Random College Basketball Thoughts

Jerry Wainwright - completely exposed the Syracuse zone. Welcome back to Winston-Salem Jerry! This game was ridiculous!

Duke - If I were one of those scrubs on the floor at the end of the FSU game, I would be pretty pissed about how Coach K considered my "life" insignificant enough not to send me to the locker room. That was complete horseshit. He cares more about his image than he does his players. If he truly feared for his players' lives he would have taken them all inside. Fuck that! He just wanted to steal FSU's thunder. What a sore fuckin' loser. Seriously, have some damn class and accept a loss with dignity (unlike the Elite 8 against UConn when he, of all coaches, bitched about the calls down the stretch and never once credited UConn and Calhoun for outplaying and outclassing Duke).

Duke - A friend at work showed me that cartoon yesterday. It's pretty good, but the NC State/Napoleon Dynamite one is better.

Missouri Valley - This conference is for real and deserves 3-5 bids. Based on adjusted scoring models, Miami would be 7th in this conference and Maryland 4th. FSU doesn't matter (they'd be 2nd) because they'll get in; they're good this year.
Creighton will soon have their 8th straight season with 20+ wins and beat George Mason, Xavier and in-state rival Nebraska.
Wichita State (my 3rd favorite college team with head coach Mark Turgeon from Kansas' 1988 championship team) has their 3rd straight 20+ win season and won 23 games and beat Providence and lost to Illinois by only 1.
N. Iowa beat LSU and in-state rival Iowa.
Missouri St hasn't really beaten anybody outside the conference, but they only lost 1, to a very underrated Arkansas team.
Indiana St beat Indiana, Ball St, and Butler.
Even S. Illinois is on the bubble.
Meanwhile Miami (a weak at best 15-13 and 7-8 in crappy ACC) has lost to teams such as Air Force (actually a pretty good team but bad for the ACC) and Louisville while Maryland (17-11 and 7-8) lost to Temple and Clemson.

These MVC teams are all good teams and could match up with anybody in the ACC other than the Top 3. Based on same ASM model, this conference ranks 6th in the country (ahead of Pac-10), and take away Texas from the Big 12 and they would be 5th. Cullen, have you even watched the Missouri Valley Conference play? Because I've seen them play a lot this year, and I've also seen the ACC. The ACC sucks this year. These teams could play well in the ACC, and they are ALL very tough at home. Those gyms are loud as hell and provide significant home court advantage (Creighton would be 3rd in attendance in the Big 12 and a very comfortable 4th in the ACC (behind State, UNC, and Wake) at over 14,000 per game). Their new arena is awesome and easily one of the 10 loudest college gyms in the country. Wichita St would also be 4th in attendance in ACC at around 10,000 per game. This is why these teams have trouble scheduling good teams at home. I predict they'll have 2 2nd round teams to the ACC's 3. Not much of a difference. Don't mistake lack of national television coverage and weak conference teams in the bottom half as implying that all MVC teams are bad. These 5 teams have deserved what little press has gone their way.

Autistic kid on ESPN - how awesome is this video?! What a great story! The autistic kid who is the team manager for 4 years plays at the end of their final home game and hits 6 three pointers for 20 points (would have been 7 but his foot was on the line). This video is awesome. My question is, why didn't they play him all season if he can shoot like that (I'm sure most his shots are like the first one he put up though).