NCAA tournament 2011 — running thread

Missouri was horseshit. I should have found a way to bet money on that game.

I still think Notre Dame might do something.

 

Notre Dame will have to play a lot better than it did against Akron.

 

Conversely, the Big 10 is 6-2 with some impressive performances. Still lots of important games for that league tomorrow. ACC's played well too.

 

No, the Big East has not. But how about their competition for best overall conference this year-- The Big 10?

The Big 10 is 6-2. Their only two losses were on a last second shot (Penn St.) and by only 1 point (Mich. St), meanwhile, their six wins included Michigan utterly slaughtering Tennessee, Illinois utterly slaughtering UNLV, Purdue utterly slaughtering St. Pete's, OSU utterly slaughtering UTSA, ans Wisconsin getting two very convincing victories over Utah St. and Kansas State.

Now maybe all that will come crashing down tomorrow. But, as of today, that best overall conference--Big 10 or Big East--debate which dominated the non-conference season, and for which the media talking heads later seemed to gravitate toward the Big East, the NCAA Tournament results seem to have thus far overwhelmingly sided with the Big 10. A fact I seem to have missed being mentioned or even vaguely referenced on the CBS, ESPN, or Turner coverage I've seen thus far.

 

He shouldn't get a pass this year, not the way the team played late in the season and certainly not with the dumb mistakes late in the loss to Butler.

 

Let's not get carried away. Two of those routs were very high (or low) seeds over very low (or high) seeds. Another one was Michigan throttling a team that quit so disgustingly that me, you and three other people from here would have beaten Tennessee. Then there's Wisconsin handing Utah State its annual first round loss that the rest of us will forget by next March, when we all pick the 30-4 WAC champ to win a game or two. Michigan State's comeback was impressive, but not nearly enough to counteract falling behind by 23 in the first 33 minutes.

 

I don't care. Big Ten has put on the show so far.

 

It has, but Big 10 teams should have won all those games. Today will tell a lot. And I like Illinois against a Kansas team that didn't look good at all Friday night.

 

Not me, I have Kansas winning the whole thing and would like to cash in on $500 in an office pool, thank you very much.

 

There is some minor heat but not as much as you'd expect because basketball is so low on the priority list around here that nobody really cares despite that program's success. The bottom line is they win a lot of games every year, graduate kids, rarely get in trouble and do pretty well in the Big East conference games and while that probably isn't enough at places like Indiana, Kentucky, UCLA, North Carolina - it is more than enough in Pittsburgh.

 

Why the Butler hate, Zag? Genuinely curious.

 

Because I hate that fucking style of basketball - that fucking slow down, play physical and try and make games ugly and win 52-50. That shit sucks. They need to take the shot clock down to 20 seconds and force teams to play.

Combine that with how much I loathe the annual slobberfest of these mid-major teams, and Butler is pretty much the poster child for everything I hate about the NCAA Tournament.