We so won't jinx this by mentioning it.

That Coca-Cola commercial that shows video footage of a diminutive yet lightning quick UCLA point guard hitting a right-handed runner high off the glass over the outstretched arm of a much taller defender wasn’t hi-lite footage from last night’s UCLA game it was merely the last time UCLA was a #1 seed and sleep-walked through a 2nd round game against a #8 seed from the Big 12 only to have their point guard bail them out in the last second(s). Tyus Edney… meet Darren Collison.

UCLA’s effort nearly made us look prescient. One’s got to think that the lack of offensive consistency and habit of mounting furious come-backs seemingly every week is eventually going to bite them in the arse…. no such, thus far as the Bruins snatched victory from defeat against Texas A&M last night 53-49.

Previously, we had lamented the lack of a go-to perimeter guy for the Bruins, a job that was to be Josh Shipp’s but one which Shipp has politely declined as he is in the midst of a season-long shooting slump. Our fears may be unfounded, though, as Collison seems of late to be quite capable of providing this perimeter scoring and tending to his primary play-making responsibilities.
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Maybe its because of the amount of basketball we’ve watched these past four days, but aside from the upsets and the high drama of many of the games, particularly last night (the Stanford-Marquette game is an instant classic), the thing that stands out most to us is the terrible officiating. And not at just one site or with a handful of crews…. evidence this weekend on T.V. has demonstrated that this is a nationwide epidemic.

We didn’t see this coming: We liked Washington St. against Notre Dame but we didn’t expect WAZU to hold the Domers to nearly half their scoring average and only 13 field goals (24.5% for the game) in a 61-41 victory. Ouch.

All the Pac-10 haters can go back to shoveling their driveway, scraping their windshield or whatever it is people east of Yuma do on a daily basis. After a disappointing 3-3 first round showing, the Pac-10 will have 3 teams in the Sweet 16 as opposed to possibly just 1 for the hallowed ACC (as of this post Miami is down 8 to Texas with a minute left and North Carolina plays later this afternoon).

oh, btw... UCLA won the national championship back in '95 when Edney hit that runner against Missouri. doh!

P.S. Texas just beat Miami. Its now up to North Caroling to salvage ACC pride against Arkansas.

We'll Take It

The next best thing to Belmont taking down Duke on Thursday would be West Virginia doing the deed themselves against the Blue Devils which they did, winning their second round match-up 73-67… and it really wasn’t that close as Duke hit a couple of late 3s to cut into a 14 point deficit. West Virginia was in control pretty much the entire 2nd half after falling behind by 5 at half-time. Box score here. Biggest stat, of course: Duke, a dreadful 5-22 from behind the arc.

Around the 8 minute mark with Duke trailing by 6 announcer Bob Wenzel felt compelled to tell us “the team in the white shirts (Duke) is really going to start showing some heart, here”. This is representative of the template for announcers and the sporting media as a whole we’ve heard for years now with respect to the Duke program that we can’t help but feel is codespeak for: "the undermanned, floor-slapping, gritty little white kids at Duke won’t ever go down without a fight. " Unfortunately for Duke, West Virginia’s whiteness rivaled that of Duke’s and from that point on WVU took Duke to the woodshed beating their brains out on the boards and coming up with seemingly every loose ball.

So…. what’s up with the Dookies? Another early round exit for another pedestrian, athletically-challenged, Coack K squad. We remarked in an email to a friend last March that Coach K was going to be the next Coach Bobby Knight (Bobby Knight coached Coach Kryzezewski at Army). What we meant by that was the success that both coaches experienced at the height of their career dictated thereafter, we believe, their philosophy towards how they ran their program and thus the type of player they recruited.

Bobby Knight won 3 national championships in a span of 12 years but his last championship was 21 years ago. Coach K won 3 in 11 years, his last coming back in 2001. But at some point, after the last championship, something changed in both programs… something changed in the mindset and philosophy of both coaches which affected their ability to win championships thereafter and it had everything to do with the personalities of both coaches, one the mentor and the other, the protégé.

This post is running long already so we’ll break it off and come back to finish our thoughts in a Pt. II later in the tournament.

…and for those of you who have been living under a rock, here is the game-winner and most significant two-points in the history of basketball in San Diego. Mongo, an Aztec alum was begging for this.

H/T: Awful Announcing

Our Little Catholic School up on the hill wishes everyone a very Good Friday.

The Toreros of the University of San Diego, a #13 seed just upset the #4 seed Uconn Huskies 70-69 in OT in one of the guttiest team performances we’ve seen in quite some time. Box score, here. We saw this same team in person back in December at the city championship against San Diego St., a loss, and it would be safe to say that we did not see this coming. This represents the first NCAA tournament win for the city of San Diego.

With leading scorers, center Gyno Pomare (pictured) and mercurial point guard, Brandon Johnson both on the bench having fouled-out, sophomore guard De’Jon Jackson who was previously just 1 of 8 from the field hit a step-back 17-footer with 1.2 seconds left in OT to clinch the win for USD.

Thank you, De’Jon. Instead of cursing a loss opportunity because of some spotty foul-shooting down the stretch and some questionable officiating, you and the rest of the gritty Toreros just made this Good Friday a little more gooder.

Our bracket is ablaze right now after having both USC and Arizona getting knocked out, teams we had going to the Elite 8 and Sweet 16, respectively but right now, we don’t care as its always nice to see a team that has no business doing so getting by on pure heart over an athletically superior college basketball blueblood who is wondering right now what just hit them.

Its in the Stars

… and speaking of High Holidays, this weekend sees a rare convergence of Easter and the first round of the NCAAs making it just a little higher than normal. We’re taking tomorrow off to ummm… honor this occasion so blogging may be light or heavy depending on our mood.

Either way, we'll be hanging on Sunday with B-Daddy and his family. We greatly admire and appreciate B-Daddy's family preacher, Pastor J's ability to apply the significance of the resurrection as a foundation to the whole of Western Civilization. Ground Zero Day, indeed.

Were 7-1 as of this posting this afternoon. Mongo can vouch for our good word.

Fire the Dog!

Two years ago, we had the good fortune of being able to attend the 1st round games of the NCAA tournament at Cox Arena here in San Diego and back before we started blogging on the internet, we were still doing it, we suppose, via email which of course didn’t make us appear very tech-savvy but allowed us to spam our intended recipients on whatever subject whether they wanted to hear from us or not.

Anyway, we were so tickled by the experience that we wanted to share it with friends. Here is that email from March of '06:


A quick 'blog' on my excellent adventure to the NCAA Tournament 1st round
games at Cox Arena yesterday:

One of the most disturbing trends in American culture I've witnessed is the
discussion being given to making the day after the Super Bowl a national
holiday. If you haven't heard any of this "discussion", consider yourself
lucky. Its downright embarrassing. Even broaching the topic of a
national holiday to sleep off hangovers is a leading indicator of how this
nation is slouching towards a soft, dull and flaccid Euro-existence. As a
Chief Engineer once related to me: "Self-inflicted wounds are no excuse for
non-performance, cadet."

........ but a national holiday for the first round of the NCAAs? - now
we're talkin'! Seriously, there are no two better days on the calendar,
sports or otherwise, than that Thurs. and Friday in mid-March that mark the first round of the men's basketball tournament. Don't believe me? Look
at all the stories in the news about the general freak-out in the business
world over crashed computer networks due to employees streaming videos of
the games during work hours. How is that not a phenomena? How is that NOT
a good thing?

Anyway, I've been fortunate enough to attend 3 first round NCAA
events over the years. Once out in Arizona and twice here in SD at Cox
Arena. Call me shallow, un-broadened, "in a bubble", whatever..... can't
say I've had a better time here on God's green earth than spending
gloriously sunny spring days in Arizona and Southern California, sitting
inside for 9-10 hours watching 4 straight basketball games.

And its not just the hoops, of course, but the whole atmosphere.
Every one is aware of the pageantry of college hoops... the bands, the
cheerleaders, all the excitement inherent to college athletics but for me
it goes even deeper. These tournament events have been like old home week
for me. I literally bump into all the SD hoops homies who I have played
against at PB Rec, Crown Point, Mission Beach or any of the various rec leagues
I've participated in over the past 16 years here in San Diego. Its
definetely a trip. A lot of these formerly over-educated, under-employed
beach-dwelling "herbal" connoisseurs have got all growed-up and
respectable-like with families and yes, even full-time jobs.

On a semi-related demographic note: this event is decidedly white, male,
middle/upper-middle class. If you wanted to eliminate a large chunk the
"investor" class in the SD area, you would be well-served to plan
"something" for this event.
...... and speaking of that particular "something", we indeed did have a
bomb scare at the Arena. Apparently, there was "noise" on the internet of
a potential terrorist act at one or multiple tourney sites. One of the dogs
brought in prior to the games sniffed out something in a hot dog cart.
They cleared everyone out of the Arena and brought in the ATF Bomb Squad.
Turns out the dog sniffed out a box of plastic forks. Nice work, Rin'.
But better safe than sorry, right? The masses took the delay well,
returning to their cars to (re-)initiate tail-gate ops until everyone was
readmitted about an hour and a half later.

I'd say something about the games themselves but you can read about
them in the paper. Incidentally, I was able to sit in the first row on
the baseline for Illinois/Air Force game. The size, strength, quickness
and intensity that I saw from that perspective vs. my usual nose-bleed
perches was simply amazing. Almost frightening. Flash-backs of Scott
Williams (U. of North Carolina and later Chicago Bulls) dunking on my head in
hi-school summer league went flashing through my head.

Sorry, this wasn't so quick afterall. Hope everyone's brackets are
in good shape - Happy St. Pat's Day and thanks for letting me share the
love.

Many thanks to B-Daddy for minding the store and for providing some excellent analysis on the Fed's intervention into the credit crisis and the 2nd amendment case being heard before the Supreme Court.

Its ON!

Just a few initial thoughts on the NCAA basketball tournament field that was just set about 2 hours ago (bracket here):

Surprisingly little bitching about who got in and who was left out which had become a Selection Sunday cottage industry of late. Even Billy Packer was very civil towards selection committee chairman Tom O’Connor on CBS’s selection show.

The two teams that were the subject of most discussion as to who got jobbed were Virginia Tech and Arizona St. Seth Greenberg, the VaTech coach was on ESPN pleading his case and gave a nod towards possibly expanding the tournament. We’ve heard more of this noise over the past few years and we sincerely hope it goes away because it solves NONE of the problems it proponents claim it will fix.

The pro-expansionists' strongest plea is that seemingly deserving teams like VaTech and ASU will be granted admittance to the Big Dance. Okay. Then what about that team that feels they are just as worthy as VaTech and ASU who gets left out…. what about them? Point is, there is ALWAYS going to be a team that feels they got screwed no matter how many teams you let into the tournament. As it is, the consensus this year was that this was the softest bubble in many years, meaning those teams on the bubble, quite frankly weren’t that good and probably would not stand a chance of even being considered in years previous.

Also, the field of 64 (plus 1… don’t ask) is nearly perfect in its symmetry. 2 rounds in the first long weekend followed by 2 more rounds in the sweet 16/Elite 8 long weekend and then the Final Four weekend after that. Why would you want to mess with the best tournament in all of sports? No. There is no tweaking you can do to it to make it any better, so just knock it off, will ya?

Back to Arizona St. for a moment: Its ironic that one of the last teams “out”, a team from the conference that many feel is the best in the land got bumped out by Georgia, a conference tourney winner from a conference that was most certainly down this year.

Apparently, there is something that Duke can do to not play their first round games in the state of North Carolina: lose to Clemson in the ACC tourney semis as they did yesterday. Duke who had the #2 seed in the Midwest Region locked up and first and second round games in Raleigh got shipped off to Washington D.C. as a #3 seed in the West Region.

The dreaded 5/12 upset: Possibilities abound! 5 Notre Dame/ 12 George Mason, 5 Clemson/ 12 Villanova, 5 Drake / 12 Western Ky., 5 Michigan St. / 12 Temple. One of those 5 seeds is going down. It’s a given… but which one? George Mason knocking off Notre Dame would please us the most but Michigan St. fits the 5/12 upset mold of power conference team that has played inconsistently all year that gets bumped off by a hot mid-major team.

That’s all for now.

The Pac-10 is overrated?

Prior to today, there would be no question mark after the post subject. As West Coast homers we’re pleased as punch that the folks that cover college hoops for ESPN and CBS have noticed the fine ball being played out here this year but as often happens when an NFL player is finally recognized by the fans and the media and is awarded a Pro Bowl spot, its probably a year too late.

We feel the Pac-10 was actually a stronger conference last year and we owe this largely to the fact that Oregon and Arizona (though hobbled by injuries) have underachieved somewhat and have not lived up to the lofty expectations people had for them at the beginning of the season.

As we said, though, that was prior to this morning when we (full disclosure: any following of hoops yesterday was done via a friend’s Blackberry as we were wine-tasting in the gloriously green Temecula Valley at another friend’s birthday) came-to this morning and cracked open the fish wrap and saw that #9 seed Pittsburgh defeated Georgetown for the Big East championship, a 16-16 Georgia Bulldog team was going to play unranked Arkansas for the SEC tourney title (this, after playing and winning 2 games yesterday because of the tornado that ripped through the Georgia Dome thus postponing their quarterfinal match-up against Ole Miss) and a 16-18 Illini squad was taking on #8 ranked Wisconsin for the Big 10 championship.

Sorry, that’s not reflective of “parity” or the “top to bottom” toughness in a big-time basketball conference. That’s just straight-up mediocrity in a big-time basketball conference.

Everybody has their own idea of how to rate and rank the respective conferences and we have always felt that you can make the numbers and stats say anything you want regarding the relative merits of the conference so we’ll just say this: We’ll take the overall strength of the top 7 teams of the Pac-10 (UCLA, Stanford, USC, Washington St., Arizona, Oregon and Arizona St.) against the top 70% of any other conference in America (this percentage figure factors against mega-conferences like the Big East that have 16 teams and thus a natural advantage in the “top 7 teams” argument).

P.S. Our arguments for UCLA not being a Final Four team keeping on taking hits as they gutted-out a win against Stanford, 67-64 in the Pac-10 championship without starting forward, Luc-Richard Mbah a Moute (sprained ankle) and an ailing but still playing center, Kevin Love (back spasm). “Barometer Boy”, Josh Shipp had only 7 points on 3 of 10 shooting but that was more than compensated for by point guard, Darren Collison getting off for 28 points while playing all 40 minutes. Stud.

P.P.S. As of this posting, #8 Texas is down eight to #5 Kansas with 10 minutes left in the Big 12 championship. Were Texas to beat Kansas and also being a team that is the only one to beat 3 currently ranked top-5 teams (UCLA, Tennessee and Kansas in the regular season), not be worthy a #1 seed?)

Is it possible to be fired while on the air?

Just when you thought the world’s greatest tournament couldn’t get any better, ESPN reduces the nation’s unemployment roles by one by bringing in Bobby Knight to do studio work during the NCAAs. ESPN story here.

Coach Knight recently stepped down as the Texas Tech coach handing over the reins to his son Pat and since that time there has been speculation as to what his next move will be. If we never again get to see him throw chairs, choke players or hold court at press conferences, we’ll have to make do with him as a studio analyst which isn’t too bad either when you think about it.

We’ll cop to a certain degree of intellectual laziness when it comes to our fondness for “The General”. That is to say our defense of his sometimes questionable and boorish behavior could be that he has always run a clean program and has graduated his players. While those are extremely admirable traits in leading a big-time college program as he did at Indiana while winning 3 national championships, its not really why we like Knight.

We like Knight because he is so loathed by teet-sucking, East Coast, liberal beta-males like Robert Lypsyte and Mike Lupica who is probably the most annoying personality in all of sports. Backhanded logic to be sure but we’ll run all day with it.

Don’t get us wrong. The Coach is a flawed man and there are many things you can say about him but don’t ever….. don’t ever question the man’s patriotism. Click here for an inspiring Marine Corps recruiting ad. NSFW warning.

Good luck, Coach! We’ll be watching.