Early game:
The early game featured UNLV and Georgia Tech with the Rebs coming out on top. UNLV was able to hold down Tech’s fantastic freshman duo of Crittenton and Young to minimal damage and survive and advance in a tight game at the end. The Rebels did a phenomenal job on the glass, particularly on the offensive end, something I felt like could give Wisconsin (minus Brian Butch) fits in round two. Despite winning, UNLV shot relatively poorly on many open looks. I really feel like the Rebels have a very good shot at knocking off the reeling Badgers on Sunday.
Second Set:
It really is amazing how much America loves the Cinderella story. A couple of threes and a 10-0 lead and it was astounding how quickly the United Center crowd was rallying behind the 15th-seeded Islanders. It wasn’t even so much that Texas A&M-Corpus Christi was outplaying Wisconsin. I thought Corpus Christi’s up-and-down pace took Wisconsin out of their comfort zone in the first half (something that disappeared as time went on) and the flipping between the man and zone defenses kept Wisconsin on their heels. The bottom line, though, was the Badgers were ice cold from the field. They were missing wide open jumpers left and right. Fortunately, for them, Kammron Taylor (played by Chris Rock) got his head out of his ass and figured out he didn’t want this to be his last college game. Alando Tucker had a relatively quiet (but very solid) game and Corpus Christi’s 7-footer Chris Daniels ate up the short-handed Badgers down low.
Third Set:
Instead of watching Kansas run train on Niagara, my buddy Rage and I used the break in between games to get some seats at the bar for the Illinois-Virginia Tech game. If you haven’t seen much of Illinois this season, this game was their season in a nutshell. I began mentally preparing to write in this post that the Illini played their most complete game of the season. They controlled the pace, held Dowdell and Washington completely in check and dominated the glass. The offense looked competent for once and their role players (Meacham, Arnold and Brock) played phenomenally solid. Then… shit hit the fan. The Illini completely crapped the bed. Credit the Hokies for putting on the press and converting their chances, but Illinois seemed to take the foot off the pedal and started playing not to lose. They turned the ball over nearly every possession and missed their shots and free throws. I’m sure Illiniboard will have some sort of conspiracy theory with the refs brewing, citing the no-call on Warren Carter with under a minute left (a horrendous no-call, by the way), but the fact is Illinois completely blew the game and didn’t execute at all the last 8 or so minutes. Ugggh – terrible times. Another blown halftime lead, another heartbreaker. This was just an Illini team that couldn’t stretch leads (due to their horrific offense) and couldn’t close games due to their lack of a go-to scorer and inability to convert free throws. That right there is a terrible combo.
Nightcap:
I was pretty mentally cashed out by this point, unfortunately. Randolph Morris was a beast. Scottie Reynolds was a chucker. I did run into Coach Jay Wright at the end of the game. He wanted me to pass along to the OSM readers that he felt like he dressed phenomenally sexy on the sidelines tonight, once again. Kansas-Kentucky should be a spectacle at the UC on Sunday. I hope it’s warm out so that the Wildcat faithful can bust out their jorts (jean shorts) for the game. They probably lowered the average tooth count in the stands by a good 1-2 teeth today. Oh, stereotypes!
Random Thoughts:
- The Big Ten was 5-1 in round 1. Texas almost choked. If only Reggie Theus had played Julie Connor more. She’s lethal from 3. Suck a dick, Bill Simmons.
- You can’t put a price on walking back to the stadium for the 4th game and walking by a greyhound bus filled with depressed, face-painted Niagara fans. It was like they came all this way and expected to win. Good scene.
- Funniest conversation of the first round: Narrowly beating out the hour-long convo I had with a few girls over which NCAA mascot (non-animal like Colorado’s buffalo or Georgia’s bulldog) would be the creepiest to fuck in full costume, was this gem. So we have a buddy that knows very little about sports that spent the Thursday with us. Very good looking dude, has absolutely no game whatsoever. None, zero, zilch. He and Rage (Duke fan) head to the bar to catch the Duke game last night because it wasn’t on regional coverage (Michigan State-Marquette). We met them out for the last set. Pretty empty scene, but they were sitting a few seats down from a set of girls. Shortly after the Idong Ibok injury (awesome stuff there), the girls gets into a convo with our buddy, naturally over what is going on.
Girl: “So who do you got in your Final Four?”
Buddy: “Uhhhh… uhhh… UNC… uhhh… Rage, who do you got in your Final Four?”
Terrible. How do you not fill out a bracket? How can you not even bullshit yourself into a Final Four? Moreover, how do you completely blow it with a girl that is willing to talk sports and is at a bar to watch sports. This kid is going to hear about this from me tomorrow
- The NCAA pisses me off. Ways they could improve the viewing experience at the venue:
(1) Show the other games! If not at halftime or between sets on the jumbotron, then at least put the other games on in the concourse. Listen, I’m paying $240 for 6 games, show me the other games when you get a chance.
(2) Along the same token, show the days’ highlights. All day long we saw 1 highlight over and over, that being the highlights of the 2006 national title game. Gee, I wonder who won that one?
(3) Have a sense of humor. They did put some classic NCAA moments up on the jumbotron during TV timeouts. You know that key Kentucky run that caused Villanova to call a timeout and got the UK faithful riled up? All I’m asking for here is ’92 Laettner on the big screen. You played it earlier, but now would be perfect.
(4) Serve beer. I don’t think I need to expand upon this.
- In case you are wondering, I hit 24/32 games. Since there were virtually no upsets (none of the top-5 seeds went down) I assume everyone's brackets are fine and that everyone is still in the game. I'm still rocking 15/16 Sweet 16s (missed Arkansas). I fully expect the brackets to break wide open in the next two rounds. It's bound to happen.
-- RK
3 comments:
So... you're not a fan of beastiality???
Ok, this is gonna be pretty rambling and incoherent, but...
Kasko, I'm so pissed, man. We talked about how the Illini shat the bed all year; well, in my wildest dreams, I couldn't imagine blowing a game like that. My buddy was talking about how SIU would be a vey winnable game... and then they CHOKED. FUCK.
A couple of observations about the game and the program...
1) As you said, the ultimate microcosm of the season. Turnovers, blown leads, playing not to lose, poor free throw shooting, this game had it all.
2) I don't want to hear a goddamn word about the refs. Yeah, they missed the Carter call, but that was a well-called game, with the refs even giving us some very questionable breaks (the T on Greenberg, although it ended up giving Va. Tech getting some more calls, and the intentional foul).
3) I have to address the coaching. This is now a trend. We saw it in the PSU game last year. We saw it in the tourney against UW last year. We saw it all year, and then we saw it in this game. He has them playing not to lose, rather than to win. Also, it's like they had no idea what to do when Va. Tech brought the press. Yeah, they broke it most of the time, but then they
a) Made no attempt to score, even though they often had numbers, choosing to go into their regular routine of using up 32 seconds of the shot clock, only to have the worst shooter (Frazier) throw up a three, and
b) panicked a couple of times (especially Warren), and turned it over a bunch.
c) The defensive breakdowns are also becoming the norm at the end of games.
4) FREE THROWS. THEY'RE FREE.
5) If Bruce isn't gonna be a masterful coach (and make no mistake about it - he's not), he better start bringing in some talent to make up for it. I like our '07 class, and from what I've read, McCamey should be solid, and I think Watkins is going to be a sleeper. But next year doesn't promise to get any better. We lose 2 of our best players, and replace them with freshmen. Add to that a tougher schedule, in an improving Big Ten (BTW, suck a dick, Big Ten haters), and I doubt we make the tourney next year. We had a schedule this year that was masterfully put together, ending up giving us inflated computer numbers, IMO.
Anyway, I haven't felt this bad about a game since the Bartman game.
Edog,
Overall, I'm not that pissed over the game. It was the season in a nutshell. I was far more upset by the UNC loss in '05 (so numb that I turned down hooking up) and the season-ender to UW in '06.
For me, Bruce gets a pass. You're a coach and you can only do so much. The players need to make the plays (which they did not) and the shots (which they did not... especially something as stupid as free throws). The two things that baffle me the most that people knocked on Weber this game were the following:
(1) "No response to the Va Tech press" - Illinois had no problems breaking the Hokie pressure. It was later in the half-court set that they turned it over. Bruce didn't have to make a counter-move for the press because it wasn't causing the turnovers and the breakdowns
(2) "How can they shoot free throws so poorly?" I played years and years of organized basketball and shot free throws over and over. I guarantee Weber had them shooting FTs in multiple ways every practice of every year. Every coach in the world does.
To be clear, I wasn't blaming Weber at all for the free throw shooting woes, but IMO there is no question he has the team playing not to lose, and it's reflected in many results over the past 2 years, especially this year, by the way they lose games - PSU last year, UW in the tourney last year, MSU, Wisconsin, Maryland, IU, Iowa, and Va. Tech just off the top of my head. Some of those were bad chokes of leads in the last couple of minutes (again, I don't think Dee would be choking on his own - some of it is attributed to the players, some to the coaching), and some of them are just close games where we had some sort of lead and couldn't finsih it off. But it's a very disturbing trend. We won only a couple of tight games all year - Bradley, Miami (Oh), and Indiana in the BTT. And with much more talent last year, we saw a couple of similar collapses.
Specific to this game: as I said, they often had numbers after beating the press, and instead of trying to get a quick score and putting the game out of reach, they backed it out, knowing full well that every game we do this, the possessions end with Chester Frazier chucking a 26 footer with 3 seconds on the shot clock, or trying to create his own shot. This is unexcusable, especially when you consider we were turning it over 1/2 the time we were just trying to get into half-court sets, anyway. That is an adjustment I would've made, but it seems they're instructed, to use IB lingo, to "take the air out of the ball." A score or two more might've been the dagger; instead, I think they scored maybe 4 points the last 10 minutes.
To conclude, I normally wouldn't place any blame on a coach for this loss. The problem, though, is the way we lose these games is absolutely a trend predating this year's team, so I feel it's fitting to give him a fair share of the blame.
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