Running 2023-24 NCAA Basketball Thread

Basketball is going to the NCAAs, and #2 Long Beach State volleyball beats #1 Hawaii both Friday and Saturday night.

Go Beach!

 

Glad this did not age well. (Notsorry ... pretty much begging for this one to get recalled.)

Not about to argue with you. See what happens when people in addition to DJ Burns and Kevin Keatts give a flip on a consistent basis? Amazing how that happens.

1) He has always been worth the price of admission. What separates him from many of his brethren is his ability to pass out of double teams and find open teammates when defenses sag on him. I mean, Tony Bennett's packline double-teams everyone on the planet who gets near the basket ... except Burns because he's concerned about his ability to find teammates left alone behind the arc for open 3s.

2) Give him more teammates who are engaged - like they were this unlike any week I have watched this team in a long, long time - and it makes him just that much more dangerous.

3) I laugh every time someone claims he's 260 or 275 pounds after reading media notes or the media guide. Saw him in person away from the court a couple of months ago. He's a human eclipse. Not meant as an insult, just highlighting that he's enormous. Ask Virginia's Taine Murray for verification.

 

What an absolute disaster of a day for UVA. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong and I'm afraid the Cavs will pay the price.

 

Also, yesterday was a gift to the committee. The bracket is pretty much set, no bid stealers left. I'd be curious to where they'd slot Temple if the Owls win today. Temple is 187 in the NET, which is about where St. Peter's sits (189). I'd guess Temple would be a 15, maybe 14 at best.

A-10 final should be fun. Duquesne beat VCU in Richmond last week but Max Shulga didn't play in that one. Shulga basically carried the Rams yesterday.

 

Burns had 7 or 8 assists last night plus a bunch of other really nice feeds.

And, yeah, when I looked him up on the State website and saw he was listed at 275, I laughed. At 6-9 with that build he’s 350, easy.

 

That’s the problem with playing a week before the big guys. Then again, they did get their title game on CBS. No chance for that this week.

 

As they should. Lucked out all year. Never very good.
So a team that finished the regular season on a run of 0-4 and 2-7 will make it and a team that won 8 straight midseason will be left out. The oddities that can develop in 20-game league schedule…

 

The most amazing thing about this State run is that the last of the 5 was the most lopsided.

 

Saw one of the zaniest games of my life Saturday. Finals of the JUCO Division III national women's tourney. Minnesota teams dominate this division historically so it wasn't surprising that two of them met in the title game. It's 53-49 for MN West over Rochester entering the fourth. Scorekeeper calls refs over. Fifteen minutes later...they've called down stat crew, committee members. They change the score to 52-50 for MN West. Which us MN West fans thought truly was wrong. We think somewhere along the way the scorekeeper messed up a FT, so MN West loses a point, Rochester gains one. Adding a fun element: The scorekeeper is the dad to the Rochester coach. Poor guy was having a hell of a time, thought they were going to have to go to the bullpen and call in a new guy to do the book.

So now it's like, of course this game will end up like one or two points and that fiasco will play a role. But Rochester entered the game with only six players and then...three fouled out, including a girl who had 25 points, shoved a player for her fourth foul and when an opposing player stumbled into her, shoved her. Technical, fifth foul. She gone. They were able to finish with four because they brought in a girl who tore up her knee a few days earlier but she could barely move. Also at one point a woman just wandered onto the court like Shooter in Hoosiers.

But it was a big crowd, lots of chippiness and feistiness between two rivals and finally my alma mater got their first national title so a fun day.

 

That’s funny.

 

Pitino will be must watch during the bracket reveal.