I should never do this again.
Well, this was probably my worst March Madness year ever. I’m not going to complain about my bracket any more than this, but I just wanted to show how terrible it was for me. At least now I can watch the March Madness games for fun, and root for UConn, who I had losing to Memphis, to win it all since it’s the closest school to me. Share your stories of Final Four woe, or make fun of me.
-SamerOchoCinco
Welcome back to the nightly RANT, it was put on layaway until the NCAA Tournament Hoops action came to a momentary stop. Even though there are no games, it’s pretty much all we are talking about in here tonight. Read the rest of this entry →
If you are like me (or anyone of The Rookies, really), you are slowly coming down off your high from the 72 hours of pure black tar heroin that is known as the NCAA Tournament first two rounds. I must preface this by saying that I’m not complaining, but just noticing, as regardless of upsets or not, these are the best four days of the sports year. That said, where are the upsets? As I perused my smoldering wreck of a bracket, I noticed that by simply picking the team with the lower seed number in every game, I could’ve picked 14 of the Sweet 16 games correctly. Of course, I didn’t, and only got 12 right.
Of course, one might say that this year is an aberration. However, over the past 10 years, there has never been a Sweet 16 with less than four teams seeded above 5. This year there is one. Add this to four number 1 seeds making the Final Four last year and the paucity of higher-seeded teams making runs in 2007 (only Winthrop made the 16 as a double-digit seed), and you have what John Gasaway, who knows a lot more about this than I, has termed the beginning of “The Era Of Chalk”.
Some would argue that this is not a bad thing, as the games next weekend in the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 are sure to be amazing basketball games. This argument, however, misses the point of March Madness. We get plenty of chances to see Top 10 and even Top 5 teams squaring off against each other during the regular season; what we don’t get to see are the best Mid-Majors taking on the titans of the game on a neutral floor, with all the pressure of March bearing down. Why don’t we see these? The best teams won’t schedule games against the best mid-majors (and if they do, they are surely home games). The tournament is about Cinderellas, like George Mason, Davidson, and Western Kentucky, and the Final Four. This year, there’s no Cinderella-sorry Arizona, you don’t count. March Madness is still the best sporting event, but if The Era of Chalk persists, the fun will be severely devalued.
Well, hello there. If you’re a regular Deadspin reader then you know what “Waxing Off” is. If not, we’ll explain: it’s a weekly column type deal where the Deadspin editors get a bunch of girls together and give them a topic to write about. The commentariat aren’t the biggest fans, it isn’t all that great, and, as Steve the Sexist Monkey would say, it’s because girls don’t know sports, silly!
Actually, he’d probably be a lot less nice about it.
So we have our own weekly feature on it. We call it Manscaping.
Here are four blind resumes for NCAA teams currently on the bubble. Make your own conclusions on their resumes, and then check after the jump for analysis and the big reveal.
Team Team A: Team B: Team C: Team D:
Record 21-10 26-7 19-13 21-8
Conference Record 12-4 14-4 10-8 10-6
RPI 58 41 70 48
SOS 79 106 55 93
Vs RPI Top 100 3-5 8-5 4-8 7-4
Road W-L 6-6 8-4 4-6 5-6
As we reach March and Conference Championship Week (the best time of the year, really), the hoops nation gets its often first looks at the teams that become darlings in the tournament, the Cinderellas. Thanks to the ubiquity of ESPN, every conference championship game and most semi-finals, even for the small conferences, are broadcast to the nation. The trick is to pick out which of those teams will pull an upset (like San Diego last year), or even which team will make a Davidson-like run. After the jump, I’ll break down four potential Cinderellas that could help you win your office pool (provided they make the tournament, of course) Read the rest of this entry →
