2024-25 College Basketball Thread

I was discussing with my Big Ten-grad daughter what an anti-Big Ten map commercial would include. Let your imagination run wild.

 

Oh, you meant on the map. Nevermind.

 

My goodness, they really used Streisand singing Being Alive from "Company?" The "It's Alright" year worked, it had that melancholy bridge to show downcast players and coaches before pumping back up for the final chorus. What was the instrumental of the 1985 version. I know it was from a movie. "Baa-dum-da-dum, Ba-da, ba-da-ba-da...."

Strange but true: The song was originally supposed to debut as a montage package after Super Bowl 21 (Giants-Broncos) but was cut for time. The songwriter knew Armen Keteyian from school and passed the song on to him, who passed it around the SI offices where he worked for a time before getting in the hands of CBS. They finally used it for the Syracuse-Indiana NCAA final later in 1987

 

At the very least, we should be able to dispense with the Ron Sanchez idea pretty quickly. Hopefully Paul Tudor Jones will open up his wallet in the spring.

I'd say I'm looking forward to crushing some ACC tournament hopeful's NET this year, but I don't see too many potential tournament teams left on the schedule. (Dealing a blow to Penny and his boys would be fun, too, but I don't think that's very likely.)

 

It's just corny.

 

You forced me to look at KenPom for the first time this season and good Lord, it's like someone transposed the football rankings instead. What in the wide, wide world of sports is going on around here?

Auburn is No. 1? Tennessee, Florida and Oklahoma are unbeaten? Five SEC schools in the top 10? After Duke, the next two ACC schools are Clemson and Pitt? Wright State has a better rating than Cal? UNC Greensboro and UNC Wilmington are higher than Temple, Seton Hall and Virginia Tech?

How did the left let it get to this?

 

I can tell you VT flat sucks. I don't know how much longer Mike Young is going to last there. The double-digit home loss to Jacksonville was jarring and a sign of things to come. Hokies will struggle to win 3-4 ACC games this year. Just very little talent.

 

Conventional wisdom is that VT devoted the vast majority of its NIL to football. That's probably the right call in this environment, particularly if they're trying to get into a new conference, but it's had an effect on Young's talent.

(The Dog-Faced Gremlin's nephew is still there, though.)

 

The thing about NIL money though is that it makes scouting way more important, because your available talent pool is essentially tripled. At least according to a quick Google search, the usual freshman basketball class is about 1,000 players, and the transfer market last year had close to 2,000 players in it. Much like free agency in professional sports, I suspect that the teams having success are the ones with the best scouting, that know how to spread the money around the best, vs. teams making the splashiest signings.

 

As it should. Tech has never been consistently really good in men's hoops, the Buzz era notwithstanding. Greenberg did a nice job of getting the Hokies on the bubble most years, but basketball has always taken a back seat to football. Problem is football has been decidedly mediocre for more than a decade now.

 

Young will be fine. Winning an ACC Tournament buys him a lot of time. And it should.

 

Cleveland State finds one of those clown schools to play. They whupped a local D3 school earlier this year and it wasn’t close to this bad:

https://twitter.com/csu_basketball/status/1868052268697911561?s=46