Friday Chicago Wrap-Up

You may (or may not) have noticed my presence missing here at OSM today. Fear not, I was actually busy at the games after waking my hung-over ass up early to get down to the United Center here in Chicago to catch the action. Here’s what I saw:

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

The Unpredictables

Every year there's a team that's wildly inconsistent all year and somehow manages to get its shit together come March and makes a run. Or the squad that heads into the Big Dance streaking and craps out unexpectedly the first weekend. These are the teams that make or break your bracket and bust your ass every year. To me, they're the hardest to predict. With that, I'll take a journey across the nation breaking down these candidates from each of the power conferences...

Atlantic Coast - Maryland

You could almost see most peoples eyes lighting up when talking about this team. The Terps came into the ACCs absolutely smoking, winners of 7 straight including doubling down on the Dookies and taking out the Tar Heels, before crapping the bed last night against Miami. There was almost a Fight Club-esque feel to this team in that everyone seems to like them, but everyone wanted them to stay a secret. Mission accomplished for me. I still like Maryland to do some major damage in the NCAAs and will be thrilled to see the bandwagon emptying after it crashed in Tampa.

Big East - Marquette

Marquette came into February as a big player at the top of the Big East. They have been nationally ranked all season and have been picked to go to the Final Four by multiple experts. But the Golden Eagles have struggled mightily as of late, going just 3-5 in their last 8. One of the reasons has been the cold shooting of star guard Dominic James, who is shooting a miserable 27.6% from the field since February while taking a good chunk of shots (12.7 per game over that stretch). He'll need to turn things around if Marquette wants to see past the first weekend.

Southeastern - Florida

This is more of a lifetime acheivement award because I've been dicked over by Billy Donovan too many times in March. Since the run to the title game as a 5-seed in 2000, the Gators had seen numerous disappointing first-weekend knock outs before winning the title last season. They've returned the nucleus of last year's squad and came into the season as favorites to repeat, but have fallen upon hard times as of late, losing to the likes of Vanderbuilt and LSU on the road. The Gators this season represent what the NCAAs have become - a tournament of unpredictability and parity. Can you say with confidence that any of the 1 or 2 seeds will make the trip to Atlanta? Do any of these teams really separate themselves from the rest of the pack?

Big Ten - Wisconsin

Is there a top-10 team people were talking about less as a contender to win the title? It seems people are discounting the Badgers as being one of the nation's elite. Many seemed to be talking of a trip to the Final Four, but I haven't heard much talk of winning it all. The recent injury (and uncertainty over the severity of the injury) to center Brian Butch only further clouds the picture. I forsee Wisconsin being a team a lot of people have circled for that popular early-round exit next week, but I like the make-up of the Badgers. They play very solid defense, have the star go-to scorer in the crunch time, have a strong senior point guard and will likely be playing in a favorable venue (Chicago) the first weekend - all things that tend to correlate positively with NCAA success. I expect the nation to be adding a chip to their shoulder soon, as well.

Big XII - Kansas

I'd like to stray away from the top-seeds in this discussion, but this one is inevitable. History is on their side as well, with recent first-round stumbles against the highly-underdogged Bucknell and Bradley teams of the past two tournaments. How good are the Jayhawks? It's a question I've been wondering for a while now. They've been absolutely killing teams recently, but it's been against their weak Big XII North competition. What's been concerning is that in their contests against the rest of the cream of the conference they've lost to Texas A&M (at home), lost to Texas Tech (on the road) and narrowly beat Texas (at home) behind a furious second-half rally. This team has world's of potential and wouldn't surprise me in the least if they cut down the nets in Atlanta, but some of their losses have been frightening.

Pacific-10 - Arizona

The computers absolutely love this team due to their strength of schedule, but the bottom line is Arizona has been a .500 team since the new year. One thing that's interesting is that the Cats took their last 5 road games in conference (very impressive), which isn't pointed out much due to the home sweep it took at the hands of the So. Cal schools. It's another team loaded with talented McD's All-Americans that can kill you in a multitude of ways of the offensive end of the floor. They tend to stuggle defensively, but will be a glam pick next week because of their name recognition and their conference affiliation and the perceived strength of that conference.

-- RK