Dirty Dookies Exposed (Daily Bubble Talk)

This post will be updated throughout the day...

The size of the bubble
Let's look at what 31 bracketologists think about the bubble.

Here is my opinion on which teams are not guaranteed an NCAA bid just yet or could get one if they go all the way to their conference tourney final (obviously winning it would get them in):

ACC: Georgia Tech, Boston College (people are underweighing their record without Sean Williams), Clemson, Florida State (people are overweighing their record without Toney Douglas)

A10: Xavier, UMass

Big 10: Michigan State, Illinois, Purdue, Michigan, Iowa

Big 12: Texas Tech, Kansas State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State

Big East: Syracuse, West Virginia, DePaul, Providence, UConn - I'm scared of Jim Calhoun so I'm including his team ;-)

Colonial: Drexel, ODU, Hofstra?

Mountain West: Air Force, San Diego State, BYU (check their schedule first! - it's horrible!). Picking BYU would be rewarding a very mediocre schedule. Their best OOC wins are all at home...*drumroll* Utah State (in-state rivarly), Oral Roberts and Seton Hall.

Pac-10: Stanford

SEC: Ole Miss, Miss State, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia?

Valley of Darkness: Missouri State

WAC: Fresno State, New Mexico State

Other mid-majors: Toledo, Akron, Wright State, Bucknell

Here is my opinion 31 teams guaranteed an NCAA at-large bid:

ACC: North Carolina, Virginia Tech, Maryland, Virginia, Duke

Big 10: Ohio State, Wisconsin, Indiana

Big 12: Texas, Texas A&M, Kansas

Big East: Georgetown, Louisville, Pitt, Villanova, Marquette, Notre Dame

C-USA: Memphis

Horizon: Butler (forgot about them!)

Mountain West: UNLV. They have built up a solid resume

Pac10: UCLA, Washington State, Oregon, Arizona, USC

SEC: Florida, Tennessee, Vandy, Kentucky

Valley of Darkness: Southern Illinois

WAC: Nevada



Dirty Dookies, Sour Losers Part II - media reaction

Jim Rome said it much better than I could on Jim Rome is Burning and his radio show, summarized by the above title.

Wilborn of PTI: "the foul was wreckless and excessive"

Woody Page: "Coach K should apologize"

JJ Adande: "suspend Henderson for one NCAA game"

Jay Mariotti's eyes were opened by this incident. He thought Duke was a classy program before this incident. (Finally Mariotti woke up!)

Coach K's indirect admission of guilt by saying "he shouldn't have been in the game". You are not fooling anyone Dirty K. Now the average sports fan knows what hardcore basketball fans knew all along

Also Patrick McEnroe made strong statements about this "hit" ordered by Godfather K

The only one defending Coach K was ... well, you guessed it, field-goal kicker Skip O'Bayless

And one more thing on the substitution debate, if you recall from past Duke/Carolina games there have been some incredible last-minute comebacks. So unless the losing team waves the flag, the opposing team has to continue to play, otherwise they risk losing the game. Coach Krapola was calling time-outs and had Henderson and Redick-wannabe (Scheyer) in the game.

I wouldn't be surprised if Gerald Henderson gets booed every time he touches the ball at the ACC tournament by the fans in general, not just fans of opposing teams. Assuming Duke gets passed NC State

It is time to clean up play by penalizing both players and coaches for "goon" plays. This is what Godfather K ordered and Henderson was following orders. As many have pointed out Henderson did not even bother to check on the condition of Hansbro after the hit: Because he planned to hit him. If you suspend a player for five games and a coach for two games, everyone will think very very very hard before doing something like this again.

Why is Coach K so frustrated? Scoreboard: Roy vs Coach K 4-1 in their last five games. Looks like K cannot deliver on his promise to Roy that "I'll kick your ass" back in the Duke-Kansas NCAA final.

Memo to Jerry Colangelo: Time to find a real basketball coach to coach the national team!. NCAA referees are not calling FIBA basketball games you know, and the ACC conference office is not running the events.


Daily Bubble Talk

Bracket Filling Tip: When you fill your brackets keep this in mind. The games are not a playoff series, and the teams play two games in three days. So when you fill each bracket, don't pick the same thing over and over. Instead introduce some randomness to simulate the randomness of the NCAAs. You may miss some of the more predictable games, but you can catch some surpring results that not many others will. This tip course coming from someone (me) who never got a bracket right :-)

George Mason came so close! So close! CBS would have loved it for the ratings. The turning point in the game was probably the turnover by Smith, it led to two back-to-back turnovers-turned-to-buckets by VCU. But probably the injury to Mason's point guard earlier may have been the root cause of the loss. Almost!

Brackets, the bubble and projections at the Where Sport and Thought Intersect blog.

More NCAA automatic bids earned last night: VCU, Gonzaga and Niagara

No new NIT automatic bids last night

Tonight!: Up for grabs three more NCAA bids (see TV listings below for the games). Also two more NIT automatic bids will be given if Oral Roberts and Wright State lose the championship tonight. NIT Central. NIT bracket projections at The Bracket Project.

Funny ads promoting ESPN360 with a "sports video deficiency" theme and a guest appearance by Bill Walton who cartoonishly (literally) towers over the athlete suffering from "sports video deficiency"

Never too late to get the Blue Ribbon Yearbook. They are also producing a 144-page Tournament yearbook, $10 for an online PDF file or $45 for the print edition with overnight shipping included. A sample page of the PDF version is available for download on their site.

Speaking of Bubble and In or Out, here is my opinion on the 2007 Basketball Hall of Fame

Great page!: Comparison of all major bracket projections at the The Bracket Project. They compare more than 30 bracketology sites! BOOKMARK THAT PAGE!. It includes links to all the bracketology sites mentioned. All you can eat brackets.



Not Bubble Talk

The shy, introverted and never-self-promoting Dick Vitale revealed on Mike and Mike that Bob Knight has collected 31 letters from prominent college basketball coaches including a hand-written letter by John Wooden, Pete Newell and Coach K recommending that Dick Vitale be placed in the Basketball Hall of Fame. On a totally unrelated note Dick Vitale has been a staunch defender of Bob Knight throughout the years.

More firings in the Valley of Darkness: Illinois State. Also Harvard is looking for a coach as well. More details at the Coaching Carousel (Spring edition)

The rosters for the 2007 Round Ball classic have been announced. The Roundball along with the Jordan Classic and of course the McDonalds All American game are the three premier post-season all star games. The Nike Hoops Summit is under the umbrella of USA Basketball and FIBA so it's not an all-star game in that sense. Details at Recruiting Wars

Newspaper Review: Tuesday's edition of College Hoops coverage in USA Today!

Conference by conference coverage of the conference tourneys, not just the BCS schools, but mid-majors as well, including game times and national tv coverage (ESPN, ESPN2, CBS and Versus. No CSTV or ESPN Full Court or Fox College Sports). Save this page (3C)!

Half-page commentary on the Tyler Hansborough foul by Mike Lopresti.

A story on Dwight Howard and one of his childhood friends now in college and how Dwight Howard has remained a down-to-earth person despite the fame, glory and riches of the NBA

Select overnight TV ratings. The Duke/Carolina game got great ratings for CBS, a 3.0 rating with 2.3m households. This handily beat the NBA game on ABC (Lakers vs Suns). The Kentucky-Florida game got a 2.1/1.6

Super 25 high-school basketball rankings (page 13C)

Scores of conference tourneys and upcoming schedule, in tiny font (page 13C)

Coaches Poll (capsules of the top 25 teams)

Recap of conference tourney action including Gonzaga (WCC), VCU (Colonial), and another story on Winthrop. Also featured are the women's conference tourneys with Stanford winning the Pac-10 being the spotlight

Overall rating: Buy it! (and then recycle it)


TV Listings, Tuesday March 6, 2007, Championship Week!
*** all times pacific; add +3 for eastern ***

Comprehensive Championship week and March Madness TV listings here

130pm, Mark Fox of Nevada guests on Jim Rome is Burning, ESPN. (Yesterday's episode featured Chris Lowery of Southern Illinois)

3pm-430pm, Pistol Pete Diaries Marathon (episodes 1 thru 3), Fox College Sports

430pm, Pistol Pete Diaries, Episode #4, Fox College Sports

4pm, Midcontinent final, Oakland vs Oral Roberts, ESPN. Oral Roberts gets an automatic NIT bid if they lose this game.

6pm, Horizon final, Wright State vs Butler, ESPN. Wright State gets an automatic NIT bid if they lose this game.

6pm, Sunbelt final, North Texas at Arkansas State, ESPN2. The winner will be a candidate to play the NCAA Opening round game next Tuesday.

6pm, Pac-10 preview, Fox College Sports (also repeats on Thursday before the Pac-10 tourney games start)

9pm, College Gamenight, 40-minute edition, ESPN

*** Repeats, and Classic games ***

10am, 3am Wedn, Utah at BYU, CSTV

11am, from 1995, the SEC conference tourney final, Arkansas vs Kentucky, Nolan Richardson vs Rick Pitino, on ESPN Classic

12pm, 5am Wedn, Memphis at SMU, CSTV

2pm, 9pm, from 1999, Duke at StJohns, CSTV

4pm, UCLA at Washington State, Fox College Sports. Total slugfest, don't watch it!

630pm, 10pm, ASU at Cal, CSN

midnight, rerun of last year's Knight School, ESPN

1030pm, 1am, 3am, various high school hoops games, including Mater Dei vs Artesia, Fox College Sports

5am wedn, Boston College at Georgia Tech, Fox College Sports