The good news is, I'm solidly ahead of Barack Obama in my NCAA pool. The bad news is, the success rate of my serious picks is distressingly close to that of the Physics Grad Programs backet...
Various and sundry thoughts on the first two days of NCAA tournament action:
-- Not that many big upsets, and six of the ten lower seeds to win were from power conferences, and thus deficient in charm. The USC win over Boston College, in particular, was quite possible the dullest close win by a double-digit seed that I've ever seen. Even the crowd seemed bored.
Compare that to, say, East Tennessee State's near-miss against Pittsburgh, which was absolutely electric. Pittsburgh had a good number of fans present, but it was clear that everyone who hadn't come into the arena as a Pitt fan was pulling for ETSU (and it's hard to blame them, given the goon-o-rama Pitt brings to the court). Granted, they were different arenas, and different crowds, but at least some of the difference has to be attributed to the match-up of two mediocre teams from power conferences.
-- Some of the near misses were brilliantly played. American pushed Villanova to the edge, and Cal State Nothridge gave Memphis all they wanted and more. Both American and CSU-N came close by playing terrific basketball-- five guys moving, cutting, setting screens, passing the ball around, and getting good shots against superior athletes.
Both of them lost because they just wore down. This was particularly notable in the American-Villanova game, where every shot American put up in the last eight minutes or so hit the front of the rim. They just didn't have any legs left.
They played the game the way it's meant to be played, though, and I salute their effort.
-- Some of the near-misses deserved to miss. VCU played a really good game, but their play for the last shot was absolutely horrific. They inbounded the ball to their one star player, who dribbled it down the court into the lane, picked up his dribble, threw five shot fakes, then weakly heaved the ball in the general direction of the hoop as the buzzer sounded.
There was never the slightest chance that that was going to work. They were in a position to take the last shot for the win because they had played as a team. Devolving to this NBA crap that every player on UCLA knew was coming was doomed to fail, and did. I have no idea why Mayben thought that shot fakes were going to do anything-- the guy guarding him was taller than he was, and had no need to jump, and who was he going to pass to, anyway? Pathetic.
-- Broadcast-wise, CBS has improved their coverage over the last several years, and are no longer quite so insistent on sticking with bad games when there are better contests going on elsewhere. If anything, they've started to err in the other direction-- last night, they were jumping back and forth between the Siena-Ohio State and Wisconsin-Florida State games (both in overtime) that it was difficult to tell what the hell was going on in either. Or maybe that was just because it was well past midnight.
-- One of the very few things that pro football has over the NCAA's is that the Super Bowl is a single-game event. I don't think the total number of new ads rolled out for the NCAA's is any lower than the total number of new ads rolled out for the Super Bowl, but the tournament lasts for three weeks, meaning there are many more slots into which those few new ads need to fit. Which, in turn, means that they get real old, real fast.
I am now thoroughly sick of State Farm's series of ads involving a fat guy selling incomplete products (popsicles without sticks, hot dogs without buns, etc.). I have no idea what their point is, I just want them to stop.
Happily, we have a DVR now, so I can just pause the broadcast for forty-five minutes at the beginning of the game, and then fast-forward through the endless commercial breaks. Which really are damn near endless-- in fact, I'm not sure whether the Siena game is really over, or if they just forgot to come back from one giant commercial break.
-- Both of my teams won their first-round games, which is good, and both played pretty well while doing so. This sets up Maryland to play Memphis today, and Syracuse versus Arizona State tomorrow.
Memphis had a close call against Cal State Northridge on Thursday, which you might think would indicate that they're vulnerable. I doubt it, though, because Northridge played them close by playing the same sort of game Maryland would need to play to win today. Memphis was caught off guard by this on Thursday, but they'll be ready for it today, and I expect my Terps to get smoked.
Syracuse won fairly comfortably over Stephen F. Austin (as they should, playing against just one guy), while Arizona State beat Temple in a game I didn't see that much of. I don't really know what to expect tomorrow.
And that's my quick recap of the last two days of tournament action. What do you think of the tournament so far?
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"They played the game the way it's meant to be played, though, and I salute their effort."
Part of me tends to agree with you on "the way the game is meant to be played," but then I wonder how much of that is due to our basketball upbringing -- in my case, being coached by people who revered John Wooden and Bob Knight's approach to the game.
But really, the game is meant to be played in the way that gives your team the best chance to win. Who's to say that Pitt pounding it into the post or Memphis running a dribble-drive offense isn't really the best way to play?
I really think the dribble-drive offense complemented by several great spot-up shooters is the wave of the future, especially for smaller schools. Portland State and North Dakota State are two teams that used this offense in the first round. You don't need a great athlete, just someone to get into the lane with regularity.
The open three is statistically the best shot other than a wide-open dunk, which is something that the previous generation of basketball minds is just now beginning to accept. Plus, anybody can get hot and get lucky, considering how close the college 3 line is. And getting hot is your best chance to pull off an upset.
Just a comment about the CBS coverage, while they may have improved, they are still absolutely terrible at it.
At one point, they actually switched to the Wisconsin game with 17 seconds left, showed the Wisconsin player move down-court, shake his man, and back up to take what could have been the game winning shot, and then cut back to the Ohio State-Siena game, which had about 1:30 left in the first OT.
This cut alone is enough for me to completely discount any other improvements they may have made.
This cut alone is enough for me to completely discount any other improvements they may have made.
Even dropping Billy Packer?
I forgot to mention it in the post, but that's worth an awful lot in my book.
I really think the dribble-drive offense complemented by several great spot-up shooters is the wave of the future, especially for smaller schools. Portland State and North Dakota State are two teams that used this offense in the first round. You don't need a great athlete, just someone to get into the lane with regularity.
I don't have any major objections to the offense I think you're talking about-- I didn't see Portland State or North Dakota State, so I'm not 100% sure, but American was running an offense that involved a lot of dribbling into the paint and kicking back out.
The stuff I hate is the "four guys stand around and watch the fifth try to do something by himself" offense. Or the "pass the ball around the perimeter, then chuck up a shot" offense.
The key is having everybody in motion, which is as important in the drive-and-kick-out offense as anything else. You don't get very far by having your spot-up shooters standing still, but if everybody rotates and cuts while the drive takes place, you can get open looks.
The essential thing to realize about basketball is that if you play the game right, you should never need spectacular feats of athleticism in order to score. If you're disciplined on offense, and keep everybody moving, you can get open for high-percentage shots.
The modern highlight-reel culture leads us to overvalue fantastic individual effort, but you don't need to be able to hurdle an average adult to win a basketball game. It's actually more impressive to me to see team play leading to easy lay-ups and open jump shots than physically overpowering in-your-face dunks.
The most boring NCAAs ever?
Ray Ratto
Sunday, March 22, 2009
(03-21) 20:27 PDT -- On Thursday evening, this NCAA Tournament looked like it had a chance to be stupefyingly ordinary. The chalk held 12 of 16 times (really 12 of 15, since 8-9 games have been a historic tossup since rudimentary seeding began in 1979), by an average of 17 points. Plus, the upset winners were not from the small/charming schools, but from large traditionals like Michigan, Maryland and Western Kentucky....