OFFICIAL March Madness Thread

[juicy j 32]

Bad news for Duke fans.... Taylor King is transferring after just one season at Duke. Possible schools he is looking at include Villanova and Gonzaga...
LINK-http://duke.scout.com/2/742312.html

I think the people on their scout board are worried about another possible transfer too.....

Any thoughts Dre or other Duke fans?

EDIT-

At Yuku sending me back to page 90 after I made this post.... Thats 50pages behind this one

2nd EDIT- My bad... I didn't see the other post on the first page when I put it up in here.

 

[ThaxbyChamblis]

Originally Posted by Juicy J 32

Bad news for Duke fans.... Taylor King is transferring after just one season at Duke. Possible schools he is looking at include Villanova and Gonzaga...
LINK-http://duke.scout.com/2/742312.html

I think the people on their scout board are worried about another possible transfer too.....

Any thoughts Dre or other Duke fans?

EDIT-

At Yuku sending me back to page 90 after I made this post.... Thats 50 pages behind this one

Like I said in the other thread....

Originally Posted by dreClark

No %!@*...

I saw this coming....

Esp, when he wasn't getting burn @ the end of the year....

+*%$ that {()}.....Get your ##+ in shape, lose some weight, learn to play D and your ##+ would be in the game.

Good luck though

And as for the Nolan Smith rumor.....Lets hope that is untrue....

 

[craftsy21]

[h1]Talking with Final Four coaches[/h1]
posted: Monday, March 31, 2008 | Print Entry


Musings from the Final Four conference call Monday:

Roy Williams is hoping that he'll answer the Kansas questions for the last time. He understands, though, that he's going to get hit up on the subject again later in the week once he gets to San Antonio.

"Hopefully it will die down. I can only answer the same thing so many times," Williams said of his 15 seasons in Kansas that ended in 2003 when he left for his alma mater at North Carolina.

Williams said he gave Kansas some of the best years of his life, his heart, body and soul. He said at his summer camp, the campers are only allowed to wear North Carolina or Kansas gear.

"I'm always going to be a Kansas fan and there were some things said at first but time heals all wounds and some have had bad feelings," Williams said. He added that if he was ever going to play Kansas he was always hoping it would be on college basketball's biggest stage, but wished it were Monday night, not Saturday (in the national semifinals).

Williams added that he hasn't pursued scheduling Kansas for that very reason. But he added he never wanted to play North Carolina, his alma mater, when he was at Kansas, either, unless it was in the NCAA tournament.

"It is a big deal," Kansas coach Bill Self said about Williams facing Kansas. Self then qualified the statement by saying the game is a big deal because it's Kansas vs. North Carolina, though. "Some particular fans will make a big deal out of it."

Self said fans are upset when a coach who has been there for a while leaves. He said he experienced that when he left Illinois for Kansas.

He said Williams gave Kansas 15 years of excellence and "although some feelings where hurt initially, five years is enough time to let a few things go."

• Self said he won't tire of questions about Williams this week since he's in the Final Four.

"I'll deal with anything," Self said. "You could put me to answer questions with the dark light shining on me eight hours a day and I'd still love every minute of it."

• Self had lost in four previous Elite Eight appearances at three different schools. He has said many times that losing the Elite Eight game is the worst feeling, outside of something he hasn't experienced -- losing the national title. He said that losing in the first round isn't good, the second round at least the team won a game, the Sweet 16, at least the team got to the second weekend, but the Elite Eight "stinks."

He said that's because there is so much hype surrounding the Final Four and in college basketball getting to the Final Four has meant "almost as much as winning the national championship. It's the road to the Final Four, not the road to the championship."

• Memphis coach John Calipari:

"The way we played this weekend, we deserved to go to the Final Four."

"A lot of people picked us four to be the best four teams and maybe we were just a little better than the field. There were still eight other teams on our heels but the four of us separated ourselves from the field."

"This is going to be a crazy Final Four. I don't remember it playing out like this."

• UCLA coach Ben Howland:

"No. 1., the committee deserves a lot of kudos and gets credit for a good job seeding the tournament. It's pretty amazing this has happened. It didn't almost happen, especially to us since we had a tough win over Texas A&M that was a close call. Obviously Kansas, watching that lost shot, I thought [Davidson guard Jason] Richards' [shot] was going to go in there for some karma. But it didn't."

• Howland said that Luc Richard Mbah a Moute had some swelling in his left ankle but that was to be expected since it has been tender for weeks. But Howland expects him to go.

• Williams said that Ty Lawson tweaked his ankle on the last play of the Louisville game Saturday night. He said they were all scared a bit as he was icing his ankle (Lawson said in the locker room that he would be fine). Williams said as the staff was heading back to Chapel Hill on the bus Saturday night from Charlotte, they all looked at each other with a little bit of angst. "It scared him a bit but he felt fine," Williams said. Lawson missed six consecutive games this season with a sprained ankle.

Final Nuggets
USC's staff is expecting freshman O.J. Mayo will declare for the NBA draft before the April 27 deadline. Mayo hasn't told the staff anything yet, but they're not asking either. They were told, though, that freshman Davon Jefferson and sophomore Taj Gibson will return next season. The Trojans should have a solid team again, even if Mayo doesn't return, with Daniel Hackett back at the point, Dwight Lewis on the wing, Gibson and Jefferson inside and anticipated stud newcomer Demar DeRozan coming in at small forward. One USC assistant coach said that a good indicator for Gibson and Jefferson is that they're in class. So, too, though is Mayo, who continues to come in every day to the office.

• As soon as the season ends, the coaching carousel spins and players that are disgruntled about playing time look elsewhere. Boston College granted a release to sophomore forward Shamari Spears. The school that has looked most at Spears so far is Charlotte.

• Loyola Marymount wants former Golden State Warriors and Stanford coach Mike Mongtomery. Montgomery, according to a source close to him, hasn't turned it down yet. The other names on LMU's list are: former UNLV coach and current NBA assistant Billy Bayno, Portland State coach Ken Bone (also a candidate at Oregon State), USC assistant Gib Arnold and Cal State-Fullerton's Bob Burton.

• George Mason athletic director Tom O'Connor confirmed that coach Jim Larranaga talked to Providence College over the weekend, but O'Connor was not certain where things stood.

• For those that are wondering why Tony Bennett would stay at Washington State over Indiana (don't dismiss him listening to LSU, though) understand that Bennett is someone who really likes his current life. Tossing himself into a cauldron of the unknown is great for some who thrive in that kind of situation. But Bennett is content living in somewhat anonymity in Pullman. If you know where you fit, regardless of the golden opportunity, then maybe that should be celebrated, not scoffed at -- even if it's a top 10 job.

 

[bballah3]

Originally Posted by WstCoastGotti

Best experience I have ever had at a sporting event. UCLA completely dominated, the crowd was 90 percent UCLA, and I was courtside

I can definitely get used to that.

Great pics. I can see myself in some of them

 

[jayhawk17]

Rock Chalk Jayhawk GO KU!!!!! Yeah boy....I've been waitn 5 years for this game Saturday..

 

[gameover2]

I can't give respect to Memphis since they play in a freakin weak conference.

 

[craftsy21]

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April 1, 2008
[font=times new roman, times, serif]A Changing Landscape[/font]
The Soft Parity of Rotating Hegemons

by John Gasaway
[/td] [td]Printer-
friendly[/td] [td] [/td] [/tr][tr][td]Contact
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College basketball doesn't have a "commissioner," of course, but if it did that person would have had to issue a statement yesterday on what four one-seeds making the Final Four says about the sport's competitive balance. Said balance, in theory made up of parity and domination in optimal opposing measures, is the most fundamental aspect of any sport. Parity is a good thing, of which a sport can indeed have too much. Domination is all right as long as it's brief and it rotates. There are different ways to measure this equilibrium.

For instance, consider the ACC and the Big Ten where competitive balance is concerned. It has now become a veritable rite of late November for the Big Ten to get whomped head-to-head by the ACC in the ill-named "Challenge" between the two conferences. Many of us take comfort in--indeed, derive our seasonal orientation--from such verities. They're like the circadian rhythms of a collective sports nation's body, stretched out on an expansive annual canvas: the Maui Classic, an Army-Navy football game, then a preposterously humiliating display by the Big Ten.

Why is it, then, that in two of the past three years the Big Ten has actually done far better, in terms of expected wins by seed, than the ACC in the NCAA tournament? Maybe it's because the bottom half of the ACC is perpetually and markedly superior to the bottom half of the Big Ten. Come tournament time, however, those respective bottom halves are absent and moot. (Well, except for Miami, which this year somehow got a bid-zing!)

In other words, the season is--or at least can be--different than the tournament. Then again, the tournament is kind of important, you know? It is now being dominated. The last two Final Fours have comprised two of the three most aristocratic such gatherings in the 24-season modern (64/65-team) era.

Snootiest Final Fours
1985 to Present

       Avg. Seed  2008     1.00    (North Carolina, Memphis, UCLA, Kansas)1993     1.25    (North Carolina, Michigan, Kentucky, Kansas)2007     1.50    (Florida, Ohio State, Georgetown, UCLA)2001     1.75    (Duke, Michigan State, Arizona, Maryland)1999     1.75    (Connecticut, Duke, Michigan State, Ohio State)1997     1.75    (Kentucky, North Carolina, Minnesota, Arizona)1991     1.75    (Duke, UNLV, North Carolina, Kansas)

This dominance is not only measurable by the composition of the Final Four. Consider also that 11 of the last 12 one-seeds have made the Elite Eight. The collective tournament record of those 12 one-seeds against non-one-seed opponents is a notably robust 44-6.

Lastly, it's worth remarking that there was a time not so long ago when it was at least within the realm of possibility for a one-seed to lose a second-round game. Sure, it was a rare occurrence, but it did happen 12 times in the first 20 tournaments of the 64-team era. Such a thing was conceivable. No longer. Starting with the 2005 tournament, the cumulative first-weekend record of the one-seeds is 32-0.

Why is this era of domination happening now? It's early to speculate, of course, but it might just turn out to have something to do with those freshmen we keep hearing about. The NBA collective bargaining agreement that took effect before the 2006 draft defined eligibility upwards. Now a player has to be 19 during the calendar year of the draft (or, if they matriculated at a U.S. high school, at least one year has to have passed since their graduation). Meaning Greg Oden was the first player forced, in effect, to play college basketball for a year. The best, or at least most promising, players in the country outside the NBA are no longer high school seniors. They're college freshmen.

The NBA's rule change has left us with a situation in which the insistent visual prominence of spectacular freshmen is partly justified--they really are great--but it's also partly an optical illusion caused by the outmigration of NBA-worthy sophomores, juniors and seniors. Keep in mind that if we still played by the old John Wooden-era rules, where "college" meant a four-year collegiate career, we would have seen all of the following still plying their trade in the college ranks this past season:

Dwight Howard, Shaun Livingston, Robert Swift, Sebastian Telfair, Al Jefferson, Josh Smith, J.R. Smith, Dorrell Wright, Marvin Williams, Martell Webster, Andrew Bynum, C.J. Miles, Monta Ellis, Louis Williams, Andray Blatche, Amir Johnson, LaMarcus Aldridge, Tyrus Thomas, Rudy Gay, Patrick O'Bryant, Cedric Simmons, Shawne Williams, Rajon Rondo, Kyle Lowry, Jordan Farmar, Daniel Gibson, Leon Powe, Greg Oden, Kevin Durant, Al Horford, Mike Conley, Jeff Green, Corey Brewer, Brandan Wright, Joakim Noah, Spencer Hawes, Thaddeus Young, Julian Wright, Rodney Stuckey, Nick Young, Sean Williams, Javaris Crittenton, Jason Smith, Daequan Cook, Wilson Chandler, Arron Afflalo, Gabe Pruitt, Marcus Williams, Glen Davis, Josh McRoberts, Dominic McGuire, JamesOn Curry, Taurean Green, and Ramon Sessions.

More to the point, under the rules that applied up until 2006, Michael Beasley and Derrick Rose would today be very good NBA rookies instead of outlandishly superb college freshmen. Today's most prominent freshmen are indeed spectacular. However, their presence in college has been compelled, and they do benefit from players who aren't there. Most notably, today's outstanding freshmen have opportunities for playing time at blue-chip programs that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.

The effect of these freshmen on their teams has been dramatic. North Carolina is the only Final Four team without (gasp!) a representative from the 2007 McDonald's All-American Team. Then again, Kansas would very likely be where they are even without Cole Aldrich. The catalytic Final Four freshmen this year are, of course, Kevin Love and Derrick Rose.

True, their teams would be excellent without them. Their teams may even have made the Final Four without them. The point is not that you need a spectacular freshman to win the national title. (After all, we haven't seen such a team since Carmelo Anthony's time.) No, the point is that college basketball appears to have become bifurcated. On the one side are teams good enough to both attract (that includes Kansas State) and capitalize on (that does not include K-State) a catalytic freshman. On the other side are 330 or so other teams. If the catalytic freshmen were smart, they'd start committing in groups, a la Greg Oden and Mike Conley.

Yes, it would be foolish to sound the parity alarm here without at least acknowledging that the two one-seeds that played for the national championship last year, Florida and Ohio State, couldn't even get into the tournament this year. Tournament-brand domination does rotate, thank goodness. The extent of that domination, however, is greater than it's been in quite some time.

John Gasaway is an author of Basketball Prospectus. You can contact John by clicking here or click here to see John's other articles.

 

[blazinjkid]

I can't give respect to Memphis since they play in a freakin weak conference.

the way they've played the last few games completely negates that. they're playing probably the best anybody has all season long.

 

[elpablo21]

I see a Memphis UNC final coming up....Rose is going to shred Mr. Hankey and Westbrook, Someone who can finally physically play love in the post (dorsey) willat least maintain the dude if not stop him, UNC is just as if not more talented than Kansas the difference is UNC mentally is tougher, if they play tightagainst Davidson then I see UNC having no problem of disposing them...

Shout out the the M.O.P of the Midwest Region

 

[n0toriousbee]

kinda off-topic...but does any have JND1 avatar pic in hi-res? i remember seeing this pic a couple years back in a SLAM mag or something...

 

[acidicality]

i'll likely be pulling for UCLA....but maybe not because all of my friends picked UCLA to win it all, and it would be sweet if all those people who pickedUCLA get their brackets ruined. I've already lost my champion so I don't care who wins all that much anymore. just want 3 good games

 

[kiddin like jason]

College basketball is still going on?

 

[mjfresh]

Memphis all the way

 

[ballinboykz]

Originally Posted by N0toriousBee

kinda off-topic...but does any have JND1 avatar pic in hi-res? i remember seeing this pic a couple years back in a SLAM mag or something...

I used to have it, but then my computer crashed. Ill see if I can find it tho, I think I remember the site I got it from.

 

[JND1]

Originally Posted by N0toriousBee

kinda off-topic...but does any have JND1 avatar pic in hi-res? i remember seeing this pic a couple years back in a SLAM mag or something...

 

[ballinboykz]

^

I was JUST going to post that one.

 

[d723]

Thats a dope pic ..

 

[bballah3]

Wheres the "Official Final Four" post?

 

[T0INE]

Memphis over UCLA

UNC over Kansas.