Just a quick note: When I talked earlier about the aesthetic superiority of college basketball, I wasn’t thinking of last night’s Memphis-UCLA game. Ye gods, what an ugly display. That set basketball back so far they should’ve replaced the rims with peach baskets at halftime. I think Memphis coach/ huckster John Calipari said it best:… Continue reading Pay No Attention to the Game Behind the Curtain
Category: Basketball
I’m a Basketball Fan, That’s Why I Don’t Like the NBA
Matt Yglesias has a fairly silly article denouncing the NCAA as a “celebration of mediocrity.” Jason Zengerle takes issue with this, and provides a nice explanation of why college basketball is superior to the NBA on emotional grounds (and let me just note how happy I am to see our leading political magazines writing about… Continue reading I’m a Basketball Fan, That’s Why I Don’t Like the NBA
Give the People What They Want
One of the nice things about the move to ScienceBlogs is that I gained access to a much better stats package than we had for Steelypips. In particular, I can now look at the keywords that bring people to my site (for steelypips, I could only get keywords for the domain as a whole, which… Continue reading Give the People What They Want
So Much for the Power of Ignorance
So, how’s my winning NCAA strategy going, you ask? Shut up, I reply. Well, OK. I’m currently in a four-way tie for tenth place in the ScienceBlogs pool (of 23) on Yahoo. Of course, unlike some gloating people, all four of my Final Four picks are still alive… I still don’t have much chance of… Continue reading So Much for the Power of Ignorance
Late Start Live-Blogging
I passed on the first set of games in favor of playing some basketball with the usual lunchtime crowd, but made it home in time to see Bucknell finish up winning against Arkansas, and Northwestern State hit a wild three at the buzzer to beat Iowa. What state is that? That’d be Louisiana. Now you… Continue reading Late Start Live-Blogging
End of an Era
So, the big question in college basketball yesterday, “Can Syracuse sustain their Big East Tournament run through the NCAA’s?” was answered with a resounding “No.” They made a decent run at it, but Gerry McNamara didn’t have any legs left, and went without a field goal for the first time in his career. Terrence Roberts… Continue reading End of an Era
More NCAA Live-Blogging
All right, we’re back from our walk, and Emmy is very proud of the way she taunted the big scary German Shepherd up the road, so it’s back to the games. 5:53 Marquette’s three-point ace Steve Novak misses an open shot with eight seconds to play, and it’s all over but the intentional fouling and… Continue reading More NCAA Live-Blogging
Return of NCAA Live-Blogging
One of the few perks of working in academia is that I can take the occasional day off for no reason at all. I handed in my grades yesterday, and spring beak starts Monday, so I can feel free to take the afternoon off to sit on my ass and watch some basketball. And bring… Continue reading Return of NCAA Live-Blogging
I Got Your Winning NCAA Bracket Right Here
So RPM thinks he’s all clever, with the Double Entendre Fridays— he’s not the only one who can game search engine traffic… If you’re one of those philistines who doesn’t like basketball go revel in nostalgia (“Cow… yup, yup yup..”), because we’re all about the hoops this morning. It’s that time of year again, when… Continue reading I Got Your Winning NCAA Bracket Right Here
The Essence of March
I’d be required to turn in my fan card if I didn’t at least mention Syracuse winning the Big East Championship in one of the more improbable runs I’ve ever seen (the AP story is tarted up with ESPN graphics here). They looked dead heading into the tournament– having lost by 39 to lowly DePaul… Continue reading The Essence of March