A-Ten Baby!

Conference Over/Under
In past posts, I have performed a simple "over/under" analysis, tracking how teams do in the NCAA Tourney relative to their seeding, then aggregating the results by conference.  So a #2 seed that loses to a #5 seed gets a minus 3, while the winner gets a plus 3.  Winning/losing as your seed says you should expect earns a zero.  So if your conference is around zero, plus or minus a few, you're doing pretty much as expected.  Keep in mind, this doesn't tell you whether a conference is good or bad.  It only indicates whether expectations were warranted.

After the first round, here's the tally:
A-10                  +10
PAC 12               +9
SEC                    +7
MVC                   +1
WCC                     0
ACC                     -1
B1G                     -2
Big 12                 -13
Big East               -17
MWC                 -18

So, it looks like thus far, the A-10, Pac 12 and SEC were very underrated.  In all fairness, the SEC only had three teams and their plus 7 is from Mississippi's win over Wisconsin.  The big losers are the Big 12, Big East and MWC.  But, some things never change:  the Big East is consistently overrated year after year.  The B1G usually is too.  Let' see how it shakes out in the coming rounds.  More in a future post...

Round of 64 comes to an end
I commented previously on how the first day had the preponderance of interesting games.  The second day fulfilled my low expectations, despite some fun with Creighton and La Salle, giving us some truly ugly games.  But first, let's play nice.

A-10
How about my A-10?  I'm feeling pretty good about nailing the La Salle win over K-State.  I am so jealous of the fans in the A-10 conference's markets. 

More nice...
City of Brotherly Love...and College Basketball
Is there a better city for college basketball than Philadelphia?  That city may not have anything else for the rest of the country, other than Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell (hell, they even removed the Rocky statue), but it has to be the greatest city for college hoops, at all levels:  Temple, La Salle, St. Joseph, Villanova, Penn and Drexel, with Rutgers across the river and Univ. of Delaware just down the road.

Tobacco Road has the reputation (Duke, North Carolina, Wake Forest, NC State) - and probably has a similar geographic area.  But it doesn't have the diversity.

OK, now on to today's games...

Ugly #1:
Because my bro is a Buff fan, I endured the Colorado game v. Illinois, singling out the first half in particular.  Now I, above just about anyone else I know, want to see the PAC 12 smack a BeeOneGee team.  But the best I could make out of that poor excuse for a game was an ever escalating exchange of ineptitude.  CU eventually lost more than Illinois did.

Ugly #2: Give me a U...Give me a G...
I endured Georgetown v. Florida Gulf Coast becasuse the pundits said FGCU was a team to watch.  Fair enough.  I knew nothing about them and I figured Georgetown was vulnerable, if only because I've never liked them (mostly a holdover from the current coach's daddy). But, to put it simply, I was waiting for someone to lose this ugly game and Georgetown eventually came through.  I'm scratching my head trying to figure out how and why.

WCC
St. Mary's exit was predictable and about right.  Their defense kept them in the game in the second half, as it did v. Middle Tennessee State in the "play-in."  To their credit, Memphis locked down star St. Mary's guard, Matthew Dellavedova.  Otherwise, Memphis was singularly unimpressive.  Without even looking who they play next, I figure Memphis will get thumped.  

UCLA
Who's that fat guy playing center for Minnesota?  That's all the comment this game deserves.  Minnesota has some talent.  But Jordan Adams, perhaps UCLA's best player, was out with injury.  UCLA quit. Nolo contendre.

Western Kentucky
These guys were seeded #16?  Huh?

This game was no fluke.  There's clearly a parity issue developing.  More in a future post.

Also, the TV scoreboard operator for this game must've had more beers than I did.  I've never seen so many misappropriated scores and corrections than I have in the last two minutes of this game.

Notre Dame
Please lose the day-glo green.  That's all.  No more.


Pet Peeve
In an earlier post, I railed on the flopping that makes it even more difficult for refs to make the right call in a charge/block situation.  Following up:

Pet Peeve #2- Players making the ref's call by pointing the direction of possession on an out of bounds when it's perfectly obvious to everyone, including yourself, that you last touched it.  What happened to honesty in sports?