Not so shining

A few words on last night's NCAA men's basketball championship game: It was heartbreaking. It was depressing. It was patently ridiculous. Never in our life had we seen a good team, a really, really good team play as poorly as did the Butler Bulldogs in their 53-41 loss to the Connecticut Huskies yesterday.

After seeing the same team with virtually the same personnel take Duke to the wire in last year's championship game and then see them make another run in this year's tournament with the "Butler Way" of grit, brawn and brains, last night's performance was the last thing we expected. Everyone knows they win "ugly" but no one saw this type of ugly coming their way.

For Butler's part, who had the poorest shooting percentage ever (18.8%) and the lowest point total in a championship game since 1941, it did indeed seem like the game of basketball was set back 70 years.

How bad was it? That game took the wind out of our sails to the degree that we didn't even bother sticking around for the most anticipated and bitter-sweet, post-event traditions in all of sports and that is the annual airing of "One Shining Moment" (how cool is it hearing about players ranging from off-the-farm to hardened inner-city kids claiming this piece of schlocky pop road-kill was always their favorite song growing up?).

Shame. The kids who play their home games in the field house used for the state championship game in Hoosiers deserved better. Then again, bet those same kids would tell you that, in sports, there's no such thing as "deserve".




Having said all that... it's gotta be, right?


"One Shining Moment" the 2011 version:




Cool. They went back to the Luther Vandross version this year after last year's Jennifer Hudson debacle.



P.S. For a really good write-up of the scene inside the Butler locker room after the game, check out Bob Wetzel's piece, here.

Messin' with Madness

The drum beat is getting louder and louder by the day. Last year, there was some buzz but this year the NCAA has indicated they will give consideration to expanding the NCAA men’s basketball tournament field (aka the greatest tournament on the face of the planet) from it’s current 64 (+1… don’t ask) teams.

The most popular proposal that we have heard is expanding the field to 96 teams. Why? It’s got to be about the money, right? Why else would you alter an entity of such perfect symmetry (64 teams, 6 rounds, 18 days, pure bliss)?

And the biggest stated argument for expanding the field? Those bubble teams that did not get an invite to The Dance would get in with the expanded format. Really? You mean to tell us there won’t be bubble teams who get left out of the tournament with 96 teams, 128 teams… 150 teams that won’t be bitching and whining on Selection Sunday to the ESPN crew about how they got shafted by the selection committee? (Selection Sunday is a double-edged sword: the great unveiling of the tournament brackets is like opening presents on Christmas morning. However, the whine-fest seems to get worse every year).

Ask yourself this question: is the tournament and thus our viewing enjoyment better served by having a 19-14 Illinois team in the field?

And how are 96 teams ever going to fit so conveniently in readable 10-point font on a standard 8-1/2 x 11 piece of office grade photo-copy paper?

These are just a few questions that must be raised before we rush head-long into tournament expansion.

Also, new rule for Selection Sunday proceedings: any coach or analyst making a pitch for why Team “X” should be in the tournament must pick out a Team “Y” from the field that they would replace.

Tournament brackets, here.

Congratulations to the San Diego St. Aztecs who pulled two upsets in the Mountain West conference tournament over the weekend to earn an automatic bid in the NCAA tournament.

The man pictured is Patrick Patterson of the Kentucky Wildcats who are our pick to win the tournament.

Addendum #1: Consider this our Gen-X/slacker contribution to the Farmer’s Almanac. Don’t know what it is but Selection Sunday is coincidental with fantastic weather. Did not this weekend feel like a breakout weekend here in Southern California? After 3 months of stormy weather seemingly reserved exclusively for the weekend, we got beautiful blue skies and sunny weather. Looking back, whether it’s here in Rolando Beach or at our humble Pacific Beach duplex rental years gone by, we would, while breaking down our brackets comment, “why, isn’t this a glorious spring day”.

It is for this reason alone that the NCAA powers-that-be not upset the tournament gods. Mid-March climate change cannot abide!

"The ball is tipped..."

Congrats to Roy Williams and the North Carolina Tar Heels on their 89-72 victory over the Michigan State Spartans tonight for the NCAA championship.

Just a couple of observations from this year's largely pedestrian NCAA men’s basketball tournament:

We’re glad the rest of the nation finally caught up to what we’ve known for quite some time and that is Tom Izzo, despite the thumping Sparty took in the championship game, is arguably the best coach in the nation.

If having the Final Four and the championship game in a domed football stadium is a bad idea, having the regionals in domed stadiums is absolutely horrible. Yeah, we know about the economy but a great economy was not going to fill up that many more seats in the stadium where the Arizona Cardinals play. Smaller venues, fellas, smaller venues.

Don’t think we’ve ever seen a player as decorated as UNC’s Tyler Hansbrough (4-time All-ACC, All-American, NCAA Player of the year in 2008, All-time ACC leading scorer, and pictured) be as much an after-thought in the Heel’s game plan as he has with this team. With all the offensive talent on that squad and towards the latter half of his senior year, he appeared to collect the majority of points on put-backs and late-in-the-shot-clock-scrambles where he happened to be in the right place at the right time to knock down a face-up 15-footer or a layup underneath.

OK, so he's probably the next Mark Madsen at the next level but it's kinda nice to see a kid stick around for four years to see through on a dream of a national championship.

Alright, here it is – the one, the only “One Shining Moment”

The first stop on our journey between football seasons

It’s On! Downloadable tournament bracket, here.

Top seeds are Pitt, UNC, Louisville, UConn.

We went to bed on Friday night thinking Mongo’s San Diego St. Aztecs were a very solid bet for the tournament after their Mt. West tourney semi-final win against BYU. We woke up on Saturday not as confident as conference tournaments around the country were ablaze with upsets and teams that were on the outs at the beginning of last week were making late runs at the rapidly dwindling amount of at-large berths.

Sure enough, despite a near-heroic comeback, State fell short to Utah, 52-50, in the conference final on Saturday afternoon and which sealed their fate as their brief respite as a “Last Four In” team gave way to the reality of hosting a first-round game in the NIT when tournament selections were made yesterday afternoon.

A couple of observations:
Thanks for nothing: UConn gets a #1 seed…. gets shipped out West. I’m sure they would not have minded a #2 seed in the East in order to play in front of their fans in Boston once the Regionals start. For those people that felt Memphis deserved a #1 over UConn, the tournament selection committee solved that problem by putting Memphis in the same Region as UConn as the #2 seed. If the chalk holds, we’ll see those two square off in the Regional Final in Glendale, AZ.

Potential first round upset that jumped off the page at us upon initial inspection: the seemingly once-a-year dreaded 5/12 upset will be Arizona over Utah.

CBS Sports has unveiled its “boss button”… the button you hit if the boss happens by while you are streaming the 1st round games this Thursday and Friday and a totally non-hoops related spread sheet pops up…. except that it's not non-hoops related. Click on spreadsheet to enlarge. Now both you and your boss will know that Jeff Fryer holds the tournament record for most 3-pointers in a game. Thanks, CBS. (H/T: Awful Announcing)

It just wouldn't be the same without it.

Like great art, great music stands on its own. It doesn’t need any explanation, rationalization or context. That’s why “One Shining Moment” is happy as hell to have the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.

We were standing in line at the bank today and they had Romey’s television program on. Rome was absolutely brutalizing the song, saying they needed to put the old nag out to pasture – that the young kids today, particularly the ones playing in the game to which the song honors, weren’t “down” with it.

Sorry, Jim. We remember with crystal clarity Mateen Cleaves, the Michigan St. point guard after their championship win in 2000, telling Jim Nantz that he would sing the song in his head as a kid growing up thinking of this very moment.

The song is a treacly, over-the-top piece of pop fluff but in the context of providing the swan song backdrop to each year’s tournament montage wrap-up, it totally works. Does it, ever.

Ladies and Gentleman, the 2008 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, “One Shining Moment”. Enjoy!

R.I.P., Luther