Category: Basketball

The 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… Continue reading Vitale in the Hall of Fame

When 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… Continue reading Rock, Chalk, Championship

Well, 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… Continue reading Down to Two (UCLA-Memphis, UNC-Kansas)

I 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… Continue reading What’s in a Name?

Davidson’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… Continue reading Davidson

North 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… Continue reading UNC-Louisville

Dick 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).… Continue reading Basketball Isn’t Broken

I 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… Continue reading Tampa Madness!

There 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… Continue reading Basketball Game of the Day (Syracuse-Maryland)

I 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;… Continue reading March (Physics) Madness