The Dude wrote:

Lunardi has St Bona now a 9 seed, so very safely IN. VCU in his first 4 byes, so we for sure want VCU to win this Finale.

What's with spreading apart the Semis and Finals so long??

St Louis is trying to add a game this week.  I think the early tourney was partly to get the games in early in case of covid issues, and second, to give bubble teams like SLU a possible chance to add to their resume or they didn’t win the tourney.

FQ, interesting, did not realize that! SLU might need it too, they right the cusp of IN/OUT

Gonzaga is 40 seconds away from a 26-0 undefeated season.  Mark Few America's best Coach shines on, and takes his best team yet to the tourney, 22 years in a row.

 

That is some very interesting news FQ dropped about St. Louis trying to schedule another game. What kind of team could they schedule, a team who has completed their season and is awaiting an NCAA or NIT bid? I'm assuming a win against teams like that will boost their metric numbers. Are teams who completed their season allowed to play extra games like this. I was surprised that the A10 didn't schedule more conference games for St. Louis(as opposed to GW) when they returned from their COVID pause because everyone knew STL had a good chance to make the NCAA tournament and needed more games/wins.

9th place Marquette vs 8th place Georgetown    3   FS1  - winner plays Villanova tomorrow at noon

Tomorrow  9th place Michigan State vs 8th place Maryland  11:30AM  Big 10 Network  - I haven't checked the bracketology, but could Maryland be in danger if missing the tournament if Michigan State beats them? Maryland ended the season with bad losses to 11th place Penn State and 12th place Northwestern. 



 

Joe Dooley is 2-10 in league play this year after 3-15 and 5-13 years.

GW fans have clamored for that guy for a long time....no thank you. 


 

Maybe he can seek to have the 14-11 season expunged or given to an Assistant Coach again:but with the decision not to play on Thursday, this means the team's year is all but over.  the Blue Devils are expected to miss the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1995. That season Krzyzewski missed most of the year due to a ruptured disk in his lower back. This season, Duke was ranked as high as No. 6 early in the season but soon fell out of the rankings for the first time since 2016. 

GTown upsets #1 seed Villanova in BE Tourney.
The NCAA Tourney is going to be crazy this year!

Duke had a lot of momentum(35 and 14 point wins in their 1st 2 ACC tourney games) going into the Florida State game. We know that the NCAA really wanted to put Duke in the tournament too, but their COVID issue could last for a few weeks and putting Duke into the NCAA tournament when they may not be able to play isn't a good idea.  I know this wouldn't happen, but it would be funny if the ACC called Louisville or some other ACC team that lost to see if they can return to Greensboro and play Florida State tonight! Maybe Travis Ford can see if St.Louis can go to Greensboro and play Florida State tonight!! HA!

I'm not sure what the problem was with Kentucky, someone pointed out in another thread they lack shooters which is a good point, but when you look at the talent level, they shouldn't have finished 9-16 and in 9th place in the SEC. Maybe it was the entire new roster of players and lack of practice/preparation time due COVID that caused the bad season. Calipari has had teams like this in the past where he had to flip the entire roster, and they still performed well

I should have posted about Georgetown before the game because I figured they had a better chance to win today after Villanova lost star guard Collin Gillespie for the season to a knee injury about a week ago. Even without Gillespie, it looked like Villanova would hold them off, but Georgetown was resilient, and their freshman guard Harris hit 2 free throws with 4 seconds left to give them the 1 point win. Georgetown plays the St.John's-Seton Hall winner in the semifinals tomorrow, Georgetown beat both of them during the season, so they could be playing for the Big East championship and an NCAA tournament bid on Saturday. 

Maryland also beat Michigan State by double digits earlier today. I thought they had a slight chance of being on the outside looking in terms of the NCAA tournament if they lost to Michigan State. It looks like Maryland plays up or down to the competition, they play Michigan tomorrow

I'm sure that it's just one great big coincidence that so many of the sport's historic powers and/or "brand names"...Duke, UNC, Kentucky, Arizona, Kansas, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Louisville, and Marquette, all "randomly" picked this season, the season of Covid-19, to either have a disastrous year or at the very least, a disappointing one relative to their recent past.  Can't imagine any factors contributing to this other than schools recruiting one and dones.

You guys talk about everything and anything (who the hell is Coach Carm and who cares!) except the fact that the men's basketball program is imploding  The "turnaround king" has a 17-32 record in two seasons and players are jumping ship like it's going out of style-- including Jamison Battle who will be a star elsewhere. Frankly, after 55 years of following the team, I'm getting sick and tired of writing letters to GW ADs pleading for the current head coach (John Kuester, Karl Hobbs, Maurice Joseph, and now Jamion Christian) to be relieved of duty. Hell, AU has a much better head coaching track record than we do and that's sad. This is the result, I believe, of not wanting to pay top-flight, experienced coaches what they deserve and, particularly since the Lonergan debacle, not wanting a coach to raise his voice to a player or discipline him in any meaningful way. Almost all of you appear to be happy enough with no radio or tv coverage (except when an opponent warrants it), two lines buried in the Post sports section, little alumni or student interest, and an almost permanent spot in the bottom tier of the A10. Please take a second either to agree with me or to tell me I'm full of crap--but please respond. 

Thomas, I think Kentucky’s problem was:

- Lack of shooters leading to poor floor spacing,
- No elite point guard to run that system like they usually have (Davion Mintz is a decent player from a Creighton, but not elite and Devin Askew didn’t work out we a freshman).
- Their star freshman, BJ Boston, turned out to be a decent scorer but shot poorly
- Olivier Saar is a finesse player and I’m not sure Coach Cal knows how to use a finesse 7 footer, especially when they also have guys like Isaiah Jackson inside.   Saar should have stayed at Wake or gone somewhere else.
-  And, as someone else posited above, I think Covid really did hurt them and other blue bloods for two reasons. First, home court advantage not what it was - it’s no as intimidating to play in Rupp or Cameron without fans screaming.  Second, I think teams with a lot of freshman were hurt by lack of practice time and other challenges of covid.  Just hard to meld new players together, especially early, and get them ready to play as a team.  I could be wrong, but I don’t think a single KenPom top 25 team starts more than one freshman, and that’s unusual.  The best team I can think  of that relies on multiple freshmen like the blue bloods usually do, is UNC - and they got off to a terrible start, but now Caleb Love is finally settled in and their other freshmen have figure it out.