Duke sucks

The sway that Duke seems to hold over ESPN is silly. I'm watching the Southland Conference championship (note to ESPN: the championship is the final game, not the whole thing; it looks dumb when you show stats that say Big 12 Championship: 3 games for a player on a team there for the first time in years), and they're showing highlights from other games at halftime.

They cut to Duke-Florida State, and the studio guy says "Gerald Henderson gets it goin' from behind the arc". But I see the shot and I think hmm, looked like he had a foot on the line to me.

I stop it, rewind, and go frame-by-frame. Both feet are on the line. Clearly not a 3. The ref standing six feet away, of course, calls it a 3. ESPN doesn't even question this.

Remember when Duke was the new power on the block? Now they're the Red Sox of college basketball.

Whatwhatwhat?

Watching the IU-MSU game, hoping for an interesting result. Indiana down 4, 11 seconds left. As they bring the ball upcourt with about 9.5 seconds left, Musberger says "They don't have to shoot the 3, but they have to work quickly."

o rly? I wasn't aware there was a four-point shot in NCAA play. Because, you know, if there isn't, they really need a 3, because THEY'RE DOWN 4 WITH LESS THAN 10 SECONDS TO PLAY.

The funny thing is that I was just thinking that Indiana had blown the previous possession (down 4, 30 seconds left) by taking 10 seconds to shoot a 2. Most coaches don't seem to realize that you aren't going to win by trading possessions, and even if they do miss some free throws, at that point in the game, you don't have time to gain a point per possession. With 30 seconds left, I think you shoot 3s. With 10 seconds left, only an idiot would say you shoot 2s.

oh wait.

I guess maybe he thought Larry Johnson was on the court.

oh wait. That would still require a three-point shot.

Stupid coaches

Dear Rick Barnes,

YOU LOST. STOP FOULING.

Good God. I think it's time to go to something like four free throws for fouls beyond 12 or something like that. You're down 17 with a minute to go. YOU LOST.

What a bunch of hacks.

Billy Packer, always 30 minutes behind the action, just noticed that perhaps the fans might get upset if Texas kept fouling. (They've been booing loudly for the last three fouls. Even they realize the game is over.)

Also, CBS sucks. That is all.

l2count

Dear math-challenged announcers, and you know who you are (Mr. Manaman),

When a team is down late in regulation or overtime, generally speaking, yes, they do need threes. Example: you're down 4 with 20 seconds left. If you hit a 2 right away, and you steal the inbounds pass and hit another 2, then no, you didn't need a 3. In any other situation, though, yes, you did. (It's also possible to foul, watch them miss two, and then come down and hit a two, but about as likely.)

What is much, much, much more likely is that your opponent is going to score again. Anything less than 10 seconds a possession is luck. You should expect your opponents to hit free throws, not hope that you'll somehow hypnotize the ball out of their hands. If they get two free throws per possession, you need three points per possession.

Learn to count.

CBS = teh suck

CBS can go f themselves. The announcers did everything but paint their faces blue at halftime.

You got the team you wanted. Make sure to root for them against West Virginia, too. Normally, biased announcers favor the underdog, but it's cool, don't worry about it.

wow

Not sure how to describe today. All I know is that a) I need to save some money so I can experience more of this tournament and b) if I went to the doctor, he'd say no way, not going to happen. (I think I'd rather have a female doctor, actually, not for that reason, but I'd rather not have a man checking out my parts. Anyway.)

Wisconsin has officially set the sport of basketball back 10 years. Good God. And yeah, Beilein has some work to do. Michigan looked awful. A decent team would have beaten Wisconsin. I'm glad MSU won, because the rest of the day sucked ...

until just now. I should have left the radio on. Hearing Don Fischer announce the end would have been priceless, but I was angry at the refs and I switched it off.

Anyway again, we watched the first two games, ducked out early and got a table at the Claddagh 15 minutes before everyone got there, headed back to watch Purdue lose a heartbreaker, and then saw Minnesota show IU why Dan Dakich is not the right man for the job. (Of course, it could also be that IU has too many players who don't realize maybe D.J. White should get the ball from time to time.)

Also, I got a free grande frappuccino at Starbucks, because they made the wrong one, which makes up for their stupid system where they have only three baristas anyway and they serve cold and hot drinks on opposite sides, so you can't ever find out if yours is ready.

One of my good friends, who is totally awesome, got tickets to a suite for the evening session. If I didn't mention this before, she's awesome. Anyway, the seats were great, and on top of that, one of the people there knows Landon Turner, so he invited Turner to the suite. (If you don't know who he is, check out his site. He was one of the key players on Indiana's 1981 national champs; he was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident, ending his collegiate career. Most people who saw him play would say he had definite NBA talent. From everything I'd heard, he's a great guy, and I'd definitely agree.)

As a bonus, Wayne Duke stopped by as well. If you don't know him, look him up. (Big Ten history.)

I did kind of have a little too much caffeine, so that didn't help. But it was a great day. (I recommend the General's Meatloaf at the Claddagh.)

Totally worth it. Bring on the dance!

P.S. Portland State won its conference. Did your school?

Oh yeah, I forgot. Some drunk jackasses from Ohio State (shocker) sat behind us, thankfully on a level up, and every other word out of their mouths was a word I will not repeat on this blog. Suffice it to say that "earmuffs" doesn't quite cover it. Probably Yankee fans too. Anyway, to them I say ha ha, your team lost, and no one cares that you stole beer from suites. (Big Ten tournament = no beer sales.)

Also, I had the worst back spasms I've ever had. Ever. I thought at one point I would have to fold myself in half to make them stop. It's possible that sitting in an arena seat for four hours and then sitting on a short stool for two hours set it off. I think it's because I drank about seven Diet Cokes at the Claddagh and didn't go to the bathroom. Why do I say that? When I got to Conseco and excused myself, after reprising the scene from A League of Their Own, the back pain was gone. If that's anything like what pregnant women can go through, wow, I never want two X chromosomes as long as I live.

Champs!

We goin dancin! We goin dancin!

Congratulations, cheaters

Good luck with that fouling press and those moving screens in the tournament. I hope you make it myself. I'll be betting heavily on your first-round opponent.

If betting were legal, of course.

Cheater

I just came up with a great analogy. I think it's great, anyway. If you don't, too bad, you'll notice I didn't add a poll to this post.

Here's the deal. It's like Sampson has a white-collar job with this big company, and he's stealing mechanical pencils. Cheap ones, you know, 89 cents or something like that. Maybe the first couple were accidental: you have one in your hand near the end of the day, you get a phone call or run into the boss' office or something, you put it in your pocket and forget you did that, and you get home and there it is. It's just one pencil, why take it back?

But eventually he realizes that no one's really bugging him about the pencils, so he starts taking a few of them home a day. Just a few. No big deal yet. And as he doesn't get caught, he takes more, and more, until he's taking home a couple of boxes at a time.

What he doesn't realize is that all the pencils have RFID tags, and so his company knows he's doing it, so HR calls him in.

"Dude, you can't be taking pencils home with you like that. It's getting out of control."
"What do you mean? I'm not taking pencils home."
"Um, yes you are. Hundreds of them. You've been doing it for weeks."
"No I'm not."
"Alright, here's the deal. You've been stealing pencils. A lot of them. However, it's not like you're stealing computers. Yet. So, no more vacation time for you. Actually, it might be better if we relocate you to another part of the company, so you can kind of get a fresh start.
"But here's the thing: no matter what, DON'T STEAL ANY MORE PENCILS. I don't want to see you breaking any rule or law, but definitely don't steal any more pencils."
"Um, okay."

So yeah, his coworkers are saying "Dude, you got transferred because you were stealing pencils? That's weak!" Well, no, it was because he stole a bunch of them over a period of time and wasn't really forthcoming about it.

Well, time goes on, and what do you know? All of a sudden, pencils are disappearing again. So they call him in.

"What did I tell you? No more stealing pencils! And now you're doing it again!"
"Um, no I'm not."
"The hell you aren't! We track them, you know. We can tell you every single pencil you've taken."
"Those weren't stolen. See, one of my coworkers, Rick, he was doing this project, and he needed a lot of pencils, and I told him that if it was work-related, then he could use some from work if he took them back when he was done, and so he did, but he got busy at home, and he couldn't take them back, so he asked me if I would take them back for him, and before I could answer, he drove up in his truck, dumped them in my yard and took off. And I couldn't just leave them there, so I brought them inside, and I was just getting ready to take them back when you called."

See, it's not the pencils themselves. I realize that's not a major issue itself. (I also realize that the NCAA isn't limited to pursuing a single coach at a time, which seems to be a main point of that "argument." See, they can bust Sampson for pencils and someone else for manslaughter AT THE SAME TIME. Very clever, they are.)

It's that he stole HUNDREDS of them. MORE THAN ONCE. And LIED about it. BADLY. Now, I've never done this myself, but I know people who have ... when you are on probation for something, don't get caught doing it again. Just a tip.

But it's okay. He can always get a job announcing. Hell, Valvano did it, Packer does it, anyone with basketball experience can. Clean ethical background not required.

Worst. Coverage. Ever.

More details to come, but this is what's happening right now. CBS cut away from the Purdue-Florida game to show us part of the end of the Tennessee-Virginia game, except that they'd cut back to the Purdue-Florida game, almost missing the end of the UT-UVa game. Of course, UT-UVa is blacked out, so we can't see it on the MMM package.

CBS should do the right thing and back out of the contract with the NCAA. They've demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that they're clearly incapable of covering an event like this one.

Can't Broadcast for S---

Among other things, the most recent NFL season showed us that some of CBS' broadcast teams are awful. Apparently that extends to its NCAA coverage as well.

I'm watching the Michigan-Ohio State game, Tommy Amaker's last regular-season game at Michigan, and Thad Matta must be thrilled to know that CBS brought its #10 announcing team to Ann Arbor to announce his #1 team's game with the Wolverines.

Enberg is tolerable. I suppose he gets a pass, somewhat, because he's about 90, but Dan Bonner is an idiot. The first reference to Michigan State instead of Michigan is a freebie: in two and a half hours, you can make one egregious mistake, sure. Three in one half indicates a poorly-prepared announcer, an unintelligent announcer, or both. There was also a reference to someone named Odom, I think. If I recall correctly, a) Lamar Odom went to Rhode Island b) several seasons ago. The young man staying in Columbus temporarily is Oden. O-d-e-n.

Naturally, the producer is reminding Enberg to point out that Michigan is on the bubble about once every five minutes.

I doubt that all the broadcast teams went to hell all of a sudden. I must not have noticed as much when I was younger.

The dog days of November

Caught an ESPN2 doubleheader today: Butler over Gonzaga in the NIT finals (looks like when they put in some new buildings around Hinkle, they must have worked on the team too - Butler's going to make some noise in the Horizon this year, and could beat as many as seven Indiana teams, starting with their NIT wins over Notre Dame and Indiana), followed by Fresno State at Louisiana Tech in a WAC football game.

Needless to say, the Bulldogs won in both games.