Wednesday, March 20, 2013

March Madness: On your mark. Get set. PROCRASTINATE!!!



Welcome, everybody, to the most exciting two days of sports that the year has to offer.

Even if you’re not a huge fan of college basketball, there’s simply no resisting the allure of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. The craziest part of the three week long tournament is that the first two days – in which half of the field will be eliminated – is usually more fun to watch than the Final Four or championship game.

Even if you haven’t thrown $10 into your office pool, there’s still plenty of fun to be had. That first Thursday and Friday of the tournament have become a sort of faux-holiday, with even the most uptight companies all but surrendering hopes of productivity as workers constantly refresh box scores or stream the games online.

While many of you are stuck in the office, I – thanks to my flexible work hours and the fact that, technically, my job requires me to keep up with the games – will be holed up in front of several televisions throughout the day.

On the off chance that your tyrannical office doesn’t have a television and has blocked the video streaming sites, I invite you to join me here as I live blog the entirety of the first two days. Check back here throughout the afternoon and into the evening as I keep you up to date with random musings and delirious ramblings that occur when you barely move and watch 32 games in about 36 hours.


11:58 – Ladies and Gentlemen, we’ve come to zero-hour.

In about 15 minutes, this year’s NCAA tournament will tip off. If you’re one of those people who likes to argue that we’ve been playing the tournament for the last couple of days with the ‘First Four’ (puke), please feel free to argue. You can scream as loud as you want. All of those teams will be gone by the end of the weekend, so I really don’t care.

But as for the games scheduled for today and tomorrow, prepare yourselves for a pair of 12-hour television blocs of unmitigated awesomeness.

Some of you have had the foresight to come down with a timely 48-hour stomach bug or a deceased relative and can watch from the comfort of your own home. Others might be stuck sneaking peaks every few minutes while the boss isn’t looking. Either way, I invite you to check in from time to time over the next two days as I live blog this spectacle.

*looks at watch – its 11:58*

Well, it would just be wrong to start drinking before noon.

*commences twiddling thumbs*



12:07 – I see that CBS has taken a page from its weekly NFL coverage and decided to cram as many analysts as possible onto the set of its pregame show. Come on, CBS. It’s a 15 minute pregame show… Less if you count commercials. What is the point of putting five guys behind the desk.

The cheesiest part is how all of these mega casts have distinct personalities for each of the cast members. You’ve got your host, your borderline Hall of Fame former player, your wacky color commentator type of character, your just-retired loudmouth former player, and a wild card. It’s like watching those boy bands from the 90s where each member had to fit a certain personality to create the image the band creators wanted.

It’s not weird that I remember that A.J. was the bad-boy of the Backstreet Boys, right?

Oh. And now I see that there are two other studios in two different cities, all devoted to keep us up to the second. When will all of these guys have time to talk for more than 10 seconds at a time?



12:15 – Over/under on promos for The Masters during today’s coverage: 23

GET OUT OF MY HEAD JIM NANTZ!!!



12:26 – Valparaiso is playing Michigan State in the first game of the day. Bryce Drew, who famously hit a 3-pointer to clinch a first round upset for Valpo over Ole Miss in – I’m going to say, 1998? – is now the head coach of the Crusaders.

I still remember watching that game with my best friend back in middle school, then spending the next hour trying to recreate the shot out in his driveway.

Seeing Bryce Drew in a suit and entering the early stages of male pattern baldness instead of flopping around on the floor makes me feel old.



12:39 – The last time that I did one of these, I alluded to my bracket and the buckets of red ink that it would take to properly score my picks. To avoid any controversy on whether I’ve actually called any games right, I’ll lay out some of the important predictions from my bracket for this year.

Seeing as how I filled out three different brackets for three different pools – because entering more than one bracket in a given pool should be punishable by death – we’ll go with the picks from the pool which will pay me the most money:

First round upsets
Belmont over Arizona
Iowa State over Notre Dame
South Dakota State over Michigan
Colorado over Illinois
Bucknell over Butler

Second round surprises
Memphis over Michigan State
Wisconsin over Kansas State
San Diego State over Georgetown
N.C. State over Indiana
UNLV over Syracuse

Hey. You aren’t a 1-3 seed, but you’re in the Elite Eight
UNLV

Final Four
Louisville defeats New Mexico
Kansas defeats Miami

Champion
Kansas – the only team who has ever won me a tournament pool in my lifetime. Thank you, Mario Chalmers.



12:45 – No. 6 Butler vs. No. 11 Bucknell – the only one of the first bloc of games where I have predicted an upset – just started. And of course it’s on the one channel that I don’t get at my house.



12:59 – Valpo getting thoroughly pummeled. Seriously. Can someone out there tell me what exactly TruTV is or how I can pick up the signal?



1:13 – I really, REALLY wish that they would let cameras into the war room as the bracket is being filled out by the selection committee. I don’t even need it to be a live feed. Just send a documentary crew – a la “Hard Knocks” – to wherever the committee meets around Wednesday of conference championship week and let the cameras roll.

They could show ‘The Building of the Bracket’ just before the tipoff of the first First Four (puke, still) game and draw in millions of viewers.

This would undoubtedly lead to cries of corruption and certain members of the committee being vilified by fan bases who are snubbed or offended at their seeding/region, but you can always hide behind the fact that the choosing of the final at-large teams and almost all of the seeding is entirely subjective. The NCAA has already made a mockery of itself by creating those first four play-in games for the sake of getting two more nights of primetime viewing. Why not go for another hour of commercial sales?



1:29 – If there’s one thing that is certain in any NCAA tournament, it’s that Verne Lundquist will somehow be behind the mic for a big upset and that, invariably, he’ll toss out some awful one-liner to commemorate the occasion.

Possibilities for this year:

Oregon over Okie St. – “The Duck quack while Oklahoma State cracks!”
St. Mary’s over Memphis – “And the Gaels advance as a cold wind blows for Memphis!”
Northwestern St. over Florida – “The Demons star in a nightmare for the Gators!”
S.D. State over Michigan – “Michigan the higher seed, but the grass is greener for the Jackrabbits!”



1:36 – My first upset pick not looking so hot as Bucknell manages just 14 points in the first half.

Also, some breaking news coming out of that game. We’ve learned that Butler coach Brad Stevens is finally old enough to get his drivers license and will be driving the team around to various parties after the game, so long as he’s back at the house before curfew.



1:44 – After three years, our long national nightmare is over. NAPA Auto Parts is once again a big sponsor of the tournament – all but ensuring a commercial for the company every 10 minutes or so – but has mercifully stopped running the commercial featuring that annoying “NAPA know how” song with all of the creepy lip syncing and weird person-to-camera unblinking eye contact that makes me feel like I need to take a shower.

The new commercial is still a little weird, but it got a couple of laughs out of me. If nothing else, at least this new commercial is plain and simple enough that I can drown it out as white noise if I’m not watching the television.



1:58 – No. 8 Pittsburgh and No. 9 Wichita State tipped off a few minutes ago, giving me a reprieve from the shellacking that Sparty is putting on Valpo.

This game is particularly intriguing for college basketball traditionalists who would just LOVE to see the winner of this game knock off No. 1 Gonzaga in the second round. Sure, neither Pittsburgh nor Wichita is a perennial power and neither has won a national title, but the fact that a mid-major conference has a No. 1 seed is just killing some of these analysts. They don’t mind upsets and unknowns making runs in the tournament – which is exactly why they would want to see the Shockers take out the Zags – but you can just see the cringing going on with some of these talking heads when the stats dictate that they have to call a team like Gonzaga one of the best in the country.

If Gonzaga does bow out early, you can chalk up another Lundquist gem about there “being a new Cinderella in town” or something idiotic like that.



2:18 – Doug Gotlieb has got to be loving life right now.

For the last few years, he’s been the one ESPN Radio personality that has really been on top of the whole college basketball landscape. His show was the only one worth listening to around tournament time. Too bad he wasn’t given enough credit since some guy who was less knowledgeable, but could speak just as well and looked better in a suit (Andy Katz, I’m looking in your direction) used all of the pretty graphics that television can provide to wow people looking for information.

With his move to CBS, not only did Gotlieb get to go home, but he now gets to do color commentary at the tournament and is one of the most respected voices at his company when it comes to college hoops.

Good for you, Doug.



2:36 – For at least the 10th consecutive year, CBS cameras/program directors fail to realize the significance of the Wichita State Shockers’… um… unique hand gesture.

This will never cease to be hilarious for me as my mind will never surpass the level of high school freshman.



2:43 – We’ve finally reached that gooey middle of the television schedule where it is nearly impossible to find a spot where there is no live game action to be seen.

I really like how the tournament has evolved with its start times over the years. There used to be a bloc of games that all tipped off at a certain time. That seemed like a good thing, but it turned bad if two games both entered the final minute and were close. You can’t make me Sophie’s Choice an NCAA tournament game. That’s sadistic.

The new staggered schedule is much better. You only have one option for the first half hour of the bloc – which is great for the network since there is nowhere to turn the channel to when commercials come on – but there is a greatly reduced chance that all of the games will be at halftime or in a vital moment at any given time.

I also appreciate the couple of hours between the final start time of the second bloc and the first tip-off of the third bloc. That 30 minute window with no games going on gives me just enough time to do something work related so that I have a solid argument that I deserve to get paid for the day.


2:51 – Bucknell loses, and my dreams of a perfect bracket go down. I was so close…



3:12 – I’m still pretty bummed out that my beloved Georgia Southern Eagles never made the tournament while I was a student there. Travelling to whatever outpost – since I’m assuming that GSU would be somewhere in the 14-16 range – would have been a blast.

When I first got into the tournament as a kid, I used to wonder why the fans of whatever scrub school even bothered to go to a game that they were destined to lose by 30 points. I could understand families travelling to watch the game, but nothing else.

And yet, every year there was a 200-person student section and a pep band cheering their asses off hundreds of miles from home as their No. 16 seed got its face rearranged by Duke or North Carolina.

After being a fixture in the ‘Hanner Hooligans’ student section at GSU games throughout my undergrad, I now see the error of my ways. I would have dropped everything and scraped together every cent I had for the privilege of bussing up to Detroit (Or Kansas City, or Philadelphia, or wherever) to cheer on the Eagles. If they ever do make the dance, I’d still be hard pressed not to make the trip. It would be so fun that I wouldn’t even mind the blowout loss.


3:32 – Wichita State starting to pull away from Pittsburgh. This is only leading to more ‘shockers’ being thrown up by the WSU faithful. I am incredibly entertained.


3.39 – I’m out of competitive games that are in the final minutes, so I’m having to dig deep into the bag of rants and random thoughts.

Why don’t we send whoever the defending national champion is to play for us in the Olympics every four years?

Sure, the world proved in 2004 that it could beat our NBA dream team, but I think that had more to do with a lack of participation from some of America’s best players and a lack of 100 percent effort from the ones who did play.

Think about it. There’s no doubt that a team like last year’s Kentucky squad could compete for the Olympic title. It might be a distraction for the guys who are on their way to the NBA, but it would be the ultimate reward for the guys who practiced hard, but rode the bench the whole season. Those guys still wouldn’t play much, but they’re probably on track to graduate and do their best to find a job in the lower middle class after college.

The stars will go on to multi-million dollar contracts and endorsement deals, but how sweet would it be for those guys to earn an Olympic medal for all of their trouble?


3:51 – What the hell is a Biliken? That mascot looks like it wants to steal all of Cindy Loo-Who’s presents and shove the Christmas tree back up the chimney.



4:13 – It’s always a little sad to see some of these small conference champions go out on such a sour note as high seeds have their way with them.

Especially the schools that haven’t made the tournament in five or more years. Those teams only get into the tournament by winning their conference tournament, meaning that the seniors of those teams hit the pinnacle of their entire basketball careers, savor it for a week, and are then – mostly – done with competitive basketball forever.

Think about it. For the teams in the field who haven’t made the dance in a while, their seniors were recruited to help turn the program around. Those guys worked their asses off for four or five years, then finally made that glorious run through their conference tournament to make it to the NCAAs. They were at the top of the world, on the front page of all the newspapers, and royalty on campus.

Now, they’re down by 27 to some No. 2 seed in the first half and those seniors will probably never play another meaningful game again.

Harsh.



4:40 - *Notice* - Irrational hatred ahead.

The hell with Davidson. I can’t stand those guys. They have all of the elitism and smugness of Duke without half of the talent. I’m fully aware that by ragging on their conference and quality wins, I’m putting down Georgia Southern, but any Eagle fan is used to insults and disappointment as far as basketball is concerned.
Davidson is giving Marquette a run for its money, and regardless of how my bracket plays out, this is the one game that I have a huge rooting interest in.

I suppose this is just an extension of the argument I have with fans from middle-of-the-road SEC fans each football season. Why are you rooting for a conference opponent when you root against them the other 364 days of the year? It’s not even like there’s conference pride on the line. The Southern Conference isn’t going to get any representative other than the conference tournament champion anytime soon, so why cheer for a team that has been the evil empire of the conference for a decade?



4:55 – Memphis is about to survive a scare in its first round matchup.

The game came against St. Mary’s, which played its way into the tournament Tuesday night. That begs the question. Now that there are play-ins for 11 and 12 seeds instead of just the traditional No. 16 sacrificial lamb, how do we handle early week brackets?

I always like to fire off a gut-instinct bracket on Yahoo! or ESPN (or some other website where you could luck into a huge payout), but now there are those potential upset seeds where there isn’t even a set team to fill the slot.

I’ll tell you how to handle that situation… You go ahead and pick anyway. I called VCU winning both its play-in game and its first round game a few years ago. There’s no better feeling than calling a team’s shot before it even makes the field of 64.



5:14 – Our first No. 1 seed is in action as Gonzaga takes on Southern.

Most No. 16 seeds go one of two ways. They either show incredible pluckiness and go full throttle to stay competitive for a half before running out of gas and getting rolled over, or they show up still drunk from the improbable run that got them to the big dance in the first place.

Southern went with the former, but just before all of the West Coast Conference haters could wet their pants and sync up their “we told you so”, Gonzaga ripped of 13 straight points to charge out in front. Southern is still putting up a good fight, but anyone with eyes can see that the Zags are a very talented team that could turn this into a laugher at any second.



5:21 – My updates are about to slow down thanks to having to lay out tomorrow’s sports page, but I’ll still be firing off observations when I get the chance. Go grab some dinner and prepare for the finish of the Davidson-Marquette game and the beginning of the third bloc of action.



5:39 – It’s looking like Davidson is going to pull the big upset. I am literally sickened by this. At least Davidson doesn’t have some smug poster boy like Steph Curry to run a millions cut-ins about before their next game. And maybe Butler can keep up its insane streak – 11 wins in its last 13 tournament games, with the only two losses coming in the championship round – and show the Wildcats what a real mid-major contender looks like.

Elsewhere, Southern hit a few shots to pull close to Gonzaga at the half. I’m sticking to my guns. The Zags have out-talented every team on their schedule so far and today will be no exception.



5:46 – Ha!!! Davidson... Those pieces of crap blew a seven point lead with 1:33 to play. I knew they’d tank it. I defy you to prove otherwise.




6:00 – Dinner time, and it looks like the much maligned 5 seeds might serve up another on the menu as Oregon leads Oklahoma State by 11 at halftime.

In all fairness to the Cowboys – who I think are a very good team – they might have gotten the worst possible draw. I’m not sure how teams get slotted into certain seeds, but I can’t fathom how the committee looked at the 22-win Ducks and pegged them as a No. 12. Usually the one trendy 5-12 upset that all of the talking heads promote is the one that I avoid, but this one seemed too tempting.

The Big 12 wasn’t incredibly good this year and I think that most people slept on the Pac 12 (insert complaint about East Coast Bias here). I don’t think that Oregon has what it takes to win two games, but beating one quality team shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.



6:18 – I’ve got to hand it to Southern. They’re playing hard and shooting the lights out, but – as predicted – it looks like the well is starting to run dry. All of the effort they’re exerting in racing down court and pulling up for 3s is making their legs tired as Gonzaga starts to get buckets that are easier and easier.



6:31 – Oh, those pesky Jaguars. Another 3-point bomb pulls Southern within two points of Southern with four minutes to go. If I ever coach a team in a slum conference, it’s going to be nothing but 3-pointers at practice, morning, afternoon and night.

Look at all of the monumental upsets through the years and a great night from behind the arc is usually the common theme.

If I were running a No. 16 seed, I’d tell my guys to jack up 50 bombs against the No. 1 seed. You might have an off night and lose by a ton, but everyone is expecting that anyways. If you luck out and have the night of your life – BOOM! Historic upset.



6:45 – Kudos to Southern. They gave it one hell of a run. For 35 minutes, it seemed like they couldn’t miss, but in the final few minutes, it was Gonzaga knocking down all of the cold-blooded shots.

I remain confident in my prediction that Gonzaga will notch a few more wins. There have been plenty of great teams that managed to get a huge scare in the first round, but then rebounded to have a great tournament.

With Oregon up big on Okie St. at the 4:00 mark, I’m going to grab some dinner and do some work. I’ll see everyone in about an hour.



8:11 – NCAA tournament watching is on hold as I vigilantly (read: required by work) watch East Georgia College in the NJCAA tournament… hold on… one more second… OK. Forget that. Back to the real action.



8:34 – This just goes to show that there is no rhyme or reason in trying to figure out brackets.

If there was ever a year for underdogs and low seeds to run rampant, this was the one. We couldn’t hang on to a top-ranked team for more than a few weeks at a time and nobody seemed very confident in defining the top tier of talent at the end of the season.

I’m sure that the power vacuum at the top led to plenty of crazy looking brackets that were lined with upsets, but so far – at least in terms of seeding – the action couldn’t be more by-the-books.

If we don’t get an out-of-the-blue upset soon. SportsCenter isn’t going to know what to lead with at 11.



9:00 – Cal is trying to put some life into this party as the Golden Bears open up a second half lead on No. 5 UNLV. Putting my own bracket aside (Please, bracket gods. Spare my Runnin’ Rebels) at least we have some excitement.

I really wish that someone would cave in to horrible judgment and award Las Vegas a Final Four. Better yet, let’s just play the whole tournament in Sin City.

If you think that you have annoying ‘bracketologists’ at your office now, just wait until all of them are trying to factor in the trouble-loving tendencies of some teams. A No. 15 seed could become a favorite overnight if a team like Miami was let loose in Vegas. Five Hurricanes would show up for the tip-off with four still busy getting bailed out of jail and the rest unaccounted for.



9:40 – The final tip-off of the night features the game that ruined my bracket and shattered my confidence last season.

I know that Kentucky was the odds on favorite to take home the title last year, but – being the contrarian that I am – I tried to outthink the room and choose a different champion.

Missouri was an incredibly athletic team that had bounced around the top-10 all season and that featured five veteran starters. I thought that I had found the major conference version of the seasoned and tested mid-major teams that make serious noise, so I penciled them in as my dark horse champion.

The only good thing about Missouri’s first round game last season is that I was halfway in the tank and enjoying a med school graduation party when I got the news that they had managed to lose to No. 15 Norfolk State.

Screw you, Tigers. Go Rams!!!



9:58 – Going to take a quick timeout to take a step away from basketball and discuss the show that I’m currently having to record in order to keep viewing the tournament and faithfully reporting back to you.

*Shameless promotion alert*

Have you ever seen Archer? If your answer is no, head over to Netflix (don’t worry, they’re running the NCAA tournament at the same time next year) and stream the first three seasons. It’s beyond awesome. It’s James Bond with twice the risqué jokes, ten times the boozing and womanizing, and none of the needless plotline extenders that turn a cool story into a 2 hour trudge.

Seriously. Stop reading this and go watch Archer. I’ll have all of your updates when you come back.



10:31 – Poor Akron… First, LeBron left you and now you’re being humiliated on national television.

And how about VCU? They look like the new Butler. And that stands to reason. In a culture where technology and the flow of information are expanding exponentially, I suppose it should follow that the darling teams who come out of nowhere to enchant the country will now only have one or two fleeting seasons in the sun before we move on to someone new.

Gonzaga got a good five or six years of being THE mid-major that everyone kept their eye on, but we’ve had several – George Mason, Butler and VCU, to name a few – in just the last handful of years. Let’s take some time to savor the moment, people. After all, most of these programs are now taking their one crazy run and turning it into more than a few years of serious contention.



11:20 – Work took a little longer than I anticipated, but I’m here to finish strong on the first day of the tournament.

New Mexico entered as one of the dark horse darlings of the tournament and – much like Gonzaga earlier in the day – is feeling the heat as Harvard leads the No. 3 Lobos at halftime.

It was bad enough for the Zags to get a scare from the SWAC champs, but it would be devastating if New Mexico got knocked off by a bunch of nerds. Even worse, Harvard doesn’t even have two of its best players as they were both kicked off of the team during a preseason cheating scandal.

Come on. Who cheats at Harvard? How can you make the grades to get into one of the most prestigious schools in the country, then be dumb enough to get pinched in a scandal?



11:38 – Syracuse is pummeling Montana, but I’m not all that happy for the Orange.

Not only am I less than thrilled with having to capitalize color names just because the ‘Cuse can’t come up with a non-offensive nickname, but Jim Boeheim has done nothing but agitate me for over a year. I never used to have any strong feelings towards Boeheim or his team, but two years and a handful of scandals have caused me to start rooting against the guy.

This is the risk that coaches run when they make the choice to always turn a cold shoulder to the media. Boeheim has been nothing but an ass to reporters for over a decade, and now that Syracuse is under investigation, he’s wondering why the press is bearing down on him.

As a member of the sports media, I can’t say that I would handle things any differently if I was working the Syracuse beat. When you get nothing but platitudes, scorn and brush-offs when trying to discuss the most trivial of matters with a coach, it makes your job infinitely more difficult. But it’s a two-way street. If you make me look bad when you give me nothing good to write about when there aren’t any huge stories, then you can be damn sure that I’m going to be all over you for information and quotes when a story breaks that the whole country is aware of.

Syracuse used to hold a place in my mind as a solid, consistent program that should always be respected and possibly feared come tournament time. Nowadays, the Orange are too far removed from any big accomplishments to strike any fear into my heart, and the fact that they are being run by an ornery grandpa isn’t doing them any favors.



11:53 – Colorado State finally strikes a blow for the Mountain West by notching a win over Missouri.

Once again, I can already hear the mid-major haters howling. Despite not being home to schools named Louisville, or Kansas or Duke, the Mountain West had the highest-rated RPI in the nation this year.

The conference received an impressive five invites to the tournament, but the matchups have been less than ideal. Boise State lost in one of the play-in games before things really got started and Cal was given a virtual home game – despite being a No. 12 seed – against a UNLV team that had already proved it was better than the Golden Bears.

New Mexico is still struggling with Harvard and is the only chance for the conference to place a member in the Sweet Sixteen.



12:05 – We’re now over 12 hours into this mess. Be strong, everyone. Stay the course.

Syracuse is up on Montana by a ridiculous 53-17 margin early in the second half. Seeing as how the Orange routinely gets top seeds – and thus, inferior competition for two or three rounds each year – I’m amazed that they don’t fare better.

The Orange is famous for its 2-3 zone that it will never come out of under any circumstances. With so many underdogs in the bright lights for the first time, the pressure to make deep shots should be too much to bear. Unless some team gets freakishly hot from outside, there’s really no reason that the ‘Cuse should ever lose games early in the tournament.



12:14 – Harvard has New Mexico on the ropes. Somewhere, Ogre weeps. Damn nerds.



12:23 – The Crimson gets its first NCAA tournament win in school history. Good for the Ivy Leaguers.

The best part about not being an insane person who puts serious money down on my brackets is that even when one of my brackets blows up (thanks a lot, New Mexico), I can still appreciate the awesomeness of whatever upset caused my downfall.

Now I’m wondering how the good people of Harvard celebrate such an enormous win. Do they knock off studying an entire hour early? Do they do something droll, such as photoshopping a new periodic table for the chemistry lab so that a few of the elements are out of order? Or do they do it up right and blow through their trust funds on a two-week coke bender in Vegas?

I would hope for something that walks the line in between those extremes, but with something as crazy as a 3-14 upset, who am I to judge how you celebrate.

Well, seeing as how Montana doesn’t want this night to go on any longer, I’m willing to oblige and call things off before Syracuse finishes off the final game of the night. I’ll see all of you back here tomorrow at high noon.

Get some sleep. Tomorrow is another long day.

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