College basketball 2009-10 running thread No. 1

You have Georgia Tech - a 7-9 team in a not so great ACC? --- wow! I would think that is at the very least contingent on them winning one ACC Tournament game.

And while Notre Dame seems to be in, it would be a good idea for them to win a game in the BET as well.

One other thing - if there is a fourth SEC team, you really think it will be Ole Miss and not Florida?

 

Most projections seem to have GT on the right side of the bubble at this point. But if they do lose their first game in the ACC Tourney they will have a very nervous time come Sunday.

 

Zag: I have GT in as one of my last teams, again speaking to how weak the bubble is this season. Jackets definitely aren't sexy, but problem is that there aren't any obvious teams better than them. A loss to North Carolina clearly knocks them out. Even a quarterfinal loss to Maryland could doom them depending on how some things shake out (ODU loses tonight, Big East team makes a run)

As for Ole Miss over Florida? Based solely right now on Ole Miss being on a winning streak and Florida losing their last three. But the Gators have the benefit of a winnable opening round game against Auburn in the SEC tournament, while the Rebels will likely have to deal with Tennessee in their first game the next round. Certainly not inconceivable that Florida passes them -- or neither of them get in.

 

I'm be interested to hear from those older than me who your favorite player was to watch in a single tourney. I ask this because I was just thinking back on Davidson's run with Steph Curry to the Elite Eight. I don't think I've ever had as much fun watching a player as I did watching Curry that spring. So much so that he's now the background on my work computer.

 

The first NCAA tournament I remember watching was the Bird-Magic tourney in 1979. I grew up in Big 10 country so I got to see Magic play a few times on TV that season and we were living in a Mo Valley town so Bird got a lot of coverage (for that era) too. Neither guy was a mystery to me when the tournament started.

The team & player that really captured my attention that year was DePaul & Mark Aguirre because I don't remember seeing anything on them before the tourney started.

Doctor Dunkenstein (Darrell Griffith) was fun to watch when Louisville won it in 1980.

I also remember U.S. Reed shooting down Louisville the next year with a half-court bomb at the horn.

The Phi Slamma Jamma teams from the early 80s were a lot of fun to watch.

 

One of my favorite players to watch in a tournament was John Wallace from Syracuse - I don't remember a guy carrying a worse team further -- and that includes both Carmello Anthony and Dwayne Wade -- than that guy did.

 

Yeah, I don't know if there's a more intriguing bubble team right now than Ole Miss. They had a real solid showing in Puerto Rico in late November, beating K-State and losing by about 6 to Villanova in the finals, and they had Tennessee beaten at Knoxville earlier in the SEC season and let them off the hook in the last two minutes. But they also hit a stretch where they didn't play well toward the end of February, and they got swept by Miss. State.

However, with the way they finished, I think if they beat the Vols on Friday to get to the tournament semis, that might be enough to put them in. And I think they could nail it down by getting to Sunday.

 

Vasquez, Scheyer and Delaney were all unanimous 1st team ACC picks. The race for ACC POY is going to be rather tight, to be released tomorrow.

 

Hard to say that one player meant as much to one program as Stephen Curry. Let's label this the "honorable mention" file:

Fennis Dembo was the last time anyone cared about Wyoming who's not from there or currently affiliated with the school.

Bo Kimble symbolized the late Hank Gathers and helped spearhead Loyola-Marymount's run 20 years ago.

Duke's Christian Laettner doesn't pass your sort of one player, one tourney run but had memorable moments. In addition to the great 17-foot turnaround he swished to vault the Devils past Kentucky in '92, he also hit a double-pump shot at the buzzer in the regional final to knock Connecticut out in '90.

Bobby Hurley had a nice redemption in '91. After getting sick during the Final Four in '90, including a blowout championship game loss to Nevada-Las Vegas, he came back much improved in '91, including the program-defining win over Vegas a year later.

Patrick Ewing burst onto the national scene with Georgetown's run to the championship game in '82.

There was also "Cornbread" Maxwell and the stuff he did for (then) UNC-Charlotte en route to their Final Four run in '77.

For ACC Tournament, good fan of Chapel Hill, check back to the mid-'90s. It seemed like every time the Deacons needed a big shot in the tourney for a couple of years, Childress was there sinking it. Head-shaking. Didn't hurt that some Tim Duncan dude was starting to blossom.

 

Anyone who didn't have all three of those guys on the team would have proven brain-dead. Easy, easy, easy choices. Trevor Booker was a really obvious pick, too. Kyle Singler? Yeah ... only Al-Farouq Aminu would have seriously been debated, I would think.