2024-25 College Basketball Thread

Fox putting college basketball on Friday night tells you all you need to know about the state of college basketball.

 

I love how they keep saying Cooper is a really good boy.

The photo of the girl and the dog just wrecked me. It took me a few hours to read through it.

 

Very true, but UConn-St. John's last Friday was fantastic.

 

and drew almost 1.5 million

 

Same reason they put Big 10 football on Fridays. You’ve already paid for that inventory so get an extra night’s use out of it. One less scripted series to pay for. And what’s their completion? Dallas and Falcon Crest are not walking through that door.

 

What about Miami Vice? Or Perfect Strangers? Or Just The Ten Of Us?

 

12-year-old Dixiehack swore that Rick Majarus played the dad in Just the Ten of Us.

 

My father-in-law was a high school basketball coach in Indiana, was friends with Majerus through recruiting of his players, looked a lot like Majerus and had only daughters, all with pinched Midwestern accents. My wife’s family would watch the show feeling like they had a documentary made after them.

 

The fact that Fox is watching college basketball of Friday nights says more about the state of network television than college basketball. Networks ca no longer afford to make hour long dramas because of competition from streaming services. So they plug in college basketball, which the pay basically nothing for.

As an Indiana alum I did watch Indiana-UCLA last night, as the Hoosiers tried to come from 10 points back at half time. A fun game until the last two minutes when the intentional fouling started to review an errant elbow and to check the clock. Along with the coaches having saved their timeouts the last two minutes of game action took about a half an hour. I think college basketball needs to adopt a rule of first team to 80 wins. The extra time it takes to play to 80 could be offset by allowing only one timeout a half for each team (the four minute commercial timeouts could come every 10 points instead),

 

For your entertainment today.

 

That's great.
Also consider:
* Bruce Pearl Gets in Player's Face and Yells for ≥ 15 Seconds
* Football recruiting reference

 

It's the hoops equivalent of football recruiting coverage: Deceptive hype.
"Auburn and Alabama are playing for the No. 1 overall seed today!" Sorry, but it's absurd to make that definitive a declaration when:
* The teams meet again in a couple of weeks;
*They may meet a third time in the SEC tourney final; and
* The SEC is so tough that today's winner might take several hits between today and Selection Sunday.
If the occupants of this week's AP poll remain ranked, Alabama's final seven regular-season games will all be against ranked opponents. I checked ACC history for a comp and found that a team has faced ranked opposition in six straight games but never seven.