Category: NCAA Basketball

Bear Down

The University of Arizona — the university from which I received two degrees — has an inter-collegiate men’s basketball team. I used to attend their games in Bear Down1 Gymnasium and the team was mediocre, if exciting at times.

Arizona first became competitive under Coach Fred Snowden in the mid-1970s after moving to McKale Center2. And, for the past 31 seasons, beginning in 1984-1985, the Wildcats have been among the elite season-after-season under Coach Lute Olson and now Coach Sean Miller.

Every one of the past 31 seasons has been a winning season — an average of 25.2 wins (and just 8.2 losses) over the time. The Cats have been in 29 of the 31 NCAA Tournaments since it became March Madness 30 years ago — including the one that begins this week. In that run six #1 seeds and six #2s.

Bear Down, Arizona!

Bear Down

1 Bear Down is the official motto of The University of Arizona. In 1926 student body president, frat boy, baseball catcher and quarterback John “Button” Salmon was injured in car accident. Before dying Salmon told Coach McKale, “Tell them … tell the team to bear down.” [George Gipp told Coach Knute Rockne at Notre Dame “win just one for the Gipper” while dying from strep in 1920, but Rockne famously first used Gipp’s words in 1928.]

McKale

2 The McKale Center is named for James Fred “Pop” McKale, who was athletic director 1914-1957, basketball coach 1914-1921, football coach 1914-1930, and baseball coach 1915-1919 and 1922-1949. McKale died in 1967.

Brackets

There were eight “upsets” among the 32 games Thursday and Friday in the NCAA Tournament.

Among the 16 teams seeded 1 through 4, only Duke, a 3-seed, lost.

Three 5-seeds lost (Cincinnati, Oklahoma and VCU), two 6-seeds (Ohio State and Massachusetts), one 7 (New Mexico), and one 8, though that’s barely an upset (and wasn’t a surprise at all in this case, Pittsburgh over Colorado).

Did you know?

That the NCAA requires student-athletes to sign over all future licensing rights? And that those rights reportedly generate around $4 billion a year for the NCAA? And that the athletes whose likenesses and names are used earn nothing?

Some former athletes are suing, but it’s about time the NCAA was dismantled.

Best line of the day

“Looked at that way, players who are compensated beyond what the NCAA thinks is correct are simply finding a way to get paid for their work. This should surprise nobody. Time and again, the ‘amateur’ concept – a foul vestige of the British class system — has failed in this country because it is unsustainable in a nation that believes, even today, and even in Wisconsin, that hard work should return a fair wage. It was unsustainable in golf and in tennis. It was even unsustainable in the Olympics. It is unsustainable in college mega-sport as well. The only question is when the collapse will come, and how thorough the damage will be.”

Charles Pierce

Go read Pierce’s last paragraph, as good an assessment as you’ll read of college sports.

Longer reads

A moment-by-moment account of Butler’s win over Pittsburgh. It begins:

On Saturday night, Shelvin Mack became the 12th-leading scorer in Butler history, passing long-ago Bulldogs star Bobby Plump. Though Plump starred for Butler in the 1950s, he was already a legend before he arrived on campus. In 1954, he made the jumper that earned Milan High the Indiana state championship—the shot and the season that inspired Hoosiers.

The erosion of the Civil War consensus. It begins:

As someone who has studied the Civil War for all of my adult life, I never once contemplated that I would ever hear any American raise once more the issue of secession or the doctrine of nullification, or suggest that the 14th Amendment should be rescinded.

March Madness

Our printable PDF brackets don’t include extraneous information like team names and seedings. Instead, we provide you with the bare minimum of information you need to make hasty, uninformed predictions: images of 68 mascots and 68 sets of school colors. Do you think the hornet has what it takes to win it all, or do you side with one of the many wildcats? Is blue and orange or green and gold the most fearsome color combination?

Printable NCAA bracket 2011: Alternative March Madness brackets with mascots and team colors

Best line to put a little balance into it of the day

“Look, I hate to be the skunk at the garden party here. And, by all accounts, [John Wooden] was a wonderful man. But it should be noted before we’re all swept away in a tsunami of Hoosier piety that anyone arguing for John Wooden’s integrity based on the UCLA basketball program that he ran is simply arguing against the historical record …”.

Charles Pierce

UCLA basketball during its dynasty was about as bad as programs this side of John Calipari can get. Cars, cash, clothes, stereos, airline tickets, abortions — for 15 years. If Wooden didn’t know, it’s because he didn’t want to know.

More best lines

“Even Duke center Brian Zoubek thought it had a good chance. ‘My throat closed up, my heart dropped and it went in slow motion,’ he said.

“Duke forward Lance Thomas said, ‘The ball was in the air for three hours.’ ”

The Quad Blog

If you don’t know what the above is about, Butler’s Gordon Hayward launched a 55-foot shot as time ran out. It bounced off the backboard and rim, but did not go in. Had it done so, Butler would have won 62-61. As it was Duke won 61-59.

Best line of the day, so far

“Gregg Doyel of CBS Sports sums it up nicely: In its last five possessions, Duke mustered just one point, one air ball, and two turnovers.

” ‘That’s not winning a national championship,’ Doyel writes. ‘That’s finding a national championship.’ ”

The Daily Fix

“However, this is the second major championship in a row in American sports where there was a clear-cut underdog fan favorite (New Orleans Saints/Butler Bulldogs) and a squeaky-clean, stiff do-gooder looking to return to prominence (Indianapolis Colts/Duke Blue Devils). Maybe we just got spoiled with the Saints’ upset in the Super Bowl and started to think Butler could pull it out.”