Monday Night Quarterback

Rumors

Flip Saunders (NBA head coach at the Pistons, formerly of the MN T-Wolves) to take over the Monson-less Golden Gophers???

Fact, not Fiction

56 is the current streak of made free throws by Gonzaga's Derek Raivio. Puke's JJ Redick couldn't get past the 40s...

Coach K on how to win road games: "Have more talent than the opponent". This from his own coaches show. A nominee for the Master of the Obvious Oscar category! I can't believe it!!!

AAU-style battle in the paint but in college: First half of Louisville at UConn, with Derrick Caracter going after Thabeet of UConn.

A Bo Ryan joke on officiating (paraphrased): "A coach finds a cell phone after a game. He grabs the official and tells him that he dropped his phone. The official asks how do you know it's my phone? The coach says... it has 10 missed calls.

Creative Fans segment: USF fans were holding signs advertising their team's webpage (on ESPN's Big Monday).


Opinion segment O'Reilly style

Great job by the NCAA since taking over the NIT!. They are making it more like a smaller-scale NCAA tourney by cutting down the teams to 32 (instead of the unbalanced number of 40), and now they will be having a selection show broadcast on ESPN2, on Selection Sunday, 2 hours after the NCAA brackets are announced. The "NIT Selection Show" will air on ESPN2 at 6pm pacific/9pm eastern, on Selection Sunday, Sunday March 11, 2007. Check my March Madness TV listings for comprehensive tv coverage of both championship week and march madness.

The 2007 McDonalds All-American rosters have been announced. As usual there is plenty of controversy with a handful of selection, most notably Taylor King, Jai Lucas and Nolan Smith. (Two of them Dookies, the other one recruited by Coach AMEX). More coverage at Recruiting Wars

Is LSU a better team without Big Baby?. They looked so in their last two games (Kentucky, Florida)! There was great movement, great blend of shooters/penetrators (Tasmin, Martin, Mason), and stability from Lazarre. LSU without Big Baby = Lazarus???

Memo to ACC schedulers: You are crazy! Carolina vs Maryland games are instant classics based on style of play, yet they only play once in the regular season! This is crazy! Do whatever you need to do and make it so that they play each other twice in the regular season. And no, I'm not interested in excuses :)

If I was voting in the polls I would not give Ohio State a #1 vote after that horrible slugfest against Wisconsin. This is how the Big 10 gets its reputations as unwatchable. It takes two to play a fun game, don't blame Ohio State (hint: blame Wisconsin and most of the other teams in the Big Eleven). That game was supposed to be the game of the week, yet both the Louisville at UConn and North Carolina at Maryland were much more watchable games. Speaking of Louisville, is Pitino copying the AASAA offense from his friend Calipari who copied it from Vance Walhberg? There were a couple of plays by the Cardinals late in the game (at UConn) that looked like textbook AASAA offense (although one can also point out that passes and skip passes are not exclusive to the AASAA offense)

Beating 13 RPI 101+ teams is wonderful if you want to pile up hundreds of wins throughout your career, but it won't get you to the NIT, let alone the NCAA. Why? Because RPI 101+ teams do not get at-large bids in the NCAA or the NIT. (Yes, I am talking about you, UConn!)

Desperate times at Duke as Coach K (on his coaches show) was listing all his players playing professional ball, not just the NBA but also in the Euroleague and everywhere else. Translation: "Come play for me and you will make lots of money as a basketball pro". Thankfully fewer and fewer top caliber recruits are buying into his vaporware these days.

Is the Air Force team wearing down because of a short rotation? This also happened to Arizona earlier in the season when Lute Olson was playing five players most of the time.

The proposed requirement to have a 50-50 or better conference record before a team can be considered for the NCAA is invalid because most of the major conferences play unbalanced and uneven schedules. The way to make the selection more fair is to include deserving teams, not to make up more rules as a workaround.

Should Bill Self be fired if Kansas loses in the NCAA 1st round for the third year in a row? That's an interesting question, and an answer may not be easy to come up with...


Media Segment

ABBA's song "Fernando" was discovered by a new generation of Wisconsin Badgers fans as it was re-recorded (by fans) as a tribute to "Alando" (Tucker)

Props to ESPN for featuring Doris Burke as a men's basketball analyst. For some reason it's considered okay for men to coach/analyze women's games, but the other way round seems to be a big issue. When Doris is a sideline reporter she usually makes the more basketball-savvy comments compared to the in-game color analyst (eg Vitale) and even the in-studio analysts. So it's great that she also gets a chance to be the in-game analyst.

TV listings for Championship week and March Madness in progress

FSN needs to learn how to count! They showed Washington's Appleby with 14 points and 5/6 on three-pointers. Someone forgot to press the recalc button!

Tim Brando is still struggling to properly pronounce the name "Vasquez" (Maryland's talented freshman). How hard is it? And this from TB: "inducing a foul". Come on! And CBS is using this guy for the NCAA tourney?

Mike Patrick did it again, this time he described the Jamar Smith accident as "bizarre". Len Elmore was speechless after he made that comment. I would describe it as sad, tragic, unfortunate, an error in judgment, a mistake, but bizarre? Where did that come from?

But they were perhaps both outdone by Bob Wenzel when he referenced "the RPI poll". RPI is a poll? WoW :-)

New TV ads with Dick Vitale!, with Hooters and an old-school Vitale in a new (it's not delivery, it's) DiGiorno.

Are TV commentators scared of Jim Calhoun??? Both Dan Bonner and Kevin Harlan (who imho is one of the most solid play-by-play guys) were talking as if UConn was an NCAA bubble team. Are they that clueless or perhaps they were afraid of drawing the ire of Jim Calhoun? (insert "appeasing the lion" here). UConn was a Big East tourney bubble team until recently, and they are barely an NIT bubble team according to NITology.com

In or Out with Digger Phelps: If it's a Big East team, you can predict the answer: IN!

You know you watch too much ESPN when you can tell which ones of the features they are showing are stock footage (eg Tom Izzo's free throw story)