I haven’t written much about basketball this year, for the simple reason that I haven’t watched much basketball this year– between SteelyKid, the book, and my day job, I just haven’t had time. This weekend, though, I watched a whole bunch of hoops, mostly involving my two teams, Syracuse and Maryland. Yesterday was a bad day, as both lost, but they each had a good run leading up to that.
Various and sundry comments in no particular order:
— One thing I have not missed in my non-hoops-watching winter has been the “announcing” team of Mike Patrick and Dick Vitale. I swear, these two reach a level of unprofessional incompetence that is rivaled only by the heads of major financial services firms. SteelyKid would do a better job calling games, and she can’t really pronounce consonants yet.
Their idiocy was thrown into starker relief than usual by the contrast with Dan Shulman and Jay Bilas doing the Big East games. Bilas has been the best studio analyst ESPN has for several years, and lately he’s also become one of their best color commentators. He never strays too far from the game at hand, he offers sharp and accurate commentary, and he can be pretty funny when required. The three-headed monster of Bilas, Sean McDonough, and Bill Raftery does a lot more banter, but is also an excellent game crew.
Watching a game called by Patrick and Vitale, on the other hand, is rather like watching the game in an airport bar with the sound turned down, and two loud drunks pontificating about basketball at the table next to you. Every now and then, they drift toward addressing the game they’re actually at, but the majority of their time seems to be spent blathering about other teams, other games, even other sports. They’re an utter failure at the essential task of calling a game on tv, which is to make sure that the audience knows what just happened on the court. they rarely if ever explain why the whistle just blew, and about a third of the time, they’re just flat wrong. On several occasions during the Maryland game yesterday, they completely blew a call, assigning possession to the wrong team, and never bothered to correct the mistake.
Thank God for the DVR. Kate and I went for a walk at the start of yesterday’s game, hitting pause on the way out, and when we got back, I was able to fast-forward not only through the commercial breaks, but also most of the free throws and substitution breaks. I still ended up watching pretty much all of the last five minutes on fast-forward, because I couldn’t take any more.
— Syracuse had a great run in the Big East tournament, but just flat ran out of gas. Jonny Flynn could barely stand in the second half, all of their shots seemed to hit the front of the rim, and Louisville got tons of open jump shots because the guys at the top of the 2-3 zone didn’t have the energy to get out to the shooters. It still would’ve been a different game had Harris, Onuaku, and Jackson been able to hit a two-foot shot, but they were essentially playing their fifth game in four days, and just didn’t have enough left.
It would’ve been a great storybook ending had they managed to win the title after seven overtimes in the previous two games, but Louisville was too deep and too good.
— Jonny Flynn ended up as the tournament MVP, despite being on the losing end of the championship game, which was a well-deserved honor. And based on the couple of post-game interviews I saw, if he can’t make it as a pro basketball player, he’s got a fine future in broadcasting.
— Does Andy Rautins do that Squiggy thing with his hair on purpose?
— Maryland lost to Duke for the third time this season, and may or may not have done enough to get into the NCAA’s by beating Wake Forest on Friday. Most of the commentators seem to have them in, but honestly, I’m a little dubious.
Still, the fact that they’re in the conversation at all is amazing. I said earlier this season that this is the worst Maryland team I’ve seen since I started following them in 1993, and talent-wise, I stand by that. The fact that they managed to be right around .500 in the ACC with this collection of players is just incredible– they don’t have anybody talller than 6’7″, and yet they were competitive in one of the best leagues in basketball.
Gary Williams is taking a lot of grief for his poor recruiting, which is probbaly not undeserved. His on-court coaching, though, has been outstanding, because the way this crew looked in the early season, I was expecting them to go 2-14 in the ACC.
— On a couple of occasions, when something happened to draw their attention to the court three feet from their noses, Patrick and Vitale commented that the officials were “really letting them play.” Clearly, they had not been watching the Big East games– Jim Calhoun would’ve blown a gasket had the refs called the game half as tight as the ACC crew did.
The NCAA brackets will be announced later today, and it’ll be interesting to see what the selection committee decides to do with some of these teams. Whatever happens with Maryland and Syracuse from here out, though, they’ve both exceeded my expectations for this season, so congratulations to them.