Three times as nice

Going into last night's national championship game against Butler I identified several keys to success that would lead to a national title for the Huskies:

1. Kemba Walker must be either a scorer or a distributor early. UConn's success this season has been directly tied to Kemba's ability to create offense.

2. Jeremy Lamb must step up as a viable scoring option. Butler's well-deserved reputation as a giant slayer is built upon their ability to shut down the opposing team's best player.

3. Alex Oriakhi must stay out of foul trouble. UConn has a definitive advantage in size and athleticism inside but it is entirely linked to the mercurial sophomore forward.

4. Roscoe Smith must get involved offensively early. Smith is a talented low post player who has the ability to stretch a defense with the occasional long jumper but as a freshman he has disappeared from games by missing a couple of shots at the beginning of the game.

5. Jim Calhoun cannot get out-coached. Brad Stevens is as talented a basketball mind as there is currently coaching in the college ranks right now. The popular belief was that Stevens would be able to scheme a defense that could at least slow down Kemba Walker and his experienced team would rain open threes to victory.

So what happened?

1. Kemba Walker shot 3 for 11 for 7 points and 0 assists, providing none of the dynamic offense that UConn typically relies upon. Additionally he picked up two fouls and sat a nearly unprecedented 3 minutes in the first half.

2. Jeremy Lamb shot 0 for 2, picked up his second foul with 9 minutes to go in the first half and was a complete non-factor.

3. Alex Oriakhi was for a force on both ends of the floor scoring 4 early points and picking up 4 early rebounds but unfortunately he also picked up his second foul with over 10 minutes to go in the first half and had to watch the rest of the frame from the bench.

4. Roscoe Smith missed both of his early shots and turned into a shot-blocking turnover machine. He also picked up his second foul late in the second half.

5. Jim Calhoun spent much of the first half munching on the souls of abandoned kittens, somehow oblivious to the fact that his lineup to end the first half was Shabazz Napier, Tyler Olander, Donnell Beverly, Jamal Coombs-McDaniel, and Charles Okwandu.

How did UConn survive the apocalypse scenario and emerge victorious? They watched Butler have an historic shooting night. No team has ever shot so poorly in a national championship game. To find point totals so abysmal you have to go back to the 1940s, years before the implementation of a shot clock or a three point basket.

UConn actually represented itself pretty well in the second half against an excellent defensive team, scoring 34 points on 42% shooting. They were still atrocious from the three-point line, finishing at 1 for 11 overall but when they had such an advantage athletically they were able to dominate inside like we have never seen before. The Huskies out-scored the Bulldogs 26-2 in the paint. The interior defense certainly helped but Butler was missing layups like someone had threatened their beloved mascot. Oh hey maybe I just uncovered an alternate theory! It is a shame because the resiliency of the Huskies to go 14-0 in tournament play as well as the nearly unbelievable run from Butler to play in back-to-back national championship games was overshadowed by the ugliness of the game. When it is all said and done, UConn emerged victorious and unless your team is coached by John Calipari, that is all that will be remembered in the record books.

U! C! O! N! N!

The UConn men pushed their way into the final eight of the NCAA tournament by beating a stubborn Purdue team. The game followed a very definite pattern of UConn leaping to a double digit lead then letting up on their defensive intensity and allowing the Boilermakers to claw back into the game. My observations of the game, in no particular order, are as follows:

1. The officials, whether consciously or not, are racist. When given the opportunity to whistle a white guy or a black guy for a foul, the black guy got hosed every time.

2. The officials were too confused on exactly which category Gavin Edwards fell into, so they whistled him for fouls constantly to keep him off the floor and have a very clear white/black option when they blew the whistle.

3. CBS was threatening someone's kitten after the teams sprinted through a brisk first half in under 30 minutes. The first 5 minutes of the second half took nearly 15 minutes.

4. I made all those numbers up but it sure felt like it!

5. Those Boilermaker uniforms are some kind of awful. That's not actually my observation but it warrants mentioning.

6. Chris Kramer sure keeps his hair nicely coiffed for a basketball player.

Well that was quick

It was almost like I knew what I was talking about! Say goodbye to college basketball season, say hello to baseball season!

That's right, tomorrow morning marks the official unofficially official start to the regular season. Confused? So are the Red Sox and the A's who will play two regular season games in Japan starting tomorrow before returning to the United States to finish up their spring training. Now it might seem stupid to schedule regular season games in the the midst of the exhibition season but, well, I kind of forgot where I was going with that.

On a related note, fans raised a small level of outrage when the Red Sox players threatened to boycott a spring training game last week unless the support staff for their team received the promised stipends to go to Japan. I got a little confused as to what was promised and who was supposed to receive it, but the general outrage seemed to stem from the fact that the players make so much money they should go to Japan for free and like it!

I'm a little ambivalent on that point. I would really love to be in a position to refuse a free trip to Japan unless someone paid me $20,000 or $40,000 or however much it is to go, but at the same time, THIS is the breaking point for people? The selfishness and greed of professional athletes knows no limits as they have proved time and time again over the years. During the '99 lockout of the NBA players, Patrick Ewing famously said "Well, we make a lot of money, but we spend a lot too." These athletes are paid absurd amounts of money to play games. We as consumers feed the kitty by soaking up as much of the product as we can. Unless we stop buying the tickets and the jerseys, stop watching on tv, stop reading about our teams on ESPN and all the blogs, we will never see a change.

These men do something better than 99.99% of the world. There is a HUGE market for their skills, and unless that changes the fans are just going to have to get over themselves. In an ideal world, teachers and firemen and people who make genuine impacts on others' lives would make the most money, but Budweiser thus far seems unwilling to push Mrs. Jones, the 6th grade science teacher from Harlem as the face of their ad campaign. Even if they did, would you cram 50,000 strong into the bleachers to watch her teach?

NCAA Kickoff

When you go through the annals of NCAA history, people tend to gloss over the 1995 tournament even though it was won by a legendary program, UCLA. They had a cheating coach in Jim Harrick, and no NBA stars on their roster. They did, however, have a memorable victory in round 2 of that year's tournament when point guard Tyus Edney raced coast to coast as time expired to beat Missouri.

As an unabashed UConn homer, that moment is particularly memorable to me because the eventual champions took out my beloved Huskies in the Elite 8. For some reason, that game is never brought up when discussing great NCAA tournament games. I assume that this is because there was no last minute miracle shot at the end of the game, but go here and check out the score from that game. It's on the second line of the chart for the west regional. You'll notice that UCLA beat Connecticut 102-96. Think about that for a minute. That was nearly 200 points in a 40 minute college basketball game. Say what you will about the lack of defense but that was one fucking exciting basketball game. Taking a closer look at the tournament from that year, you see that the Huskies' LOWEST scoring game from the tournament was a 96 point effort they achieved twice. As a basis for comparison, the Miami Heat, ostensibly a professional basketball team, managed a mere 54 points in an actual NBA game last night. Had Tyus Edney not made that miracle shot to beat Missouri, assuming the rest of the bracket falls out the same way, theres' a solid chance we're talking about the 1995 National Champion UConn Huskies.

Oh well. Here's some awesome video to get you even more amped up for the upcoming tournament.

Bracketology time!

So the brackets have come out. The fields of 64 (or 65 on the men's side) have been set in stone and now comes the in depth analysis you've come to expect from me on a semi-regular basis:

I don't have a fucking clue. Honestly, nothing would surprise me this year, especially on the men's side. This could be the year that all four #1 seeds make it to the final four. This could be the year that a #16 seed finally beats a #1 seed. UConn ended up as a 4 seed, which seemed a little high given their end of season disappointment, but this is also a team that won 13 of its last 16 games, so whatever. On a selfish note, I want North Carolina to do well, as it gives me more opportunities to see Tyler Hansbrough do his "I'm a goofy white boy but I still kind of kick ass at basketball dance" seen here:



On the women's side, a lot of time was spent analyzing whether Stanford was hosed by being the #2 seed out west behind #1 Maryland. Head coach Tara VanDerveer gave the diplomatic answer saying she was just happy to be there and hoped to have the opportunity to play Maryland for the right to reach the Final Four. I imagine UConn coach Geno Auriemma would have had a different reaction. What it all comes down to is...does it really make a difference if you switch Stanford and Maryland? Either way, Stanford and Maryland would probably have to play one another to make the Final Four, and the difference between #4 Vandy versus #3 Baylor in a potential Sweet 16 matchup is pretty negligible. Sometimes the perceived slights the analysts try to wrench out of the brackets are just a bunch of noise. If Stanford is able to use this as motivation to whoop some ass, good for them.

On a more analytical note, the Tennessee Volunteers are still the defending national champions, and they still have Candace Parker. Look for them to repeat if you're filling out a women's bracket.

Finally, a quick shout out to Cornell athletics who became the first Ivy League school ever to represent their league in both the Men's and Women's NCAA tournament. Here's to you you fucking cheaters!

Update

So the experts have weighed in. Due to UConn's regular season success they don't believe they will drop further than 1 or 2 seeds at the most. That will put them in the 4-5 seed range, mostly matched up against a mid major in the first round. This can be troublesome. Everyone knows that at least one 5 seed loses EVERY year. I would have to believe the Huskies would be a prime candidate in that spot.

They have now lost four consecutive Big East tournament games, which by my math means this team is not great at tournament time. I really feel like the return of Jerome Dyson has shattered the fragile confidence guard Craig Austrie displayed in his absence. Coach Calhoun is famous for yanking his players in and out of the lineup after the slightest mistake. Some guys handle it, some guys don't. When the rotation was basically 8 or 9 guys with guards Austrie and A.J. Price sharing the playing time with Donnell Beverly and eventually Doug Wiggins, Austrie was the steady hand to slowed things down when they got out of control and made some big shots. Now his play has suffered and I just do not see this team advancing to the second weekend of the NCAAs without solid play from both him and Price.