NCAA Basketball 2010-2011

You know...I expected Carolina to start their drop pretty early...but damn...not this quickly! Hopefully they have a season better than their 17 loss season last year.

All I want is Northwestern to make the NCAA Tourney. Tough early Big 10 schedule-@#8 Pur, #2 Mich St, @#19 Ill.

Looking forward to ACC/Big 10 Challenge.

*Monday, November 29
Virginia at Minnesota

Tuesday, November 30
North Carolina at Illinois
Ohio State at Florida State
Michigan at Clemson
Georgia Tech at Northwestern
Iowa at Wake Forest

Wednesday, December 1
Michigan State at Duke
Purdue at Virginia Tech
North Carolina State at Wisconsin
Indiana at Boston College
Maryland at Penn State


Minnesota is ranked 17th right now so the surprise factor should be gone. They are respected.

I'll chime in with the hope that, like Carolina, UCLA will find last year's meltdown an aberration. In a down year for the PAC 10 (it was only three years ago that five of the first ten players drafted were from the Pac 10, and the league still hasn't recovered), the addition of a JC PG who looks skilled and smart, if not as athletic as I'd like, will be the stabilizer.

I'm a huge Carolina fan...so I really do hope that last year was just an abberation of a meltdown for them. They cant possibly have two seasons in a row that terrible.

Carolina will only go as far as their PG, and Larry Drew II isn't the answer to our prayers.

I haven't gotten around to watching any of their games, so far, so I'm not sure what this Marshall kid looks like but everything I've read about him, since he signed his LOI, is that he's a smooth and non-flashy guy. He doesn't really sound like the new-age Carolina PG (ala Felton and Lawson), where they push and push and push, the kinda guy Williams loves.

The worst part of last night's UCLA-KU hosing isn't so much that the scrum at the end should have been a no-call (if the Big 12 actually "reviewed" that, as they claim, they did it without their glasses on), but that after Honeycutt tied the score prior to that, the KU player who "inbounded" never took the ball out of bounds in the first place (he threw the ball with one foot on the floor inbounds, the other in the air; neither foot actually goes out of bounds). Should have been an inbounds violation, Bruin ball, game tied at 76, 4 seconds left.

Ah, well. They played a much better game than I'd expected, and Smith may have had a bit of a breakout. We're still terribly weak at guard, though.

Hope we don't have a letdown over the next couple weeks as we move through the rest of the pre-conference cupcakes.

In Women's BB news-UCONN finally lost after 90 games to Stanford. You would think that would be an impressive streak. But when you consider the average margin of victory during that streak was around 35 points you learn Women's basketball sucks and has about 3 teams that can compete with eachother on a high level.

Northwestern is at 9-1 with 19 games to play + Big 10 tourney. Gotta get to 20 wins before tourney for a shot.

FSU agrees with you.

So who is gonna make a CHUD bracket thingy?

http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/t1/group/63557?b=er

The Wall Street Journal's "Blind Brackets" allows you to pick the tournament game by game, without knowing the names of the teams (you get a fake name, their approximate seeding, what level conference they play in, and some key positive/negative bullet points).

 

Some of the choices will be obvious when you read the descriptions, and in the end I wound up with three #1 seeds in the final, but it's still fun.

Dead link. Let me know what's up.

Not sure how those digits got added to the end

 

http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/t1/group/63557

You are not a member of this group. (Error #113)

Well, usually every year I have one region that is completely screwed from day one.  The Southwest is that region it seems this year.

 

I will say, I always pick at least one 13 over 4 seed, but unfortunately it wasn't Louisville/Morehead State.  I did almost hit it with Princeton, though.  My Southeast region looks good, only missing UCLA.

Yeah, leave it to Louisville to fucking choke. Had they not played like shit in the first half, they would've easily dominated.

 

I want to see how Michigan/Tenn goes today.

The Big East is a fraud.  Louisville, Pitt, St. John's, Georgetown, Villanova, & W. Virginia.  I don't expext them all to win but 3 of the top 5 teams in their league are out.  It's like big 10 football.  Lots of talk when they play eachother, Lots in the to 25, but when they play other schools they get their asses kicked.

 

Atleast 8 of the 11 will be out in the first 2 rounds.

Include Notre Dame in that Big East failure list.  Can't believe FSU dominated them like they did, but it made me happy.  My brackets are shit now that two of my Final Four are gone, including my overall champion.  So I'll just enjoy FSU's unlikely run the rest of the tourney, which may end at any second.

So happy Butler got back.  Now hoping for Ariz, VCU, and Kentucky if only for the Ashley Judd shots

Amazing to see Butler back. Brad Stevens phone will be blowing up yet again I'm sure. They came so close against Duke. So I hope maybe this could be the year!!

Bill Self will be crucified if they don't pick it up in the 2nd half.  Go VCU!

Unbelievable.  Despite having the most disastrous final four I've ever picked (Syracuse, Notre Dame, Duke, and Pitt) I am somehow still in the money in my bracket challenge.  And, in retrospect,  I was three more points from Arizona away from placing first.

So with 2 of the 4 Final Four teams coming from small schools/conferences is this what we can expect from college basketball with big time NBA prospects only staying one year? I think so. I mean aren't VCU's starting 5 mostly seniors? It may take a few years for small schools from small conferences to go far in the tournament but they'll end up being more competative in the long run than schools with 'one and done' players. Sure your Dukes, Kentuckeys, and NC will always be there, but as we've seen they'll be much more beatable than in years past.  

At least some solace I can take from the VCU loss is that FSU kept it closer that any other team has so far in the tournament, and that they made it to the Final 4.  Funny to see a Final 4 with no #1 seeds.  My bracket is wrecked, but at least I had the right idea--I only had one #1 seed in there (Kansas).

I watch, mostly with indifference, every March.  But now that Kentucky is in the final four my interest has been piqued, as a Yankee fan with an historical perspective...

 

Possibly, but it's only been three seasons since the first Final Four with all #1 seeds, so it might be a bit early for much trend-spotting.

 

And while I'm certainly no Arizona fan, it was nice to see D. Williams rip Krzyzewski's goobers a new one.

Thank you Butler.  UConn is very beatable. 

 

Outside of the UConn campus-will anyone be rooting for them?

Me? But that's because I'm from CT. But yeah, you'd have to figure the majority of the country wants to see Butler win this one.

That was an ugly game. Just ug-ly. Although, my Huskies came to play in the second half. Any team that shoots 19 percent can't expect to win any game, never mind a championship game.

Tonight's game just reinforces my belief that College basketball is just a tad overated. Anyone who actually sat through that whole game, or Saturday's games, I applaud you they were all pretty unwatchable.