I’ve had some important dates in my life and here are a few calendar items you’ll want to note in your date book, Blackberry or computer. At least, I think you will.
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Tag: NCAA Tournament
Thoughts from the biggest of games:
7:36 p.m. – Not much has been proven in the first six minutes of the game. The teams are just feeling each other out and trying to figure out what will work. Neither team seems uncomfortable or ineffective, so it should be a good game. I am a little surprised that it has been a reasonably low scoring start, but it feels like that could change. I don’t think that we can rule out or elevate either team ion any way based on what we have seen so far.
Continue reading “The Last College Basketball Game of the Year”
That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? Few people ever thought that Memphis and Kansas would be playing in the final game, so we didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about what would happen if they did. THe public seems to have a pretty good feeling about Memphis. More than two-thirds of bets placed have been on Memphis, and the line has moved significantly from where it opened with Kansas as 1.5 point favorites to the current level of Memphis -2. So, how is this game going to turn out?
I’ll chime in all night with thoughts from both games. All times are mountain time.
4:04 p.m. – Time to settle in and watch some basketball. Just finished watching Colonel John unleash a massive run down the stretch to win the Santa Anita Derby and position himself behind Big Brown and Pyro as the third best looking horse pointed to the Kentucky Derby with four weeks left to go. It was impressive. Now for some basketball. They are doing the cheesy introductions, so we should see some actual game action in about three hours at this rate.
I’m going to weigh in tomorrow with in-game analysis during both games. Until then, I just wanted to share a couple of interesting things that have popped up today and provide us with more to think about as we try to make winning picks on the big games:
This is the second week in a row that I have written this same type of article. It’s almost as if it is a recurring feature or something.
Here’s what is bouncing through my mind on this hump day:
1. Memphis is still favored? – I am shocked. It’s not that I don’t think that they should be – I have them narrowly favored to win it all. It’s just that I never thought that the public would go this way. It goes to show just how short the attention span of people is – a week ago Memphis was doomed and UCLA was the power.
Continue reading “10 Questions Bouncing Through My Mind – Redux”
I was sitting down to take my first long look at the Final Four today when, as I often do, I started to think about whether there were overriding rules that should be followed when handicapping college basketball’s last three games of the year. I tend to do this kind of thing whenever I am faced with an annual event. It’s not because I am looking for a system or a shortcut – those don’t exist, or at least not without a ridiculous amount of research and study to uncover them. Instead, I do it because it helps me to focus better on the games at hand, and to prioritize the ridiculous amount of information that I will be faced with. If you don’t have some kind of a framework to build upon when you look at a wildly public game like these three will be then you are vulnerable to being led astray by the ‘experts’ and whatever topics they happen to be focused on these days. In the last two rounds, for example, it would have been pretty easy to discount Memphis because we heard endlessly how badly they shot fouls and how much that matters. As it turns out they shot very well from the line, and they would have won both games fairly handily even if they had been much, much worse.
For the first time in the 20 or so years that I have been filling out a bracket I have all four Final Four teams. I should be proud of that, but all it really means is that I am a chalk-eating weenie. I did the ultimate newbie thing – take the number one seeds and put them all the way through to the end – and it paid off. That makes me feel like a need to shower for a week or so. Don’t get me wrong – I’ll spend the money if my luck keeps holding. It just seems wrong that something so unimaginative and boring would be the right way to go.
Will the last five minutes of a college basketball game ever be interesting or tense again? That’s eight of the last nine which have been over well before they have been over. Tomorrow, hopefully, is another day.
1. Davidson can beat Kansas, and it wouldn’t even be a massive upset. Heck, if I had to rank the eight teams in order of likelihood to win based on the way they are playing Davidson wouldn’t be at the bottom despite their seed.
Continue reading “12 Quick Thoughts Heading Into Saturday’s Games”
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