The 24 hours or so after the brackets come out is, at least to me, maybe the most interesting time of the sports-media year. My favorite moment from Sunday night was when ESPN’s panel came on for its post-bracket analysis, and there’s Bobby Knight, leaning heavily back in his chair and yawning like a grizzly bear. Then Knight lists forward in his chair, still yawning. I mean, this was like a 10-second yawn, which on TV is like 10 minutes. Both Digger and Jay Bilas have by now noticed and are trying not to laugh.
Finally the yawn ends, but then Knight notices a loose cord or wire that’s like, coming out of his pants or something. So he motions to Digger like, what should I do with this (this is live television; Rece Davis is by now well into his intro and setup). As if Knight was a little kid, Digger patiently shows him where to put the wire. Big-time, network-TV show biz.
Anyway, to the brackets:
I say or write this every year, but there are two philosophies about putting together the tournament, and they sometimes oppose each other - 1. Get the strongest field possible, and, 2. Reward teams for having had great seasons.
The NCAA runs a lot of national championships in a lot of sports at a lot of levels with a lot of qualifying criteria, and many of them have fields comparable to to D-1 basketball’s 65. In general (to put it in hoops terms), teams that have 24 wins and regular-season league titles fare better than teams that go 18-12 and finish sixth or seventh in their leagues. Even if the 18-win team’s league is much stronger than the 24-win team’s league. Even if the 18-win team is a better team than the 24. That’s how the Madness ought to be, in my view.
The committee agreed with me in 2004, when 12 at-large bids went to mid-majors. Soon after that the Big East expanded to like 140 teams by taking teams, and in effect bids, from mid-major leagues. The little guys have gotten no more than six at-larges in any year since. Of course, the big guys generally won’t play the little guys except at home, which means if a little wants to play a big schedule, the little pretty much has to live on the road.
It’s not fair and to me it makes the tournament less fun, but many disagree. The smart and thoughtful Jay Bilas, for example, thinks this year South Alabama (26-6) should be out and the likes of Kentucky and Arizona and Villanova, with a combined 38 losses, should be in. The barometer of where you stand with regards to the two philosophies, this year, is pretty much how you feel about South Alabama.
Some people think Tennessee should have gotten a one seed. That’s debatable, but what’s odd is they evidently got the last two seed. If you ranked the teams in the field from 1-64 and there were no upsets, perfect brackets would mean the regional final matchups would be overall No. 1 vs. overall No. 8, 2 vs. 7, 6 vs. 3 and 4 vs. 5.
The committee has North Carolina No. 1 overall. The Heels would play Tennessee in the East regional final. The weakest club on the No. 2 line, to me, is Duke. If you put Duke in the East, you’d set up a Carolina-Duke regional final in North Carolina. The state would explode. Maybe the committee wanted to avoid that.
Still not sold on the Tar Heels, by the way. They’re great when they’re playing fast and running people in and out and wearing people out. But they don’t play much defense, they can’t be bothered with screening and cutting, and they make mental errors left and right. There’s no attention to detail. It’s like they have group ADD. I’m probably giving them the kiss of life.
On the other hand, Memphis, Wisconsin and UCLA are being undersold. The sense I got Sunday is that people think Memphis is a little like Hawaii in football, a team that plays this goofy system that won’t hold up when it really counts. Actually Memphis’ system is just based on dribble penetration in the same way that Knight-style motion is based on screens and Princeton is based on backdoor cuts. It only works if you have, get this, basketball skills.
Wisconsin should have been a 2 seed. I don’t think the Badgers have enough weapons to win the whole thing, but that’s not what the seed should be about. It’s about a body of work. Wisconsin is 29-4 against a solid schedule, was clearly the best team in a BCS league, dominated that league’s tournament, and won at Texas. I can’t think of more than 2-3 teams in the country who’ve been as consistent, from October to now, than these guys.
UCLA: The web site nbadraft.com has a mock 2008 draft in which five Bruins are taken by the middle of the second round. When in doubt about the NCAAs, taking the team with the most near-future NBA players isn’t a bad idea. But it’s more than that. UCLA is very well-coached, especially defensively, has been to the last two Final Fours, and is a better offensive team than the last two because of the superb big man Kevin Love. None of the five ESPN gurus picked the Bruins to win it all Sunday night. I think they’re the favorite.
Tomorrow’s a big multimedia day. There’s an NCAA podcast with New Era writer/editors Keith Schweigart, Phil Gladfelter and Jeff Reinhart and your correspondent. Then the second edition of the Sunday News webcast The Low Post, also on Madness, will be live from Brooks Hall at Millersville U. with me, Eric Stark and Dell Jackson of llhoops.com.
The premiere of The Low Post, on the Phillies, can be found by going to the Lancasteronline.com and clicking on “local videos.”
