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!

Odd story coming out of Houston and Detroit today - the NCAA, in an attempt to improve sight lines and thus increase the number of available seats at Reliant Stadium and Ford Field this weekend, has put the courts on 27-inch platforms atop the actual floor. We like where the NCAA is going with this - and someone mark that down, because that’s a statement that doesn’t come out of our mouths very often - since it presents the possibility of getting more people into the games, which leads to louder crowds, which is good for sports.

But the execution seems all wrong. Instead of raising the entire floor onto a platform, they only raised the court and a five-foot cushion on each sideline. Which seems, I dunno, unsafe. Players realize this too, and have already said they don’t plan to hustle after balls heading out of bounds. To top it all off, because they didn’t lift it enough to make every seat in the stadiums a good one, they still need to curtain off the would-be end zones. Which means that, instead of having a curtain on the side of the court as the last thirty years, they have curtains behind the backboards … creating odd shadows on the backboards that screw up players’ depth perception. So, in an attempt to sell more seats, the NCAA ended up with less safe, less energetic, and less skilled basketball. Sounds right to us!

DO WE HAVE TO?

OK, Fine, We Admit it …

… we can’t see Carolina losing. Unlike some teams … we’re looking at you, UCLA … the Tarheels haven’t take a game off in two months. Last night’s win over Wazzu was a perfect example of their stengths - solid team defense and the ability to score from anywhere on the floor with multiple players with range and penetration ability. To top it all off, they have an All-American who is a legitimate threat to commit aggravated assault at any given moment. We hate them, we hate them, we hate them … and they are our pick to win the whole thing at this point. Not because they are the #1 overall seed, but because they are playing that much better than everyone else.