My brackets are now history (thanks, West Virginia), which is almost a relief, in that now I can just forget about them and enjoy the hoops.
Anyway, I spent the last few days at the games in Philly. Observations:
*It seems to me that most of the best high school players around here (meaning south-central Pa.) aren’t good enough for D-1 because of physical limitations (size/quickness/athleticism), not basketball skill.
But on the national level, my sense is it’s the other way around, sort of. I’m amazed how big and athletic even mid-major teams are. If you saw Tennessee-Chattanooga’s players out of context, say walking through a hotel lobby, the average person could believe they were looking at a NBA team. American U, of the academics-first Patriot League, had bigger big guys and quicker little guys than UTC, at least among its first five.
Which is why Davids no longer play like Princeton in order to have a shot at Goliath. As I write this, I’m watching Morehead State climb all over Louisville over 94 feet. They aren’t winning, of course, and they aren’t going to win, but…
Where do they find these kids?
*The sad decline of the newspaper business is really in evidence at events like this. For Thursday’s games I sat on the floor, right behind the Chattanooga/American/UCLA bench. (I was probably on TV dozens of times), by far the best seat I’ve ever had, and many of the chairs around me were unoccupied or taken by hangers-on.
In past years when Philly has hosted NCAAs there have been so many credentials issued that I ended up sitting in an auxiliary press box way, way up near the ceiling of the Wachovia, where I needed binoculars to get a real sense of what was going on.
