The Atlantic 10 hype bubble bursts

Another conference that is cyclically overhyped (and underhyped at other times) is the Altantic 10 (actually has 14 teams). Two of the overhyped teams are out, Richmond fell at the hands of the perpetually ignored Saint Mary's, while the booksmart spoiled brats of millionaires managed to DESTROY the overhyped Temple team.

The East Coast Hype is of course a regular thing. The Big East and ACC get most of the "hype juice", but during years where the some of the big ACC/BigEast names are troubled (UConn, North Carolina), they have unused hype at ESPN, which eventually "flows" to the Atlantic 14 :-)

The overhyped Big Yeast collapses like a House of Cards

Every year, the constant hype of the Big East and the ACC by the ESPN family of networks is probably responsible for at least two non-deserving bids for teams from those two conferences. This year, the Big East is turning out to be the Big Hype! Georgetown got humiliated by the tough Ohio of Ohio from start to finish. Villanova stumbled thanks to a few lucky breaks and avoided a very embarrassing loss the #15. And Marquette, despite its Top 24 seed, could not beat the automatic-bid from the Pac-10.

And this brings us to Duke. It looks like the CBS and NCAA elites were feeling too uncomfortable with Duke not reaching the Final Four in quite a while, so they OLE'd the Duke region, creating an almost rose-pedaled path for the sleazy Dookies to make it to Indianapolis. Assuming of course they can escape the winner of PitinoVille vs California.

Goodbye Gonzo, the TV awaits you?

Gonzo was probably not given a fair shake at Seton Hall, but in the busy and crowded Big East, patience is not a virtue. The good news for Gonzo is that he has the personality for TV. He is certainly more interesting than Tim Welsh or Mark Gottfried that for whatever reason ESPN decided to feature.

Speaking of which, is it time to start a Re-Hire Tom Brennan campaign? He brought a unique perspective and a breath of fresh air in the tired line-up of ESPN more-of-the-same analysts!

Please don't expand to 96 (but perhaps expand the opening round)

There is talk of expanding the NCAA tournament to 96 teams (64+32=96), however, I think that such an expansion would be too big at the moment, considering the NCAA tournament is great as it currently is.

However, there are arguments made for giving more teams a chance, and selection committee screw-ups ruining student athletes dreams. So how about a compromise instead?

Expand the opening round instead! That's right. Instead of having Virginia Tech, Illinois, Mississippi State, UAB, etc whine and complain, have them play an opening-round game against the lowest ranked at-large teams on the S-curve?

So perhaps expand the opening round to four games (eight teams), but in the interest of fairness, ONLY include at-large/bubble teams in the opening round. ALL the automatic teams DESERVE to be in the field of 64!

And seating/seeding the teams is fairly simply - they already have an S-curve they use during the selection process - use their S-curve position as a placeholders in the brackets, that way all teams get a fair ranking (as fair as that could be).

With ESPN having so many channels (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN360 (renamed to ESPN3), U, Classic), they can easily televise every single one of those opening round games.

So in this year, for example, we could have these opening round games:
* UTEP vs Mississippi State
* Minnessooota vs UAB
* Utah State vs Illinois
* Florida vs Virginia Tech

That would be a good and low-risk first step. If that proves successful, then they could perhaps slowly increase it to five or six in future years...

Purdue gets defeated by the game clock 20-11!

As the Big Ten needed more help in boosting its reputation as a conference where exciting and watchable basketball is played, Purdue, an alleged candidate for a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament could not score more than 11 points in the first half of the conference tournament semifinal against the TubbyGophers!

Eleven points in 20 minutes! Yes, they even lost to the game clock by 20-11 :-)

CBS please have Marques Johnson be the analyst for the Pac10 Championship

Part of the March Madness Championship Week silliness created by TV contracts is that sometimes you have analysts that have never watched the teams be the analysts for the conference championship games. This is ridiculous. Why fly some clueless idiot like Bob Wenzel to call the Pac-10 conference championship game, when you have the premiere Pac-10 basketball analyst right here in Los Angeles, already covering the conference games for FSN!

In addition to that, Marques Johnson is very qualified and a great analyst to be added to the NCAA Tournament team. Sadly Billy Packer heavily influenced the selection of March Madness analysts over the years, and a number of "even keeled" (read: BORING) analysts are part of the eight-analyst rotation.

So CBS, please ADD Marques Johnson to your March Madness analyst rotation!!!

Watch ten years of NCAA action (Sweet 16 to Final) for free

If you are a hardcore college hoops fans, you may get hooked on the NCAA Vault (website requires Flash), it lets you watch Sweet 16 NCAA basketball games from the last ten years completely free. The video size is relatively small, but it is FREE :) This includes the games from the Sweet 16, Elite 8, Semifinal and Final of the last ten years.

Better yet, the video is commercial-free and you can JUMP to any point in the video just by moving the slider. It loads up really fast if you are on a broadband connection. They do show the final score and summary of each game so if you want to watch without seeing the final score ahead of time, cover those parts of the screen :-)

The collection starts with the 2000 Wisconsin vs LSU game, and ends with the 2009 North Carolina vs Michigan State NCAA championship game.

I agree with the coaches proposal on the Big East Tournament

I think the Coaches Proposal for the Big East Conference Tournament is a great idea. This would create a normal 16-team tournament, and in a way it would be like a mini-NCAA tourney. The top four seeds would play the bottom four on day #1. On day #2, the middle eight teams will play each other, and it the tourney will continue as expected on days #3 (1 vs 8, 2 vs 7, etc), day #4 (1 vs 4, 2 vs 3) and day #5 (1 vs 2).

This will give the top four Big East teams an early rehearsal of the NCAA tournament, where they play on one day, rest one day, and then play again.

That way no one has to win five games to get the automatic bid, instead, it is a more common sense four-games for the winner regardless of their conference ranking.

Can Saint Mary's beat GoneZaga in the second half?

The final of the WCC conference tournament is at half time right now. Saint Mary's as usual is doing well at the half time mark. The big question is, can they do it in the second half? The Zags have had their number the last few years. Saint Mary's has more to gain with a win since they get a guaranteed NCAA invite, while the Zags only have to wonder whether their invite will come with a mocha or a latte ;-)

And whichever team loses is going to be yelling at the TV when "Dougie" does the postmortem analysis the game from the game :)

Katie Couric dethrones Syracuse

It's goodbye storied Freedom Hall, and part of the Freedom Hall story was just written today, as PitinoVille managed to dethrone Syracuse from the #1 spot in the country and destroy their undefeated road record. And Louisville perhaps owns this victory to the crazy second half Katie Couric had with a barrage of threes and dunks!

And if you want to get a piece of the Freedom Hall history, the Hardwood Heavens DVD series on Amazon has a "Freedom Hall" DVD, available for around $15. This is part of an original sportsumentary (sports + documentary) series commissioned by the (now named) Mojo channel. This was produced beforehand, so it obviously won't have the closing of Freedom Hall. Narrated by Brent Musburger.

Please go to six or more fouls, this is jj-redickulous!

This is crazy, let the players decide the games, not the middle-aged old men with the whistles and the baggage! The game is for the players to play! Poor Mississippi State lost two of their best players - if it wasn't for the disqualifications, they could have won the game in regulation!

Come on NCAA, you don't have to continue living in the middle ages! The 21st century is not that bad!

Free from Coach DraKula, Elliott Williams flourishes

If you needed any further evidence that Coach K is a DraKula that drains the life energy out of his players, look at how well Elliott Williams is doing at Memphis, a brand new team with a 19yo head-coach! One more player, free from the energy-drain of Coach DraKula is able to succeed in his post-Duke-transfer career.

And the Memphis performance today may have some Tigers fans questioning the coaching skills of Calipari. If a 19yo head-coach-kid is able to almost beat #1 Kansas, what was Calipari doing with a lot better players? :)