Running 2023-24 NCAA Basketball Thread

As I often said to YankeeFan: Who ya talking to, man? There’s no camera on you. This isn’t a commercial for you running in your congressional district. Talk like a human.

I’ve long supported chocolate chip cookies and I won’t back down on that.

 

Years ago, I was on the stat crew of a women's basketball program that wasn't very good. During the national anthem, I would count the people in the building - including those on the court, stat crew and media - and sometimes I would get to triple figures. Not often, however.

 

To be clear, I think engagement with all programs other than the top five percent is overstated. TV numbers are skewed, social media numbers are conflated. (The MAC program I follow — which has made a Sweet 16 this century and won a game in the tournament in the last five years — gets 90 views for the coach’s postgame presser on Youtube.) I just don’t think middle-aged men shitting on women’s basketball at the height of its popularity is an especially bold or enlightened take. It’s the airline food of sports joke. I just ask it be less lazy, a dismissal cooked up in 1992 and never revisited or reconsidered.

 

It’s a cheap joke, but if you applied it to, say, Arkansas-Texas A&M on a Thursday in February it probably would have landed. For the SEC tournament final between the last two national champions? You don’t have to follow the sport at all to know that’s going to do a big number. Acting like the audience is in the dozens just makes somebody sound like an out of touch fool.

 

Look, all the back-handed insults in the world are not going to change anything. Just agree to disagree.

 

No. We’re going to see if less than 1,000 people watched LSU women’s basketball during a conference tournament. I’ll keep you posted.

 

Not the playing field. You said BTN lacrosse broadcasts had numbers in the hundreds. That's what you were called on. Get it right.

And don't fucking tell me to talk like a human. I'm not going to let you tag me as a hater of women's sports. I have the resume to back that up.

 

Now you're just being a jerk. But please, go on.

 

Hermes and his woke liberal agenda don’t want you to make jokes about Angel Reese.

 

Especially when it’s the same matchup that drew 1.56 million a few weeks ago and beat Celtics-Heat.

 

When a January league game on an otherwise nondescript Monday night outdraws the Celtics and Heat (not like we are talking Hornets-Jazz), it is past comparisons to college wrestling or lacrosse. And Chef's comments were idiotic. That isn't even Caitlin Clark. She blows away NBA numbers.

To paraphrase The Wolf in Pulp Fiction: "Its 2024, boys. Move out of the sticks."