Skip to main content

It's Four Ones

With victories by Kansas and Memphis today, this is officially the worst NCAA tournament of all-time, as every single No. 1 seed has made the Final Four.

It could just be a statistical blip, but I think there are two reasons the tournament has played out this way. First, I think that despite the age limit enforced by the NBA in recent years, pro basketball continues to take most of the best players. And as the talent pool gets smaller and smaller, the talent gap between the haves and have-nots gets wider and wider. It's like Reaganomics, but for basketball.

And the second reason is that Davidson can't pick an end-of-game play to save its life. What the FREAK was that? Let's throw the ball to Curry, give him no help (screens, cutters, whatever), and see what kind of shot the one scorer on our team can saunter up the court and create for himself. Come on! What did they think he was gonna do?

Comments

blaine said…
Yes I agree, that was awful to watch. So the best play they could come up with for their final play was a last-second heave from near halfcourt by someone OTHER than Curry? Why did Curry give up the ball anyway? Oh yeah, no one set a screen for him. Terrible execution.
8:27 PM
John said…
I actually think college basketball has gotten better in the last couple of years due to the NBA's new age restriction . . . now at least guys have to play one year of college (or do something else for a year after high school) before hitting the NBA. But, of course, no one with a future in basketball stays in college for more than a year, so there is a very limited talent pool.

That Davidson play with Curry at the end was ridiculous . . . he could have at least TRIED to advance the ball across half court with more than 6 seconds left . . . and his teammates were standing around like a church team waiting for him to win it all. Pathetic.

Four #1's is disappointing - but it just goes to show that in the NCAA tournament, the big boys ultimately get it done.
7:54 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Orange Julius

All right, class, what kind of things do we look for in an NBA draftee? A player who's proven, or one with oodles of upside? A guy coming off a spectacular college career, or one coming off the bench for his Serbian club team? A player who's shown constant improvement, or one who mysteriously fared worse as a senior than a junior? No, Kiki, put your hand down, it's the first answer to each of these questions, not the second. Yesterday the Nuggets picked 20th in the first round, selecting Julius Hodge, shooting guard/small forward, out of North Carolina State. College fans will immediately recognize his name, as Hodge was the ACC Player of the Year as a junior. Unfortunately, he just finished his senior year, which was marked mostly by a dip in his scoring numbers (he developed a sudden inability to hit free throws or threes) and a punch to the groin by Wake Forest guard Chris Paul. Hodge is mostly a mid-range and slashing-type scorer, kind of like the more-than-sufficient s...
19 comments
Read more

Who cares?

So we finally got done with the NBA playoffs after nearly two months of stretched-out play, and tomorrow's the draft. I really couldn't care less. I'm so burned out on the sport. Sadly, there's nothing else going on worth mentioning, so we might as well get into it. (Yes, baseball, Pugs, but I haven't really started following that this year yet, sorry.) Would the NFL hold its draft five days after the Super Bowl? Of course not, and not just because the league doesn't want to distract from the highlight of its annual calendar, the Pro Bowl. Of course, the NBA's situation is a little different. College play ended two and a half months ago, and the teams want to get draftees ready for the all-important summer league play (because the kind of guys that need the summer league always end up players). Not that when college basketball is over is relevant, anyway-the league is overrun by a bunch of high school players "just months removed from their prom" (...
12 comments
Read more

And now that it’s gone, it’s like it wasn’t there at all

I never thought this blog would last longer than Jay Cutler's career with the Denver Broncos. He was a talented young prospect so good that the Broncos, a powerhouse organization only one game removed from the Super Bowl the season before, traded up to get him—or, in other words, a player whose upside was so huge, the team sacrificed its present to get his future. And now? He's gone . How did it come to this? * * * Often I'll play devil's advocate with a move like this; you know, I'll try and explain how it makes sense from the other side of the table. Today, during the most disastrous Broncos offseason in memory—and the draft hasn't even happened yet, so settle in—I just don't have it in me. I don't think move is really defensible from a football standpoint. But what the heck: as the article above says, the Broncos are sending Cutler and a fifth-round draft pick this month to the Chicago Bears for quarterback Kyle Orton, Chicago's first-rounder in t...
11 comments
Read more