We’re not quite ready to talk about the chalk-tastic weekend just yet. We need something to cleanse our palate with something far more soothing - something from a more simple time, a more hopeful time - something from, say, late Friday night:

Memories of Cinderella and jokes of forcible rear entry soothe the pain of chalk. (HT: Kleph.)

That’s more like it.

As you all know, Davidson missed their chance for the game-winning, lead-story-writing, script-already-in-development shot that would have led every tournament broadcast for the next twenty years because Stephan Curry couldn’t get an open look. Some people are crediting Kansas’ defense on the play - and there can be no doubt that in those last sixteen seconds, the Jayhawks clamped down impressively. Though we do not come to kick those that are down, we disagree.The scripted play (with Curry asked to bring the ball up and find his own shot) was macho but immature in design. Curry has thrived when working with teammates on ball screens and motion plays; on the most important play of the season, sending him up the court to go mano-a-cinque-mano with the Jayhawks was insane.

Though we of course mourn the loss of our last upstart in the tournament, we have a tough time feeling too terrible for Davidson. They had a great season by any standard, a phenomenal season by SoCon standards, and [insert clichéd dig at pampered lifestyle of students at a school where they do your laundry for you here].

However, anyone who has ever played on an underdog team that made it farther than it should have - and back when we could be confused with an athlete, we were on such a team - knows that when you do lose, the hurt is much deeper than it would have been earlier. Davidson’s loss mattered more yesterday because, unlike in any of the previous rounds, they actually had something to lose. While the loss eats at them today, the mere fact that a small liberal arts school from the SoCon made it to that level should be lauded and remembered for years to come.

As for the other three games? UCLA, suddenly awakened from its slumber through the first three rounds (and, really, the last three months), remembered that it had the defenders to shut down Xavier’s perimeter game and a big man who could bully them down low. Memphis, playing with a chip on their shoulder the size of … well, Texas … , shut down D.J. Augustin and forced the Longhorns to (unsuccessfully) rely on other scorers. And UNC continued to play the best ball of the tournament, taking the lead over Louisville five minutes into the game then holding it with a vise grip.

And thus, we are “treated” to the first Final Four with all four #1 seeds. We’ll have more thoughts on this later this afternoon.

There was not a single thing to dislike about this game. A nip and tuck first half that featured slick play and hard defense. The underdog pulling away while the favorites watched in horror and protested in waste. A mid-major star who is about one win away from crossing from underhyped to overhyped. And the full result - Davidson 73, Wisconsin 56, and the little #10 seed that could is one win away from wiping George Mason off the maps.

On the flip side, Wisconsin … and Big Ten basketball by extension (given Michigan State’s paltry performance) … got knocked on its ass, and we couldn’t be happier. Wisc plays a style of basketball that would better be described as “football”, since they rely almost entirely on post play, penetration, and beating the ever loving bejesus out of each and every opponent. Elbows, butt rams, subtle shoves, blatent shoves - this is Big Ten basketball, and it’s thoroughly unfun to watch. Unfortunately, it has also been successful in tournaments past - in fact, Davidson’s win was the final blow struck to our brackets, since we had Wisconsin in the Final Four. We’ll gladly forfeit our measly entry fee to see a fun team like Davidson advance instead.

We know that three other games happened tonight - all were, for the most part, boring blowouts and unworthy to report. (Stanford tried to keep it close with UT, but apparently, putting together a program with 1/6 the money of Texas means you get the Lopez twins, but no discernable offense.) So we head to bed tonight with visions of another double digit seed making the dance … and, since they are playing a Bill Self coached team, you have to like their chances, right?

What? All the good names that sound like “blog” have been taken already.

Some people are saying O.J. Mayo plans on declaring for the NBA draft. We disagree. We think he plans on eating a delicious BLT, washing it down with a frosty cold glass of juice, then showing up at the Clippers shoot-around this afternoon. We’re dead serious. We have no beef with Mayo, and in fact think he may be onto something with his “Fuck it, if it’s all about image anyway, I’m gonna control mine instead of letting the NCAA do it for me” attitude. And we think he’s smooth enough that he might just convince a catatonic Mike Dunleavy that he’s already on the team. (HT: Bryan)

Bruins Nation gets its mancrush on. We enjoy the way Kevin Love plays, but … honestly, this post made us feel a little awkward. That said, Love is like the anti-Hansbrough in the Machiavellian world of big men - while Pyscho T leads his charges with the ever-present threat of cannibalism, Kevin Love effectively walks the streets of the people handing out coinage, candy, and offensive rebounds.

Whelliston provides the stats on the money differences between the Sweet 16 teams this year. Most of the information isn’t terribly surprising or newsworthy, unless you are the type who is still surprised to learn that the Wisconsin athletic department budget could fund the entire SoCon. The one that shocked us, though - Texas spends over six times as much on its college basketball program as Stanford does.

Orange and Blue Hue states the obvious, but with some barebone facts - more people watch the first weekend when there are more upsets. We’re curious what the effect for the second weekend is - our hunch is that fans return to normal and want chalk, but we could be wrong.

Finally, gotta give Gate 21 some credit for putting lipstick on the pig today after their Vols got depantsed by Louisville. We’re not sure whether we are jealous of their good attitude, or scornful of their low expectations. We’re leaning towards the latter, if only because last weekend’s losses still hurt.

THE GAME EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT

Atlantic 10 Claims Victory; Usage of Name “Big East”
Xavier 79, West Virginia 75 (OT)

This was the game of the night, but it wasn’t terribly fun to watch. Each team spent one half on fire at both ends of the court, and each team spent one half flailing about like a two-year-old in the ball room at Chuck E. Cheese. (We like this concept - five enormous gentleman crammed into a clown car-esque space, throwing balls wildly at one another while clumsily shuffling around and giggling in delirium.)

We talked about this more in our liveblog last night, but Xavier was able to win down the stretch entirely thanks to their long-range shooting abilities (11 of 19 overall, 3 of 3 in OT) and in spite of their free throw shooting abilities (12 of 21 overall, 2 of 6 in OT). This isn’t a good recipe for Saturday, when UCLA and their “we’re the best team when we feel like it” squad come to town.

TWO OTHER STORYLINES, JUST FOR KICKS

Even Better Than Free Laundry

So, the administration of Davidson picked up the tab for any student who wanted to travel to Detroit for their game against Wisconsin tonight. And, while we rarely recommend going to Detwaah for any reason, we have spent many nights in Davidson, N.C. Wildcat faithful, we hope all of your asses are on these buses just for the excitement of a venue change. (Seriously, guys, don’t worry - we promise that if you leave a note to UPS on your whiteboard, they’ll leave your latest J.Crew shipment at your door and you can rock your new chinos on Monday.)

Basketball: Now With Risk of Crippling Injury!

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Sure, it’s not quite the same as the first weekend. But the 2nd weekend of the tournament is where even more drama happens, in many respects - can Davidson actually pull a Mason? Which #1 seed will bite the dust in a most unsavory fashion? And when will it get warm enough for girls to wear skirts and flipflops? (Not that we’re watching, honey.) For these reasons and more, we humbly log in to our MMOD account and bring you our live thoughts as the games progress.

7:10: Let’s get this started. The first pair of games: (7) West Virginia vs. (3) Xavier in the West, and (1) UNC vs. (4) Washington St. in the East. The West game tips off now, with the East game starting in about 20 minutes.

(more…)

So, we get back in the saddle for real tonight by doing what we wanted to do all last weekend - liveblogging the games. We’ll be posing all night, and hope you’ll join us. In the meantime, we’re enjoying Bobby Knight’s Pepto-tastic v-neck on, of all things, Baseball Tonight. Dear tWWL: corporate synergy is annoying, but nonsensical corporate synergy is amusing. Keep it coming.

Anyway - for your amusement, belittlement, scorn, and gambling, we present our just-as-informed-as-yours-but-we’ll-call-them-expert-because-we’re-writing-this-damn-post predictions for tonight’s games:

It’s just a little hobby, we’ve only dabbled … but Aunt Lou says hello.

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Hooray mediocre post-season play!

THE GAME EVERYONE NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT

Same Bad Time, Same Bad Channel
Ohio State 74, Dayton 63 (West)

We have to admit - Ohio basketball fans, we’re impressed. According to reports, Value City Arena in Columbus (and, really, is there any better city to host Value City Arena than Columbus?) was filled to capacity last night. Pretty damn good for a surprisingly good NIT Quarterfinal matchup between two schools from Central Ohio.

But that last sentence holds the key to the NIT - we’re pretty sure that we’re the only person we know who watched a nanosecond of this game. (And, in the interest of full disclosure, we have family in Central Ohio.) In the interest of saving on team travel costs and generating ticket interest, the lower tier post-season tournaments have no choice but to encourage regional matchups (though this one, of course, wasn’t planned.) But regional matchups have regional appeal, and regional appeal means no big advertising dollars, so it should surprise no one that the NIT had to be taken over by the NCAA to remain financially stable.

Meanwhile, a fun storyline that has been picked up already - with tOSU and Florida on opposite sides of the NIT Final Four (with tOSU playing Ole Miss - thanks for beating VPI, Rebs - and UF playing UMass), we could be treated to a rematch of last year’s championship game. I’ll be just like last year! Noah! Oden! Horford! Conley! Brewer! It’s the NCAA championship game on CBS The Deuce!

(more…)

We’re fully aware that it was college basketball’s biggest weekend. We watched as much of it as we could - we’re just kind of in the middle of some stuff. Not “ugly divorce” level stuff, just “haven’t slept more than three hours a night in the last week because work has taken over at the worst possible time” stuff. So, trust us - as badly as you want more posts, we want to be writing them. (Or, maybe you just want to complain for more posts. We don’t always understand.) Then again, I suppose we could have pulled a Brian Cook and pretended our heads were buried in the sand for a couple of days thanks to the easter eggs laid by the Devils and Hoyas.

Anyway - in the meantime, a bit of sorta kinda news for you: the NCAA sent out a release late Sunday to clarify that Texas A&M only lost to UCLA by two, not four as originally reported. Considering the game time line was about 10.5 points, not even gamblers care about this news. But don’t let that stop the Aggies, who will go their graves thinking that UCLA got away with a foul in the closing seconds. (They are right, but let’s not encourage them.)

When asked for comment about the loss and, ya know, end of their team’s season, A&M students responded the only way they know how:

(HT: Dave.)

We would say we’re sorry, but …

THE GAME EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT

Please make the room stop spinning
#2 Duke 71, #15 Belmont 70 (West)

[clears throat] Excuse us for just a moment. [walks into hallway, curses, destroys furniture, punches wall, kicks dog, returns] OK, much better.

Now, imagine what that would have been like had Duke lost. We didn’t see the game (poorly timed obligations this week have me working very, very late each night away from a computer), and that’s probably for the best. By all regards, Duke didn’t play poorly - just at a pedestrian pace. Meanwhile, Belmont played like a team that wasn’t afraid of Duke (and needn’t be, because it’s a game after all) and knew it needed to play the game of its life (and went out and did just that). A small part of us is disappointed the Bruins didn’t pull of the upset. A very small part.

Post-game, the MSM seemed to trip over themselves in a race to decide who could write the most poignant “But what does this MEAN for Duke???” piece. Ugh. These are the times when it is useful that these folks are paid to write articles that create emotional reactions (and thus forwards and page views), not necessarily articles that make a lick of damn sense. So, to them I say - Belmont played a great game, Duke played a ‘meh’ game, Duke barely won. This happens to some team in the tournament every g*ddamn year. Don’t oversell it just because it’s Duke.

TWO OTHER STORYLINES JUST FOR KICKS

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We hesitate to call this a “liveblog”, since that seems to be all the rage and we’re tragically unhip. But we’re all watching these games, we’re all eatin’ some snacks and drinkin’ some drank, and we all have opinions. So let this post (and those that follow) be your virtual couch, and let the comment board be your virtual way to tell us that we’re idiots. We wouldn’t want it any other way. Oh, and don’t forget your old friend March Madness on Demand - we’re relying on it to get us through the one class we’re thinking about going to today.

Just Alt-Tab through, and you’ll be fine.

7:00 - Finally, here is the lineup with evening games, in order of scheduled tip-off:

MIDWEST: (6) USC vs. (11) Kansas State (in Omaha)
WEST: (2) Duke vs. (15) Belmont (in Washington, D.C.)
EAST: (4) Washington State vs. (13) Winthrop (in Denver)
WEST: (8) Brigham Young vs. (9) Texas A&M (in Anaheim)
MIDWEST: (3) Wisconsin vs. (14) Cal-State Fullerton (in Omaha)
WEST: (7) West Virginia vs. (10) Arizona (in Washington, D.C.)
EAST: (5) Notre Dame vs. (12) George Mason (in Denver)
WEST: (1) UCLA vs. (16) Mississippi Valley State (in Anaheim)

Our posting will be non-existent from this point on, since we kind of have a show to run. But we hope those of you watching at home will keep the updates coming - that’s what the comments are for. We’ll catch you at the end of the night’s games, and we’ll be recapping the evening games tomorrow morning.

We hesitate to call this a “liveblog”, since that seems to be all the rage and we’re tragically unhip. But we’re all watching these games, we’re all eatin’ some snacks and drinkin’ some drank, and we all have opinions. So let this post (and those that follow) be your virtual coach, and let the comment board be your virtual way to tell us that we’re idiots. We wouldn’t want it any other way. Oh, and don’t forget your old friend March Madness on Demand - we’re relying on it to get us through the one class we’re thinking about going to today.

Just Alt-Tab through, and you’ll be fine.

2:40 - And now, for the late afternoon games:

SOUTH: (6) Marquette vs. (11) Kentucky
SOUTH: (4) Pittsburgh vs. (13) Oral Roberts
WEST: (6) Purdue vs. (11) Baylor
MIDWEST: (8) UNLV vs. (9) Kent State

As a warning, there will be a gap in this blog - I forgot two things: my computer is dying, and I have a softball game at 3:30. So we’ll all float on anyway …

(more…)

We hesitate to call this a “liveblog”, since that seems to be all the rage and we’re tragically unhip. But we’re all watching these games, we’re all eatin’ some snacks and drinkin’ some drank, and we all have opinions. So let this post (and those that follow) be your virtual coach, and let the comment board be your virtual way to tell us that we’re idiots. We wouldn’t want it any other way. Oh, and don’t forget your old friend March Madness on Demand - we’re relying on it to get us through the one class we’re thinking about going to today.

Just Alt-Tab through, and you’ll be fine.

12:15 - Let’s get this started - today’s early games:

MIDWEST: (1) Kansas vs. (16) Portland State
SOUTH: (5) Michigan State vs. (12) Temple
WEST: (3) Xavier vs. (14) Geogia
(more…)

To help us prepare for the upcoming tournament weekend, we’re borrowing a tradition from the mothership. Here are our buys and sells for each of the regions for this weekend’s games.

EAST REGION

Buys

Butler - We were at work on Sunday night, so when we let out a Sheila Broflovski-esque “What what what???” when we saw the Bulldogs as a #7 seed, it scared a good number of people. Then we reviewed their schedule, and we understood why - their most impressive non-conference road win is a tossup between Virginia Tech and Southern Illinois. Toss that in with the fact that they are playing another talent mid-major (South Alabama) in essentially a road game (Birmingham), and this should be a loser. But the Bulldogs have one thing that you can’t buy in the tournament, and that’s defense. They held opponents under 60 points in more than half their games this year, and nine times under 50 points. Also, their three losses are by a total of twelve points. The old adage in betting is “don’t fall for the low hanging fruit”, and I think that taking South Alabama (or, for that matter, the unfortunately-placed #2 seed Tennessee) is a little too good to be true; RPI and schedule be damned, Butler isn’t a #7 seed. Bulldogs in my Sweet 16.

Sells

Wazzu - We aren’t in the business of muckraking around here … oh, wait, that’s EXACTLY what we’re in the business of. (Sorry.) Tony Bennett is either the next coming of John Wooden, or he found a killer outline for “Beating NCAA Recruiting Rules 101″, because we have no explanation for how he’s winning in Pullman. Regardless, his team seemed to lose steam as the year went on. Yes, all of their losses were in the Pac-10 - and yes, early in the year, they beat a couple of tournament teams soundly. But we’ve watched these guys, and they seem to be held together with duct tape and shoe polish. Enter Winthrop, a regular tournament participant with a win last year under their belts. We smell an upset.

SOUTH REGION

Buys

Pittsburgh - We’re already on the record as fearing Pitt, but let’s run through the numbers - undefeated until Christmas, including a win over Duke at MSG (known in Devil circles as “Cameron North”). Ravaged by injuries, they finished the regular season 11-9 with both tough losses (by 18 at Marquette) and plucky wins (by 9 over Georgetown). For the most part, they are healthy and playing together again … and showed off by winning the Big East. All this plus a favorable bracket has us thinking they will face Memphis next week. We can’t tell, however, whether we should be nervous or worried that we agree with Bob Knight about Pitt.

Sells

Miami (FL) - ACC bias w000000t! Um … yeah, about that … Miami, we’d like to congratulate you on your invitation to the tournament. Would you have made it, with the exact same squad, if you were in Conference USA instead of the ACC? Not a chance in the world. So enjoy the spotlight and the check, and kindly let St. Mary’s face off against Texas.

MIDWEST REGION

Buys

Clemson - OK, so maybe there is some ACC bias going on here. But as we wrote yesterday, Clemson has a quality squad that has both won and lost very close and tough games against superior competition this year, and has generally owned lesser competition minus a few hiccups. The first round shouldn’t pose much problem for them, but we also think they match up well against Vandy in the second round. As we’ve said before - someone must stop the monster that is Shan Foster, and if it’s not Clemson, don’t think for a second that it will be Kansas.

Sells

USC - We want to believe in Tim Floyd’s squad. (We’re really not sure why - in football season, we hate the sons of Troy with a white-hot heat and wish plagues upon Los Angeles and all of Pete Carroll’s beautiful angels.) We do. We’ve come around on O.J. Mayo and think he might actually be aight. But this team is streaky like taco night boxers, and they are playing against the best player in the country. Even with K-State’s pupu platter on the floor beside Beasley, we like the Wildcats.

WEST REGION

Buys

Duke - You know why? Because we said so. Risky bet? More than you might think - especially if West Virginia, another lanky, defense-oriented, long-shooting team gets to face them on Saturday. But dammit, we’re fans, and we’re gonna pimp our team this weekend because, barring UCLA getting lost on their way to the team buses, we’re pretty sure we won’t be able to do it next weekend.

Sells

Purdue - This was a tough pick for us, because we pretty much see chalk in this region. But of all the “high” seeds, Purdue looks to us to be the most vulnerable. No consistent scoring option, no impressive true road wins out of the Big Ten, and their opponent is an emotionally charged Baylor team. Sure, Baylor has a “just happy to be here” feel to them. But we’re on record as thinking that both of these conferences stink, so we’re going to hope that karma sides with the Bears.

Before we can move onto the games happening this week, it’s worthwhile to recap the action that happened over the weekend. No formal weekend digest format to this … just thoughts as they occur:

ACC: Clemson is the definition of a conference middle child - for many a year, they were the weak runt of conference basketball, unable to get over the hump against Big Brother, mocked and beaten up by their only-slightly-bigger-but-with-massive-chips-on-their-shoulders cousins. (Clemson has only made it to the Sweet Sixteen three times; every other “original 8″ ACC team has at least seven. Even Virginia.) And ever since FSU, daU, VPI, and BC joined the conference - well, no one seems to give poor ol’ Clemson any mind anymore. So (with no bias whatsoever) we cheered heartily for them against Carolina … and once again, Clemson came up short. One of these days, boys … one of these days. They got a #5 seed anyway, which feels right - the team is fast and solid, and may notch #4 into the school’s sacred scrolls.

Big East: Familiarity may breed contempt, but even taking that into consideration, we don’t know any Georgetown fans that expected the Hoyas to win against Pitt on Saturday night. Pitt is a dangerously good team, and Georgetown is a dangerously flawed team. Goddammit.

Big Ten: Don’t care. No, seriously. Don’t care. Wisconsin is the most boring “good” basketball team we’ve ever watched.

Big XII: See Big East. (Except the basketball is OK - its just that the results didn’t matter for anything, including seeding.)

Pac-10: In all seriousness, it was good to see the three good teams in the conference (UCLA, USC, and Stanford) play up to potential for a few days straight. (We don’t care what the committee says - Wazzu has no real talent, ‘Zona has talent but no teamwork, and U of O … has hippies?)

SEC: In journalism school, this would be called “burying the lead” - needless to say, this was the most interesting tournament of the weekend, what with tornadoes and upsets and the OIN-BE-LAVIN.

We loved the upstart Bulldogs winning the tournament. We love them doing it by winning three games in two days after the Georgia Dome got attacked by Tulsa. We really loved that they won it on the home floor of their in-state (if out-of-conference) rival. But we cannot STAND that they didn’t take a bid from one of the other middlin’ teams in the SEC. No one can convince us that UK shouldn’t have lost their bid to UGA.

So, how’s everyone doing? Had a good weekend? Got in a little yard work with spring starting? Good, good … oh, us? Eh, work. Busy as shit. You don’t want details … did we have any fun? Nah, not really.

Oh, THAT? OHHH … we had plenty of that. Sorry - we thought you meant sex-swing type fun.

In short … FUCK and YES. We have plenty to say about this weekend’s events and the games to come, and we’ll get to that in due time. We don’t want to turn into tWWW and repeat the same hype for four days straight, so we’re trying not to blow our wad in one day. So, patience, my friends - there will plenty to talk about before noon tipoff on Thursday. Let the excitement of Madness Week decant like a fine pint of Guinness on this most holy of holidays.

The Church can move the Feast to Saturday, but the Feis goes until tonight.