transferred to another school. Dunno how many schools do things that way now, but I would bet that it is more than zero.
 
Matthew said:
At about $20K to $40K (of more) per year of free tuition and room&board for the guys that aren't walk-ons, I'd say they are getting some benefits. What they do with it is up to them, and what the school allows them.

About 25 years ago our local paper did a "what ever happened to..." story about a couple of high school athletes that went to big colleges. One of the guys, a football player, got a full scholarship to play at Alabama. He thought, great, now I can get that engineering degree. The school said no, THESE are the classes you will take, no exceptions. They couldn't afford to put scholarships and elegibility at risk for a student to take a "hard" subject and possibly not make the grades. He transferred to another school. Dunno how many schools do things that way now, but I would bet that it is more than zero.
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"Pay the man, Shirley:" http://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...s-arent-hurting/2011/03/13/ABSmlxT_story.html

(When I went to the University of Maryland as a mistakenly aspiring sportswriter, there were dozens of well-known “gut courses.” I took one of them — Sociology of the Soap Opera. The first day I walked in, I noticed fourth-fifths of the men’s basketball team starting five was in attendance. I stopped going to practice to get quotes; I just caught up to them once a month when they came to class.)
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'nuff said.
 
Matthew said:
Schools have always had the "Rocks for Jocks" classes. I was more surprised that a school would force a player to take those classes.
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They were doing that when I was in school. Don't ask how long ago.... :hairraise:
 
I'm surprised they had institutions of higher learning back then!
 
SkyHog said:
Was basketball still played with peach buckets back then?
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jb_progress_basketball_1_e.jpg


Nice shorts.
 
What do we all like?

Morehead! (State)

Down goes Louisville!
 
Michigan 75 Tennessee 45. Michigan was 0-1 at the stripe, and went on 2nd have runs of 16-0 and 14-0.

I picked em to win 1 game, but Wow!
 
And tonight it's Georgia vs uw. My two favorite teams are the WSU Cougars and anybody who is playing the huskies. Go Georgia!
 
The quarterback of the OSU team that won the national championship was a student of mine in one of my department's most rigorous classes. Smart as a whip too.
 
Ghery said:
And tonight it's Georgia vs uw. My two favorite teams are the WSU Cougars and anybody who is playing the huskies. Go Georgia!
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All that matters is that UGA lost (says the Ga. Tech grad). :thumbsup:
 
Those refs need to learn to swallow their whistles. No reason for that last foul to be blown on Pitt tonight. Was it a foul? Yeah, probably. With 0.8 seconds left, however, sometimes, the referees need to let the game play as it should have.

Even the Butler coach said something along those same lines in the post-game interview.

Very sad ending (and I hate the Big East).
 
Good game though.
And it appears BYU has reclaimed some mojo...
 
SkyHog said:
Those refs need to learn to swallow their whistles. No reason for that last foul to be blown on Pitt tonight. Was it a foul? Yeah, probably. With 0.8 seconds left, however, sometimes, the referees need to let the game play as it should have.

Even the Butler coach said something along those same lines in the post-game interview.

Very sad ending (and I hate the Big East).
Click to expand...

Just saw the replay of the last couple of seconds. Both fouls were dumb moves by the players. The last one probably would have been let go if it wouldn't have been so obvious.

Interesting thing - ESPN website says the crew chief of tonight's game was one of the officials that DID swallow their whistles at the end of the Rutgers-St John's game in the Big East tournament. The game where the refs walked off the court when there could have been as many as 2 seconds on the clock, then withdrew from the rest of that tournament.
 
SkyHog said:
Those refs need to learn to swallow their whistles. No reason for that last foul to be blown on Pitt tonight. Was it a foul? Yeah, probably. With 0.8 seconds left, however, sometimes, the referees need to let the game play as it should have.

Even the Butler coach said something along those same lines in the post-game interview.

Very sad ending (and I hate the Big East).
Click to expand...

I disagree. A foul is a foul whether it's .8 left of .8 in. I've refereed basketball games, and it makes you look VERY unprofessional to make situational fouls. I remember one game where one team was blowing out another and they were definitely overmatched, but I still called the game as if it were less than a 10 point affair. After the game the losing coach approached me, and said he completely respected that I didn't let his guys get away with things just because they were down.
 
EdFred said:
I disagree. A foul is a foul whether it's .8 left of .8 in. I've refereed basketball games, and it makes you look VERY unprofessional to make situational fouls. I remember one game where one team was blowing out another and they were definitely overmatched, but I still called the game as if it were less than a 10 point affair. After the game the losing coach approached me, and said he completely respected that I didn't let his guys get away with things just because they were down.
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+1. These games are 40 minutes long, not 39:59.

(I'm sure Louisville fans would agree too)
 
Back to the original title of the thread: I got a pretty good chuckle tonight when Sir Charles called the Big East the "itty bitty East".
 
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