Running 2011-12 College Basketball thread

DING!

 

Prairie View went off as a 4-point favorite against Alcorn State today.

The score as of this post is 61-17 Alcorn.

Oops.

 

Boston College might have struggled to finish in the top four in the Big South this year. My word is this a bad basketball team.

 

Vazquez Ward transfer again?

 

Well, Southern Miss hangs on to beat East Carolina 81-78 in OT in the CUSA Tournament. ECU hit 15 treys, but Southern did enough to win it. That should lock up an NCAA berth for USM. No team with their resume has ever been left out. They've got a 17 RPI, a 58 SOS, they're 3-2 vs. RPI Top 50s and 9-4 vs. Top 100s. I think they're at least a 10-seed, and they could get to an 8 if they can go on and win the tournament, which is doable.

Oh, Sonner, as for Alcorn-PV, it's the SWAC, you suspend reality when you go there.

 

Tell Vegas that.

 

Boise State just blew a nine-point lead to SDSU. Aztecs up by two late in the first half.

EDIT: Broncos up by two at the break.

 

Until yesterday, I didn't realize Oregon State had 18 wins this year. Now the Beavers are leading Washington in the first half. For as sorry as the Pac-12 is, that's a fine job by POTUSBIL.

 

One of Oregon State's key kids, Roberto Nelson, was a major player in George Dohrmann's book on AAU basketball.

Been interesting to see how some of those kids turned out. The star of the book, Demetrius Walker, is a 16-minutes-a-game guy for Steve Alford's New Mexico Lobos. As an eighth- and ninth-grader, he was considered the nation's top prospect for his age group. Very eye-opening.

 

I used to cover the ACC tournament regularly and I've watched many a game surrounded by sections full of empty seats -- usually the earliest or latest game of the first day. A lot of fans of teams that aren't playing in a session won't show up for that session, or at least they won't come early or stay late.

The game that springs to mind first for empty seats at an ACC tournament was in the early years of Coach K at Duke -- I think Vince Taylor was still Duke's star at the time, or maybe he had just left -- the Blue Devils got absolutely clubbed by Virginia in the first round at the Omni in Atlanta. It was the last game of the night and it got started late because the previous game had run long. A large part of the crowd cleared out before the game started and by the end, the place was pretty much deserted. You could hear echoes throughout the building.

Just looked it up -- it was 1983 (the year after Taylor left), and Virginia won 109-66. And yes, it was that brutal.

As an aside, that day -- and I believe it was during that game -- was the first time I ever actually saw Dean Smith smoke. He was hiding in a corner trying not to be seen, but there he was.

 

Are you sure it wasn't Dusty Rhodes?

 

That's the game that Coach K continues to lie about to this day - the "here's to never forgetting" game. K claimed as recently as November that Ralph Sampson played the entire game when he actually scored 18 points in 14 minutes. The rat-faced prick used that to justify running up the score with his starters during the down years at UVa.