2020-21 College Basketball thread

I'm riding the Muss Bus. Pigs get to the Sweet 16.

 

They lose to TT.
Sorry.

 

If Gonzaga doesn't win this year, it will never win.

 

Cripes, I've somehow talked myself into Colorado into the Final Four -- Gonzaga, Colorado, Illinois, Ohio State. Gonzaga to beat Illinois in a high-scoring final.

 

If Gonzaga wins, I'm thinking that's the first unbeaten champion since 1976 Indiana.

 

Rutgers was also undefeated entering the Final Four that year. The team it beat in the East regional final to reach the Final Four? VMI. Yes, VMI, which eliminated Tennessee and DePaul to reach the Elite 8.

 

Larry Bird's Indiana State team suffered their only loss against Magic Johnson and MSU. Unbeatens UNLV and UK got bounced in the semis. I remember San Francisco and Bill Cartwright getting steamrolled (by Vegas, perhaps?) but they may have lost at least once before the tournament. And DePaul seemed to be unbeaten until March every year under Ray Meyer for a bit.

 

They didn't call it that then.

 

This year feels a lot like the year UNLV won it in 1990 ... I know the unbeaten thing gets some run, but it feels completely different this year than in a normal year because of the fits and starts of the scheduling. It doesn't feel like Gonzaga has the massive pressure on it like it would had it played a full 32 or 33 games. I just look at their bracket and don't see a lot of pitfalls. Oklahoma? No. Creighton? No. Virginia? Gonzaga beat them by like 26 earlier this year. Then it's a weak-ish Kansas team or an Iowa team it already steamrolled as well. And the East Region probably is the weakest and that's what Gonzaga faces in the Final Four.

Can they lose? Sure. Anybody can. But I've watched a ton of college hoops this year, way more than in years past, and that team is so deep that their top guys can have an off night and they can still survive. And that scare against BYU was really good for them. Got their juices flowing to figure out how to rally from a deficit against a decent team. They feel like an NBA team, like a 12-point deficit just doesn't spook them like it does others.

 

I have a vague memory of reading an SI story about a high school game where the team was down to one player against five at the end for the last 10 or 20 seconds of the game and the team with one player managed to pull out the win.

The kid inbounded the ball off the defender once, made some free throws, and a couple other times, he’d toss or roll the ball down the court and made the opponent chase after it ad waste valuable time.

 

The rules may differ at different levels, and they may have changed, but I believe in high school play, the officials are supposed to call a forfeit if one team gets down to one player.

In the NBA, if a team gets down below 5 players, fouled out players are allowed to return to the game (in reverse order of when they fouled out), and if they commit additional personal fouls, they are assessed technicals in addition to the normal foul penalties.