Running 2023-24 NCAA Basketball Thread

Dan Monson going to the dance.

 

DJ Burns is my new favorite player.

He's the proverbial 800-pound gorilla. Where does he go? How does he score? Anywhere and any way he wants.

He's the dancing bear, with all that bulk and all those moves.

He played that entire game with a huge smile on his face. I mean, like every second.

No one had more fun tonight than Burns.

 

Oregon Ducks win the final PAC-12 men’s tournament and win their way into the NCAA Tournament.

Their big man, Dante, was an inferno in the paint (couldn’t resist!) going 12-for-12 from the field and altering Colorado shots on defense.

 

Dan Monson and Kevin Keatts need to match up in the first round with matching T-shirts that simply read “Hold My Beer.”

 

So which mid-majors are going to pay for Oregon and NC State stealing bids today?

 

Probably none. The only mid really on the bubble is Indiana State and the number crunchers have been digging their grave for a week.

 

I have a long history of having little respect for South Florida, but they were a good team this season. (24 - 7, 16 - 2) UAB - USF was a war, whale of a good game, and I have to give those guys props. You want to see a coach handle a tough loss with grace? Check this after game presser out. The reporters had no questions for the two of his players at the presser? He asked them questions.

 

Alabama pays $500K for secondary guys. In BASKETBALL. The good ol' boys have money to burn and Nate Oats is the type of win-at-all-costs good ol' boy they love. Win/win11

 

Amir Abdur-Rahim is the real deal. And he is 2-for-2 on turnarounds at places where it was considered nearly impossible to do it. USF would be wise to re-direct some of the money it is putting toward its football stadium to his contract, pronto.

USF’s men’s hoops history is staggeringly bizarre. In 1974, it plucked Bill Gibson from Virginia, after he’d turned around the Wahoos program. Gibson died of a heart attack a year later. When the school built its current arena in 1980, it landed Lee Rose from Purdue, who had taken two schools to the Final Four in the previous four seasons. But the school didn’t keep its promises re: basketball budget and he quit six years later with nary an NCAA bid to show for it. In both cases, George Steinbrenner provided money to land the coaches. (Big Stein was long USF’s athletics money man whenever they needed to hire or fire a coach.) Seth Greenberg was there for a few years and somehow escaped to the Virginia Tech job when he was a year from being fired.

The program had its first sellout in 23 years this winter. Then had sellouts in the subsequent two games to close the regular season. USF got a brief glimpse of what it could have always looked like, but I imagine Amir will have well-heeled suitors at his doorstep shortly. If his words mean anything, he’ll dig in for at least a few years and see it through at Temple Terrace University. But we shall see.

 

Indiana State and FAU

 

If I got left out and FAU makes it as an at-large, I'd be more pissed about Temple that anything. Tie for last in the league and that happens -- at least NC State beat a No. 1 seed with everything on the line, and knocked a top eight team down to a No. 3 seed, to say nothing of winning five straight elimination games.

 

Played in front of tens of fans in Henderson, NV. Its a crazy world!

Go Beach!