Sure, it’s easy to write about the NCAA tournament games … but what about the NIT and the CBI, or as we like to call them, “The Motor City Bowls of Basketball”? Where else are you going to get the hard hitting news you need on these trifflin’ tournaments? That’s right – we’re focusing our comeback post on these tournaments. Ballin’.
 
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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!

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Really?
 

AND ALSO, THESE GUYS …

Kickin’ Up a (Dust) Storm
Tulsa 73, Houston 69

Nothing says lovin’ like a semi-final matchup between two also-rans from a shitty shitty no-good conference. We’ll reserve judgment on the CBI until its championship series next week … that’s right, they’ll play best-of-3 for the title, because what America wants is three games between Tulsa and Bradley … but this can’t be the way that the organizers wanted it to start.

Meanwhile, the elimination of Houston and (sniff) Virginia means that yet another two solid mascots have been eliminated. (Not to mention the elimination of Sean Singletary, a talented UVA player who, by course of being signficantly better than his teammates, actually hurt the team more than he helped this season.) You know what that means – pictures of Wahoos and Cougars that bear no relation to the teams but make us chuckle:

cougar wahoo
Hott. As in, please don’t touch. Indeed, ’tis UVA’s specialty.