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?