On a neutral court under these same conditions, I think you guys have a good shot at pulling off the upset. LSU was a much tougher matchup for UNC than Butler would have been.

My one and only bracket is at 91%, but I'm such a Spartan (Michigan State) fanboy that I pretty much need them to crush everyone... and looking at their game so far. Too many young kids trying to much flashy junk, if they would learn to make a basic pass without trying to showboat they would cut their turnovers by about 75%.

I think they might sneak their way into the final four if they put their ego aside for when the competition gets tough (Kansas and Louisville), and dominate the boards like they are taught to.

While it does lower your FG%, going inside gives you many more trips to the line and 3-point plays that are not factored into that percentage.

It struck me like this during the KU-UT game that I saw, as well, but this Duke game is just underscoring it. Texas seems like they have a lot of good parts but just are too impatient and undisciplined to put it all together. They have better individual players than Duke if you go 1 thru 5 but Duke is just a better team, biding their time and waiting for the Longhorns to implode.

SI

That assumes you're giving up inside shots for 3's. I would think that in most cases it is correct to give up all shots from 15-20 feet in favor of a 3 instead, and that shots inside should not change from what they would have been without a 3 point line.

When Duke gets hot, they can put up points in a hurry.

I think you can say that about almost any Duke team. Coach K tends to recruit guys who will be there for 4 years and not one and done. He is careful to go after guys who fit into a team more than guys who are just raw talent.

Another set of compelling endings here - late games have made up for the early ones in terms of drama.

Oh yeah.. two good finishes coming up!

Wow, that last Gonzaga bucket was WAY too easy.

Duke would be well advised to win this one in regulation, given the foul problems. Singler and Thomas out already.

And my championship pick of Gonzaga is still alive! Bad news: They have to face Carolina next. I still think they can pull a stunner.

I really like that Zaga didn't call a timeout there. I am not sure if they had one but so many teams seem to call one reflexively and they pass up a chance to hit a team which is probably celebrating a little.

lol@ the announcers praising "the presence of mind by Scheyer to save it towards a teammate".


I mean, it was a great play, but he had no idea who that ball was going to.

Damn.. Texas is killing me...

True. I just wish the drama had been spread out throughout the day better.

My two gripes with CBS.

1) Space out the games a little better. They consistently had two games in the final minute. Maybe add 5 minutes of seperation to the start of each game or something. No reason to have this on Saturday and Sunday.

2) Where has the split screen gone? Last two nights have had games perfect for the split screen.

Gonzaga tipped off five minutes before Duke, there's typically some offset. Not sure if you were suggesting it didn't exist or just isn't enough. But if you look at the current time these are going almost perfectly for the network & the local affiliates. Barring double overtime, they'll have time to wrap up and then hit the east coast local news right on time.


I doubt we'll ever see split screen again, it makes it easier to herd viewers to the MMOD which is a new revenue stream for the network. (and where I suspect the majority of games will end up within the next few years)

I don't know, just sucks to have two games ending within a minute of another. There aren't that many games on Satuday and Sunday so I don't think it should be a problem to start the day 30 minutes earlier to space out the games more.


Probably not. Not sure if this was the case on other computers, but the MMOD was about 1-2 minutes behind the TV feed. So watching on both, I'd see the score on top of the TV different than what I was watching.

I don't get why people love the split screen so much. What if the finishes are occuring at the same time? Watch each with one eye? What audio do they play? Both?

It was borderline unwatchable last night in my region. They would cut from game to game just in time to see timeout called and stare at the damn coach for a minute. They were being so clever trying to show two games at once they ended up missing more buckets than they showed (by my count). Great job moron producers. Does anyone have a brain in any company these days?

Really? I was consistently surprised as I don't think I missed a basket in the entire sequence, even when I was railing at them to switch (thinking they were behind) they were actually on track.

Are we on different coasts or something? I wonder if they were switching them separately or something.

I'm in the Midwest, so in our region they were cutting between Siena Ohio State and Wisconsin Florida like nuts. A team would have a lead, there would be random cutting, and by the time it came back the game would be tied and they would be in the time after the clock had been stopped after a basket as they go to timeout.

I missed my beloved Spartans entire last 5 or more minutes. I could understand it at least if they showed the exciting clutch baskets rather than balding white men in the middle of a huddle.

So probably you just had a better button pusher in your area, ours must have been confused about what to do with three big ten games at the same time.

I think you just hit on the difference, we only saw two games all night here, I don't think I saw a single minute of Michigan State all night. Our primary game IIRC had been the one that finished first (Siena-OSU?), so we were always heading back to it primarily with FSU-WIS being like bonus coverage, they had a clear priority for the game we started with. In your case sounds like the third non-OT game was your primary & it created some confusion for them.

Midwest here too and was disappointed in how they handled the switching.

I know we have established that mmod is the reason for not doing split screen, but, again, the problem with mmod is that it's at least a minute behind real time so the scoreboard or break-ins are not well timed. I wish they would do the split screen just for the final 2 minutes or something like that.

SI

I thought the switching was pulled off impeccably. Of course, if I was a fan of a team that was involved in one of these finishes, I would probably feel differently.

That said, we never missed the final ticks of a game that came down to the final ticks. I think they did a masterful job of switching games at the correct moments.

The switching during the Siena/OSU and Wisconsin/FSU games was perfect for me. A buddy of mine in New York City that I was chatting with at the time said that they switched from one game to the other while a shot was in mid-air at one point when both games were highly contested late. He was not happy at all heh.

Also, the score on the screen thing has been an issue for me as well when watching a game on TV and one on MMOD. What I would like to see in an ideal world is something along the lines of a small DirectTV package, not the full $80 March Madness thing, but something similar to the interactive stuff they did for the Australian Open and the Olympics where you could pull up stats and such. I'd pay $10 or so to have access to something like that through direct TV for the tournament if it also gave me the option to turn the live score tracking OFF so that I could continue to watch both without constantly seeing a scoreboard that is 45-60 seconds ahead on my TV. I assume most Cable companies can offer something similar as well.

Last shot of regulation. Felt like the power went out :banghead:

The moderately annoying thing here is WRAL feeds all 4 games in HD to Time Warner, but because they have to support people who only get the main WRAL feed, the main channel has to flip while they can leave the others alone.

What the heck is up with the STUPID scheduling? The tip off times are so dumb. Why not have one game tipping off every hour on Saturday?

I was just looking at the schedule for today and all the games are back to back to back. 2:20, 2:30, 2:40, 2:50 then 4:50, 5:00, and 5:20.

These games are stacked on top of one another and they will be done by 7. CBS could have done a lot better job of scheduling these games.

Ugly game. Makes you wonder what happened to Howlands policy of "playing the best defender, regardless of offensive ability/experience"

You left out the 1220ish tip for Arizona State.

The ending time is pretty obvious I think, it allows them to get to 60 Minutes, Amazing Race, and Cold Case, a night that they already tend to win on total households (while losing on 18-49). Between the vanity buying for the tournament and the steady buying already in place for their Sunday night block, getting the games out of the way without losing those other hours maximizes their revenue.

Plus it bears noting somewhere (might as well be here) that the tournament finished behind both of ABC's doctor/chick shows on Thursday, heck they were tied by the flagging E.R. in 18-49's. No reason to believe they wouldn't finish behind Housewives tonight as well. And while they'll still finish behind it, it probably doesn't feel quite as bad to have it be the regular shows do it instead of one of your programming centerpieces.

these tip times and schedules have been the same for as long as I can remember, at least a decade. One thing to keep in mind is that the second game at a location starts 30 minutes after the first one ends. So the tip times for the later games are just estimates.

I'm pretty sure it's not CBS, it's the NCAA.

If you believe that CBS isn't dictating tip times then you haven't been paying attention. There's some negotiation I'm sure and technically the NCAA sets the times but CBS pays handsomely for the right to have a great deal of input.

The fact that they've been doing it for a long time doesn't make it a good system.

Man, is it just me, or have a lot of people been fucking whiny in these NCAA threads this year? Lighten up and enjoy the games, you twats.


Oh, and allow me to twat out for a second: Please, ASU...beat Syracuse and their boring to watch zone defense

I rescind my complaint. I forgot ASU plays a similar defense...Syracuse just does it much, much better.

It does seem like sports (and especially sports networks, commentators, and the many conspiracies that explain outcomes we don't like) cause people a lot of misery.

Meanwhile it's halftime & Syracuse leads 41-32, without a single word about the game other than Karl's dislike of the team's defensive style.

I think Cuse is gonna get picked in the second half. This is the second half where the Big East run catches up to them...Harden can't play any worse. I think ASU has a run in them.

Part of me thinks that too, but then I also think - what real difference can an extra 30 minutes of basketball make a week and a half later (especially since a number of the starters fouled out well before the end of that game).

I think it's mental more than physical...somewhere you have to let down for a half. If it happens here, ASU can make this fun. Harden got a little better late vs Temple so maybe he does that here too.

I don't know. I'm kind of reconciling the idea that the Big East is just in a higher class than the PAC-10 this year. I'd love ASU to prove me wrong, but it seems like Syracuse is just a better team.

ASU really needs to get Pendergraph going by having the guards penetrate the zone. They shot 20 three pointers in the first half. I realize a zone can lull you into launching from deep, but if you get stone cold, that can lead to a blowout. You need to "diversify" and get the ball to the talented big. Harden is just the man to do that.

Wow, didn't expect this reaction when I came to check this thread. Syracuse dominated the first half and I see no reason why they wouldn't continue through the second half. Just because people tend to not like the Big East doesn't make ASU's talent level the same as Syracuse's.

Nice adjustment right off the bat to get Harden to the line.

I don't see the fatigue thing coming into play - what has it been, 9 days since the double-OT game?