CONFERENCE TOURNEY POST-MORTEM
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.
1
chris says:
UGA beat Ole Miss, UK, Miss. St. and Arkansas, the last 3 of which all made it to the Big Dance. I was impressed. Clemson’s run was great and all, but fuck man, Georgia did just about the impossible.
March 18th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
2
Dids says:
Kyle Weaver and Derek Low want to fight you
March 19th, 2008 at 9:04 am
3
Winfield says:
Yea Uga did something great, don’t get me wrong. But Pittsburgh had to do the same thing. 4 wins in 4 days. They are the better team but had to go through stiffer competition.
Just throwin’ it out there.
March 19th, 2008 at 9:31 am
4
now_a_hoo says:
I don’t think anyone’s disputing that Pitt deserves a higher seed, or that UGA didn’t accomplish something special. But should UK still have gotten in? I think that’s the far more interesting question.
March 19th, 2008 at 10:52 am
5
Kanu says:
If you want to check your brackets against historical norms as far as upsets that you picked during each round of the tournament, here’s a handy guide:
http://dodgyatbest.blogspot.com/2008/03/using-past-to-submit-sensical-bracket.html
Best of luck in your pools.
March 19th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
6
eirishis says:
#4 – my point exactly. While they played well down the stretch, I think picking UK over Ill. State, VCU, UMass, or even tOSU given what happened in the SEC tourney was dodgy.
March 19th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
7
Michael says:
#4 & #6:
Valid question, no doubt.
Bottom line is this, and it’s the same with football, UK brings an exponentially higher number of fans and dollars where ever they play vs. the teams eirishis listed, save tOSU. And for that reason, they will always be selected if they have a winning overall record and at least a decent conference record by SEC standards. Same goes for Duke, UNC, UCLA, et al.
March 19th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
8
The Ghost of Tyus Edney says:
Pitt was great, so was Clemson… but Georgia won TWO GAMES in one day. Not sure how anyone trumps that.
March 19th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
9
WWH Mustaine says:
“No one can convince us that UK shouldn
March 19th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
10
WWH Mustaine says:
“No one can convince us that UK shouldn’t have lost their bid to UGA.”
Seriously? A team goes 12-4 in the SEC, has to deal with more injuries than you see in the average physical therapist’s office, and wins 11 out of its last 13 games, and you think it should be left out of the Tournament because of an OT loss (on a fluke shot and a missed call, no less) to a team it had already beaten twice before? After a fucking TORNADO???
Wow.
Congratulations. You just redefined the word “wrong.”
March 19th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
11
now_a_hoo says:
Well, I’m sure that losing to UGA is such a fashion more than makes up for the Gardner-Webb and UAB losses.
March 20th, 2008 at 10:44 am
12
WWH Mustaine says:
^ Wrong. Empirically.
Nice effort, though!
March 20th, 2008 at 4:13 pm