March Madness Midterm Memoirs

So in my first post, I eluded to a future post about the conference tournaments.  However, that was also in the context of ideas I wanted to share before I had a blog.  With the speed at which information travels these days, anything more than a day old is, well, just old.  I figured it would be more relevant to share that as one of several observations (or memoirs) from the first half (midterm) of the 2014 edition of March Madness (how do you like my clever alliteration?).  And no, I did not win Warren Buffet's $1 Billion.

Conference Shampionships

No, I didn't forget my spell check, I think conference championships are a sham.  Don't get me wrong, they're fun to watch, and as my wife will attest, I can easily get glued to Stephen F. Austin vs Sam Houston State.  But do I think they're fair, or even logical?  Not by a long shot.

For the non-college basketball aficionados, 68 teams are selected to play in the NCAA national championship tournament.  32 of those spots are reserved for the conference champions, and with the exception of the Ivy League (coincidentally the smartest schools in the country), the "champion" is determined by a weekend tournament.  If that still doesn't mean much to you, what this means is that the team that has the best conference record at the end of the regular season (usually 16-20 games) is not guaranteed a spot in the tournament.  If you're starting to smell what I'm stepping in, yes, a team that was terrible all season can get their act together for 3-4 games and have a shot to play for the national championship.  

Every year, as the field of 68 is put together, the talking heads refer to it as the best 68 teams in college basketball.  False.  A few of this year's mighty "champions" include:

• Mount St. Mary's with a 16-16 record
• Cal State Poly with a 13-19 record

But it's not just the bad teams getting in, it's the good teams left out.  Of the 32 conferences, most of them will only send their automatic bid because they are composed of schools that are small, don't have much money, and therefore do not have the level of talent of the larger schools and conferences.  So if you work hard all season, but have a hiccup in a weekend tournament, you're rewarded with  a consolation trip to the NIT tournament.  As a result we are robbed of seeing teams such as:

• Belmont Bruins - Ohio Valley regular season champions.  This team has been to several NCAA tournaments in recent years, so their experience, combined with the fact that they have the 16th ranked offense in the country, made them a dangerous threat to upend a bigger team (they already took out North Carolina earlier in the year).  The team that knocked them out, Eastern Kentucky, earned a 15 seed and a quick exit at the hand of Kansas.
• Green Bay Phoenix - Horizon League regular season champions.  Not only were they the best team in their conference, they proved themselves against the big boys - upsetting Virginia (yes, the same Virginia that got a 1 seed this year) in the regular season.  We were also deprived of seeing one of the best inside-outside combos you probably never heard of in Keifer Sykes and Alec Brown.  Instead, they were upset by Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who earned a 15 seed in the NCAA tournament and were quickly escorted by Villanova.

I'd love to spend more time complaining about the injustice of this system, repelling possible arguments against my stance (yes, some people, maybe even you, think this is reasonable), and provide alternative solutions.  Instead, I'll just summarize the system as stupid because: 1.) it can punish teams that played great for a whole season, 2.) we don't get to see the true "best 68 teams in the country."  The most fair and realistic solution I can think of is to limit conference tournaments to those that finished in the top half of the regular season standings.  Moving on....

Evaluating the Big East's Big Divorce

It's been a year since the Big East Conference broke up as part of the domino effect of national conference re-alignment, leaving us with the Big East and American Athletic Conference (AAC).  I don't know off the top of my head all the RPI and BPI numbers for each conference (for non hoops fans, those are 2 sets of objective numbers use to rate every team in the country), and really, I don't care. While objective numbers do serve a purpose, the eye test is very valuable too.  If I had to pick the most over-rated conference this season, it would be the Big East.  Conversely, if I had to pick the most under-rated conference all year, it would be the AAC. I don't know how much basketball the NCAA selection committee saw this season, but they confirmed my observations with their selections:  

Villanova gets a 2 seed?  There was nothing overly impressive about Villanova this year.  Yeah, they got off to a hot start and had some big wins in December, but the rest of the year was spent beating up luke-warm Big East opponents.  In both their match-ups against Creighton, they were played out of the gym each time. Speaking of Creighton, take away Doug McDermott, are they really a 3 seed?  It was fun watching Baylor beat their brains in this evening. Providence gave UNC a tough first round game, but they were clearly out of gas from their improbable upset run in the Big East tournament (which they entered a bubble team).  And who let Xavier into the play-in game (I hate those too, another blog for another day)?  I feel like they've been on the tournament bubble since January, and they followed with a lackluster performance in their loss to NC State in the aforementioned play-in.

Can someone explain to me how Louisville finished 5th in the nation and ended up a 4-seed?   Well don't look now selection committee, but the defending national champions are in the sweet 16.  Meanwhile, Cincinnati, arguably the best defensive team in the country, gets rewarded with a 5 seed (which is inherently cursed) against a really good Harvard team nobody wanted to draw on selection Sunday. And Connecticut gets a 7 seed with that stud backcourt led by Shabazz Napier and Ryan Boatright?  I thought it was fitting they showed Villanova what a real Big East team looks like in the round of 32.  And poor Memphis.  They probably merited an 8 seed, but at least they managed to win a game (currently losing to #1 Virginia at the time of this writing).  And how did SMU not get selected? I know, I know, their out of conference schedule is weak.  But they also beat good teams (both home and away) in the AAC.  Their RPI might not be top 25 (even though they held a spot in both polls for quite a while), but I've SEEN them play, and they LOOK like one of the best 68 teams in the country.

The Big East is half of what it was a year ago (literally, there's half as many teams), yet people still talk about it like it's the gold standard of college hoops.  The AAC meanwhile, is severely under the radar.  However, when I watched their respective games this season, the AAC was clearly a step above the Big Least (again, not a typo).  There will be at least 2 AAC teams in the sweet 16.  The rest of the Big East gets to watch them play from home.

Way to Go Stanford and Dayton!

I had Kansas picked to lose in the 2nd round... to New Mexico.  Forget how Stanford managed to win, how did they get there?  In watching and reading the analysis of bubble teams for 6 weeks (b-ball definition: a bubble team is a good team, but not considered a lock to get picked as an at-large for the NCAA tournament), there were 5 bubble teams that had Stanford as their "best win."  It's hard to convey tone in writing, but it was a very sarcastic "best win."  How does a team that got beat by 5 shaky teams, none of which are terribly proud of that win, make it as an at-large selection?  I don't know, but I'm happy for their goofy-looking mascot:

And Dayton, why didn't I see this coming?  I was struggling to pick between Syracuse and Ohio St. in their hypothetical round of 32 match-up.  It wasn't because they were both so good I couldn't pick which one was just a little bit better - I couldn't decide which of these 2 teams that stumbled their way into the tournament would choke first.  I should have decided that neither was fit for the sweet 16 and just went with Dayton. 

Opening Round Etiquette

I think it's time for all of us who filled out a bracket to pause and remember this is a LONG, LONG tournament.  If I had a dime for every time I heard one of the following phrases after 5 games: "I'm perfect in all my picks so far," or "(Fill in upset school here) lost - my bracket is ruined," I wouldn't need to pay $5 to enter my picks for a chance to win $200... I'd have plenty of pocket change!  If you fall into one of these categories next March, please, do me and everyone else a favor and at least wait for the round of 32 to be over before you react.  One good day definitely doesn't guarantee anything, and one bad day (unless you lose a final 4 pick) doesn't ruin anything.  Calm down and enjoy basketball.

And the Best-Dressed Coach Award Goes to...

My wife diligently watched many games with me.  Although she was not concerned with winners and losers, she decided that North Carolina's Roy Williams is the best-dressed coach in college basketball!

Switch and Bait

Just twelve hours after posting my first epic blog, I discovered my first epic mistake.

Blogspot (or Blogger) operates under Google, so I figured it would be a seamless transition creating this off my gmail account.  However, I made this post when I was visiting my family in PA, and I did not realize that my mother has a gmail account that was set to always stay "logged in."  Thus, when I brought up Blogspot and created my first post, I was actually doing so as my mother!

You may be thinking, "Wait a minute, wouldn't you notice the different email address?"  You'd think so, but I didn't.  Her address is eerily similar to the log-in I use at work, so it looked very normal, and did not phase me that it was a different user name than my gmail account.

This may beg the question, "So where are we reading this current post from?"  Well, I went back into my mom's account and deleted the blog.  Before doing so, I saved the html code form my first post.  I then went into my gmail, created a new blog under the same name, posted the html code from my first post, and voila - just like new!

Except one small problem - the web address fullkospress.blogspot.com no longer exists!  So while I'm grateful for my 7 Facebook likes yesterday (you know who you are!), I am even more grateful that no one decided to subscribe to it, or they'd be sorely disappointed (or relieved) if they ever came back.  As for the infamous Tweet/Post, if you try visiting it now, you get:

Embarrassing.  So, if anyone's keeping track, the new URL is now: fulkospress.blogspot.com.  My "full" now has one less "l"... Blog... Fail...

Why?

Welcome to The Full Court Press!  You may be thinking "Oh great, another blog.  Dave, what possessed you to do this now?"  Great question.  The answer: shameless self promotion and venting.

I get a lot of random thoughts.  My poor wife has to listen to endless monologues and soliloquies of my ranting about everything from why the Steelers are so frustrating, how annoying it is that it takes forever for that light to change on Parkwood Blvd., or how unprofessional it is that Dunkin Donuts applies my free drink coupon to the coffee instead of the latte.  I need an outlet, and I don't care who listens. Even if my wife is the only one who ever reads this blog, I'll be happy knowing I got it off my chest.

"Ok, Dave, what are you going to enlighten us about?"  Man, you are rolling with the good questions today!  In general, it will be a cornucopia of random thoughts.  However, more specific will be: theology/culture, sports, or something I find hilarious like this:

It's going to be a wild roller coaster ride (I say that now, but it will probably end up more like the trolley in the parking lot of the amusement park).  I tend to be conservative about what I put on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, etc.  I'm sure we've all seen posts 3 paragraphs long about how "person I won't name is such a jerk," or posts with 40+ comments debating the merits of Republican vs. Democrat (they're both awful).  Rather than subject everyone I know to all my knee-jerk reactions of life (many people I know couldn't care less what I think about ESPN's SEC bias), I'll just put all my thoughts here.  And in case you can't tell, I'm verbose.  If you've ever received an email, text or rare Facebook message from me, you'll know brevity is not my strength.  Here, I'm not constrained by Twitter's 140-character limit.  I'll probably put a link on Facebook and Twitter to my most recent posts, but fear not, you do have a choice:

Take the blue pill, and this can be your first and last experience of The Full Court Press.  When it shows up on your timeline - just keep scrolling.  Take the red pill, and you keep reading.  Get ready for a "Full Court Press" of thoughts and opinions.  Hopefully some will make you think.  Hopefully, it can spark civil conversation.  And maybe, you just might get a chuckle, even a couple of yuks.

I've had the blog idea on my mind for a while - i.e. I've formulated some blog posts in my head the last few weeks as a reaction to current events, but I've had nowhere to put them.  So, as time permits in the next few weeks (I work for a minor league baseball time, and opening day is 2 weeks away), I'll trickle some thoughts that might be a little dated.  But I promise I'll do my best to keep them somewhat relevant.  In the mean time, here's a preview:

• The American Fairy Tale:  I have a confession - I watched the majority of the most recent season of The Bachelor.  My wife and I boo-ed and hissed along with the rest of America at Juan Pablo.  I found most of the individuals on the program to be shallow and naïve.  I can't get over the audacity of ABC to think they can script one of the most unpredictable human emotions - love.  And in the midst of the insanity, I couldn't help but see an ironic twist: The Bachelor highlights many of the truths of the Bible's book on romance, the Song of Solomon.
• March Maddening: At the writing of this post, we are wrapping up conference championship week in college basketball.  This is the first half of what makes March so exciting for hoops fans.  At the same time, this might be one of the worst things about college basketball.  Is it time we start thinking about trading the excitement of conference championships for a less-diluted pool of talent in the NCAA tournament?  Do I really want to see a 16-16 Mount St. Mary's play for a shot at the national championship? (spoiler alert: no)
• Better than Fallon: I'm in an overwhelming minority of Americans - people who don't think Jimmy Fallon is funny.  Well, he can make me laugh from time to time, but I hardly think that merits the holy grail of late-night television.  Most of America disagrees.  But remember, this is MY blog, so I'm going to give my alternatives for who I think could do a better job and why.

Enjoy!