The NCAA men’s basketball tournament bracket was announced yesterday, which has kicked off the usual round of people “predicting” the outcomes based on totally silly criteria like the Academic Progress Rate of the schools in question. This is, of course, completely frivolous. What you really need is solid, relevant information. Like predictions based on the […]
Category: Basketball
Lazy Sports Writing Hall of Fame: William Rhoden
I’ve lost a lot of sleep this weekend staying up late to watch Syracuse games, so I’m only getting to some of the Friday articles in my RSS feeds now. I don’t want to let this utterly worthless column by William Rhoden of the New York Times pass without comment though. It’s ostensibly about the […]
Quick Basketball Notes
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 […]
Seven Quarters
My plans to write long and smart blog posts today was thoroughly derailed last night by a combination of a slightly sick SteelyKid (she’s had a runny nose for a while because of teething, but it seems to have slid into a bit of a sinus infection) and an incredible basketball game. Syracuse and UConn […]
A Game of Timing
One of my coaches, back in the day, always used to say that basketball was a game of quickness. Usually when he had just stolen the ball from somebody thirty years younger than him. It’s true, quickness is a big asset in basketball. But it’s also a game of timing– knowing when to shoot, when […]
Seasonal Sports Peeve
It’s March now, which means that we’re at the absolute peak of the college basketball season. Small conferences have already started their tournaments, playing for the one shot those teams have of getting into the NCAA’s. Big conference tournaments start next week, with the Big Dance the week after. So, of course, ESPN and all […]
Go Figure
Maryland 88, North Carolina 85 (WARNING: Auto-playing video): Greivis Vasquez did something no Maryland player had done since 1987, and the Terrapins pulled off an upset that was almost as remarkable. Vasquez had a career-high 35 points and 11 rebounds and 10 assists — Maryland’s first triple-double in 22 years — and the Terrapins rallied […]
Congratulations to Pat Summitt
Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt got her 1000th win last night, a record that will probably stand for a good long while. Nobody else in college basketball really has much of a shot– the record for men’s basketball coaches is Bob Knight at 902, and the most wins by an active coach is Mike […]
Athletes and Academia, part II
I 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 […]
I Could Take Him
Barack Obama, hoopster: The real question is, why is he afraid to play me one-on-one? (Video via Matt Yglesias.)