Basketball
drorzel | November 19, 2008I got a bunch of really good comments to yesterday's post about athletes and attitudes toward education. Unfortunately, yesterday was also a stay-at-home-with-SteelyKid day, and she spent a lot of time demanding to be held or otherwise catered to, so I didn't have a chance to respond. I'd like to correct that today by responding to the main threads of argument in those comments.
Taking these in no particular order, Moshe writes:
Not sure there is a serious argument here, athletes are different in so many ways, but I'll bite - here is another difference. Some students and athletes have their…
drorzel | April 28, 2008Barack Obama, hoopster:
The real question is, why is he afraid to play me one-on-one?
(Video via Matt Yglesias.)
drorzel | April 8, 2008The world's best known shrieking basketball analyst was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame yesterday, and event which ESPN is understandbly hyping to no end. I've written before about how Vitale is, in my opinion, one of the very worst color commentators in the business, so you might be wondering "What do you think about this yowling idiot being in the Hall of Fame?"
I'm perfectly fine with it, actually. It's a well-deserved honor-- as much as I dislike listening to him, and think that any useful insight he may once have had to offer has long since sunk into a sea of shtick, there's no…
drorzel | April 8, 2008When I went to bed last night, I thought the crucial moment of the NCAA men's basketball championship game was Bill Self's mystifying decision to go to a box-and-one on Chris Douglas-Roberts in the middle of the second half.
That's because I went to be lat night with two minutes to play and Memphis up seven. I assumed that there was nothing left but free throws, missed threes, and Jim Nantz's desperate attempts to say something immortal, or at least memorable.
Whoops. Memphis's poor free-throw shooting finally came back to bite them in the ass, Kansas hit some big shots, and the Jayhawks won…
drorzel | April 6, 2008Well, that was certainly an odd pair of national semifinal games. They were very similar in some ways-- Memphis ran circles around UCLA from start to finish, and Kansas did the same to UNC, save for a ten- or fifteen- minute stretch in the middle of the game.
I watched very little of the Memphis-UCLA game-- I don't really like either team, and it was clear from early on that Memphis wasn't going to be seriously challenged. I had heard that UCLA this year was an improvement over the last two years in that they could actually score some points, but they really seemed to revert to the mold of…
drorzel | April 5, 2008I am obscurely glad to learn from this Times human-interest story that Kansas center Sasha Kaun is from Russia. Otherwise, he is at the age where any parent naming their child "Sasha Kaun" would've had to deal with everybody thinking "Sasha Kaun Sasha Kaun everybody Sasha Kaun..." Yes, I am both a Bad Person and a Child of the 80's.
It's a reminder, though, of how many ways names can go wrong. This is a question of more than academic interest, of course, because we need to come up with a name for FutureBaby in the reasonably near future (we considered and rejected sticking with "FutureBaby…
drorzel | March 30, 2008Davidson's amazing NCAA tournament run came to an end today, as Kansas just squeaked past them, 59-57, when a shot at the buzzer went wide. The low score probably offends NBA fans, but to my mind, this game showed everything that's right about the NCAA tournament.
If you watched the game, it was clear that Kansas was bigger, stronger, and faster than Davidson at pretty much every position. And yet the Wildcats were able to hang with them, and even had a four-point lead in the second half-- not because they were chucking wild shots and getting lucky, but because they played excellent…
drorzel | March 30, 2008North Carolina beat Louisville last night to reach the Final Four, in what was the first good game in a couple of days. Xavier never seriously challenged UCLA in the early game, and while it's nice to see Davidson win, there wasn't much drama in their whomping of Wisconsin on Friday.
That Times link is notable in large part for their choice of photo to illustrate the story:
I really wish I knew what led to the choice of this particular picture for the web site. Honestly, it's like an editor called somebody and said "For this game, I'd like a picture that makes everybody in it look as stupid…
drorzel | March 25, 2008Dick Vitale is yapping about changing the rules of college basketball again, undeterred by the fact that the last time they listened to him it was an unmitigated disaster (the season or two when they replaced the alternating possession on a held ball with a "ties go to the defense" rule that proved totally unworkable). This time out, he's upset that Georgetown lost in the second round, in part because Roy Hibbert got in foul trouble, and he wants to get rid of the rule that disqualifies players after five fouls. He thinks coaches should be able to keep their star players on the floor, and…
drorzel | March 22, 2008I got a late start this morning, and had to run some errands today, but I would be remiss if I didn't post something to commemorate the wackiness in the Tampa subregional of the NCAA Tournament. They played four games yesterday in Tampa: the first two went into overtime, with Western Kentucky beating Drake on a last-second three and San Diego knocking off UConn the same way. Then Siena thumped Vanderbilt (Woo! Capital region!), and Villanova closed the day with an upset of Clemson. Two #4 seeds fell to #13 seeds, and two #5 seeds fell to #12 seeds.
This is what makes the NCAA tournament the…
drorzel | March 21, 2008There was a lot of basketball played yesterday, and a lot more will be played today, but the most important of these games was unquestionably Syracuse's victory over Maryland last night in the Carrier Dome.
What? Yes it's an NIT game, not an NCAA game. So what? They're the two teams I root for, and I've never seen them play each other before. That makes it the most important game of the day for me, and this is my blog. If you liked some other game, get your own blog.
Anyway, with the game taking place a mere two hours from here, and tickets not exactly being in high demand (there were a few…
drorzel | March 20, 2008I give you the last four rounds of the Worst NCAA Pool Bracket Ever:
That's small and hard to read, but it's filled out with the winners determined by the rankings of the physics graduate programs of the competing schools. (If only one of the schools offers a Ph.D. program in physics, that school wins; if neither school has a graduate program, the higher seed wins.) You can get the whole thing as a 1.03 MB PDF.
I wouldn't bet any money on this prediction, if I were you: the winner ends up being #14 seed Cornell...
Obviously, this is not a serious prediction. I entered four serious brackets…
drorzel | March 17, 2008For the first time in forever, the NCAA Tournament will start this weekend, and I won't have a clear rooting interest. Neither Syracuse nor Maryland made the field of 65. This is, of course, karmic blowback from the Giants winning the Super Bowl-- the last time they won, Syracuse became the first #2 seed ever to lose to a #15 seed.
It's going to be an odd experience, but I'm basically ok with it, because neither team deserved to be there. They had their chances to make a case, but bother stumbled badly down the stretch. Maryland lost its last three games in inexcusable fashion, and Syracuse…
drorzel | March 16, 2008Today is "Selection Sunday," when the field for the NCAA basketball championships will be announced, and everybody will start filling out their office-pool bracket sheets. I'm going to be in the weird position of watching the tournament without a rooting interest, as both my teams stink, and won't be in the field.
But I can rant negatively about that later-- the important thing now is that this weekend is when the conference championships for a number of leagues are decided, so positive stories about basketball abound. So let's talk about them for a few minutes.
Really, there's no better…
drorzel | March 3, 2008This has been a rough basketball season. What with one thing and another, I haven't been able to see many games involving either Maryland or Syracuse, and those games I have seen have been bad. Last night looked like it was going to be an exception, with my Terps holding a big lead over Clemson midway through the second half, but then they completely fell apart, getting outscored 34-11 down the stretch, including a tough 24-footer with two seconds left to give Clemson a 73-70 victory.
The decisive moment in this was probably the decision to sub Jason McAlpin in in the middle of the second…
drorzel | March 3, 2008This has to be seen to be believed:
(Via the Times Union's high school sports blog, who says it's from a high school game in Oregon.)
drorzel | February 14, 2008My Terps lost to the hated Dukies 77-65 last night, in a game I barely watched. Vitale and Patrick had the call, and were their usual intolerable selves, and I needed to do some cooking for today's physics department luncheon, so I was in the kitchen more than in front of the tv. A few observations based on what I did see:
-- This was a really simple game, and the box score reinforces my impression. Duke couldn't hang with the Maryland big men down low, Maryland's big men couldn't guard their Duke counterparts on the perimeter, and Maryland's guards have judgement issues. When your back court…
drorzel | February 13, 2008I didn't see the game last night, as I got distracted by some other tasks, but North Carolina narrowly beat Virginia last night, on a late jump hook by Tyler Hansbrough. This might seem surprising, given that UVA was .500 on the season, and 1-8 in the league, and indeed, the AP describes it that way.
Of course, nowhere in that article do you find the crucial bit of information. You have to go to ESPN's box score for that information (their game recap just repeats the AP text). From the box score, you can infer that Ty Lawson did not play, which makes the struggle a whole lot less surprising.…
drorzel | February 6, 2008The good news: the first UNC-Duke game of the year is tonight. It's a little less interesting than it might be, as Carolina guard Ty Lawson has a sprained ankle and the Tar Heels are nowhere near as good without him, but it's still likely to be a good game, and the atmosphere is always great.
The bad news: Dick Vitale has recovered from throat surgery, and will call the game for ESPN.
I wonder how annoying it would be to stream the radio call on the tablet...
drorzel | January 22, 2008Well, ok, the final score was really 64-62, but it was 4-2 in the five-minute overtime period after forty minutes of old-school Big East basketball failed to resolve anything. On paper, this shouldn't've been much of a game-- Georgetown is #9 in the country, while Syracuse dresses only eight scholarship players at the moment-- but that's what happens with rivalry games.
The was fairly typical of Syracuse's season so far. They made a really good effort, and actually led by seven late in the game, but were undermined by inexperience and poor judgement. Jonny Flynn in particular forced a lot of…