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This goes back to the post I was talking about earlier where I posted the lines from a bunch of the games. The lines were really close this year, be it because of a lack of mid majors or, more likely, a bit more parity than the last couple of years (2 years ago had the last upsets ever, last year had all 4 #1 seeds). Most of the upsets were 2 or less points on the point spread so they didn't seem as dramatic as in the past. This, again, goes back to my contention that it wasn't until the last set of games from last night that things got interesting (and apparently ESPN agrees with their headline overnight but I'm not sure I want to use them to help defend my theory). SI |
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As we all know, the lines have nothing to do with how the game expects to play out but where the money is going to go. With more midmajors, the money is going to fall harder on the power conference teams nescesiatting the need for bigger spreads. The number of upsets has nothing to do with the number of midmajors in the tournament. Rainmaker's song and dance gets a little tiring when he has nothing to back up his "More midmajors" routine. |
OK, three games and it is very much looking like three blowouts so far. Not exactly must-see-TV at the moment.
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Nope- Texas A&M is keeping it kindof close but they look outclassed
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After Thursday's game I Was really nervous about Memphis' chances of beating Maryland, but this type of game is what we have come to expect of our Tigers this year. I hate that CBS switched over to UConn vs A&M as soon as it started and hasn't switched back to the Memphis game.... even with UConn winning by 20+
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At least Vasquez is getting some Top Gun points for me.
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boy these games today are real snoozers
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It's been quality time to do other stuff while having the games on as background noise
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Same here. I've gotten a few tasks done and am now just playing computer games while keeping the games on in the background. Hopefully, the late games will be more entertaining. |
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Agreed. I've actually just gone on to the DVR for now. |
Aw man. UNC-LSU. I wanted to stay with that Washington-Purdue game :(
Time to get out the second laptop for MMOD SI |
Not good news for UNC fans. Looks like Lawson might be done for the day and who knows for next week
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Lawson wasn't playing well at all anyway but damn that is a bad sign.
UNC has good depth inside(although I can't stand Tyler Zeller, he is technically depth), but thompson has 2 fouls, david and hansbrough 1 already. Also, Thornton might score 40 today(see good guards against UNC all season long) |
Nantz is slobbering all over Lawson.
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I'm not sure why LSU decided that the contested 15-18 foot jump shot was superior to driving to the basket into the Carolina big men who all have some fouls already, but I do thank them for it.
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I wasn't saying that it wasn't an upset. I'm saying the average guy who looks at the scores is going to consider Siena a bigger upset than Arizona regardless of seeds. Plus I said there is a ton of parity in college basketball. The difference between a 12 seed and 5 seed is much smaller than in the past. |
What a time for Channel 4 HD to go down.. :(
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Well, a rare nice defensive half for UNC, and a very nice showing in the post by Hansbrough, Thompson and Davis all. For all the slurping Lawson got for that one transition basket, he has been a hinderance, not doing anything with the ball that Frasor or Drew couldn't do, and he is obviously incredibly uncomfortable out there and his shot is way off.
Of course, if UNC continues to lead and this helps Lawson be more ready next week then that's all fine. LSU's defensive stopper that we were chatting about Thursday is on Ellington, which makes sense instead of putting him on the PG, and he has done a good job making sure Ellington cannot get open for 3's in the half court set, but Ellington has still managed to have a solid 11 point half. |
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Only Marcus Thornton is good at the drive to the basket, everyone else is below average for their position. I think we are playing hard and well in general, UNC is just making all of their short range hooks and jumpers, even while well defended. (Which is most of the time) I am impressed that we have kept the UNC post men as far from the basket as we have. If we have a little more shooting luck in the 1st half and Carolina a little less, its a very close game. But that's basketball. |
haha well that was a nice start.
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Well, looks like this batch of games is an awful lot more competitive. Looks like UNC is going to need to squeeze everything they can get out of Lawson in the 2nd half of this game.
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I'm surprised Purdue-Washington isn't closer
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I saw the Boilers up close 3 times last week and they were really clicking. Hummel is 100% and they were shooting lights out.
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North Carolina might want to consider boxing someone, anyone, out.
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[quote]#6 seed Arizona State is playing #11 seed Georgia at the Gwinnett Arena in Duluth, GA. That's 45 minutes or so from Athens but it's considerably closer than playing in Atlanta would be. I know the thought is to help attendance but they're playing in a nearly empty building, as UGA doesn't even draw well at home (unless Tennessee comes to town) and this particular mediocre squad inspired pretty much zero interest.[/i]
I think I just figured out where some of those fans were. Attendance for the basketball tournament game listed as 2,200 and change in the local writeup. Attendance for today's UGA-Miss St baseball game on campus? 4,461 which is a new record at Foley Field. I've seen the fans at both and there's a reasonable amount of non-student carryover between the two with older fans. I have to think that baseball game, for whatever reason, was the choice of at least 500 people who would have otherwise gone to the basketball tournament to follow the local team. |
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That's a nice breakdown. Might have seemed worse when I made the comment as they were switching back and forth between Siena-Ohio State and Wisconsin-FSU. I mean Siena won an NCAA tournament game shooting 33%. That is amazing to me. Do you know if there is a way to find statistics like that for the 80's or 90's? I'd be interested to see if FG% has remained the same. College basketball is odd to me for the simple reason that it's probably the only sport where a team from 25 years ago could beat up on a team from this era. I can't think of another sport that has that element to it. I think there are a lot of reasons for it, but I think the one and done rule the NBA implemented has actually hurt college hoops. We just don't see many great teams that have great juniors and seniors anymore. The one year players kill the continuity of teams and don't allow them to gel over years. |
I am SO impressed with LSU right now and their ability to respond to whatever UNC dishes out. After hearing all year about how the SEC was having a terrible year and how amazing the ACC teams were, it would be awesome for another ACC team to go down, especially at the hands of the SEC.
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Just got to Houston Bush Airport where I have a layover for an hour, signed in just in time to see an 8-0 UW run. Go Huskies!!
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LAWSON. Damn what a change from the first half.
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Griffen with a tough make for "and 1" checks out his guns, then proceeds to clang a foul shot off the backboard. Nice.
Hey CBS, please change us over to the UNC game or the Purdue game if you insist on sticking with semi-local coverage. |
Let's go Huskies.
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LAWSON. That's the 5th time he's gotten to the basket this half(scoring on 4 of them), this is why UNC has to have him playing. Total game changer.
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LSU-UNC is getting out of hand now, it was tied at 63 and is now 74-63 North Carolina.
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Can't agree more- he makes a huge difference. That was why I was picking against them in some of my brackets- if he's out, they're definitely beatable. With him, they're the favorite. SI |
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Its going to be real interesting to see how badly this messes him up for next week(assuming Carolina hangs on to win, not a sure thing at all yet). I'm going to be rooting big time for Western Kentucky tomorrow, that's for sure. As for the 11-0 run since it was tied at 63, UNC has stopped giving LSU offensive rebounds at will, and Thornton has gone cold again, I think he missed 3 3 pointers during that stretch, when earlier in the half he wasn't missing anything at all. |
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I was legit curious when I started looking them up & was surprised to see that myself really. Quote:
I imagine you could find some odd reference somewhere by Googling through random articles about shooting or the tournament but probably your best would be to find the box scores from older tournaments. Heck, going one by one through the box scores on ESPN is how I pulled that together this morning (and it was every bit as tedious as it sounds). Quote:
As you might suspect from me noting it here, I think the complete dependence that many teams have developed on the three has to be part of it. There's always exceptions and even moreso in limited samples like this one but typically teams don't shoot the three as well as they shoot the two. But there's quite a few teams that are shooting close to half of their total shots from out there, it has to drive total FG% down. Granted, watching Tennessee persist at it all season is influencing my perception of the problem (and they're pretty much the poster children for it) but it has to be a pretty decent impact for a lot of teams. I understand why teams do it, you can't just shoot twos when the other guy keeps hitting threes and "4 of 10 from 3 is the same number of points as 6 of 10 from 2" and all that but it does make for more missed shots. |
Good effort by LSU but it's tough to beat UNC at home.
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great defense by purdue in this final 90 seconds
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Bracket...officially busted. Washington was a final four team in most of my money brackets.
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Washington had a chance....Purdue buckled down there. Now U-Dub has to hope for a missed free throw.
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I think the same could be said for all of basketball. The NBA has a lot of teams/players that shoot way too many 3's. Even stars like Lebron are chucking up 4-5 3's a game when they are not good 3-point shooters. |
Washington put themselves in a hole, and just couldn't get over the hump. Now Purdue has the extremely daunting task of facing Connecticut.
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For many college teams, they aren't taking too many 3's at all. 33% from 3 = 50% from 2 as Jon pointed out, and the top 50 3 point shooting teams in the country this year are all over 37%(looking for a list of all 330+ teams but top 50 is all I've found in a quick search so far). So these teams are lowering their FG % but they are likely far more effective as a result of the 3 point shot. |
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Try that NCAA stats link I had in my original post about this. It'll give you about 200 & someodd of the D1 teams, basically all of those who average more than 5 three point shots a game. There were some who didn't show up because of that criteria apparently but it covered most of them. IIRC from a quick glance, the range of difference for 3 point shooting from one team to the next was smaller than I would have expected. |
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It's about the conference you're in, coupled with who you play and how small your school is. Davidson will always be a mid-major unless they win a national title and then get invited to play as a basketball only member of a major conference. Gonzaga is the same. It's not a moniker that's being misapplied, at all. Being a "solid program" and being "a few seasons away from being obscure" is a pretty thin line for most of the mid-majors. Even Gonzaga could fall on hard times if Mark Few were to leave, a new coach who didn't have his magic at recruiting or having a team gel, and unlike Carolina or Duke (a team that was a bottom feeder in a major conference pre-Coach K) who have years of pedigree to fall back on if times get hard on the court. It's also about revenues. Those mid-major programs still probably aren't revenue generating programs, because of all of the work those schools have to do to keep them in the national conversation or to fly them from Hell to Thermopolis to get them to play teams that might get them some recognition. George Mason made the Final Four. But they're still a mid-major and nothing is going to change that, save for a decade or more at the top level..at which time, they'll surely change conferences as a result. I do think there is a difference between mid-major programs like Butler, Gonzaga or state university teams like Utah, Memphis or some school from the Missouri Valley Conference who have basketball pedigree and can roll out good years where they get multiple bids to the tournament, versus say, micro-majors from one-bid leagues like the MAAC, Atlantic Sun, Sun Belt or the HBCU conferences (MEAC, SWAC) who are D1INO (Division 1 in Name Only) and who recruit kids based on that fact and whose ONLY reason for being up is the shot at getting into the tournament. So the real distinction is between the mid-majors and those teams, not the major conference schools and the mid-majors, because by and large..while the teams change, the conferences basically remain the same and they're at the behest of a system that renders them pretty expendable. |
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Yeah there you go. 210 teams in division I shoot 33% or better from 3. That'll lower your overall FG % but is more effective than most teams are capable of inside the 3 point line. |
Griffin is just a monster! 32 points and 15 boards today!
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Booyah :) The finish to those two games last night were just awesome. |
LOL...WKU has a player named....get ready for this: Steffphon Pettigrew
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Agreed. Even with the double digit loss, I am very proud as a LSU fan. Its hard to describe how well they improved the post defense and rebounding to hang with UNC through most of the second half. UNC was playing in front of a home crowd, and they hit a lot of tough shots. I don't think anyone in the nation would have beaten them tonight. Will have to appreciate this LSU season for a while though, we are going to SUCK next year, even if Tazmin Mitchell comes back. |
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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. |
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Oh yeah.. two good finishes coming up!
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Wow, that last Gonzaga bucket was WAY too easy.
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Duke would be well advised to win this one in regulation, given the foul problems. Singler and Thomas out already.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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. |
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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. Quote:
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) |
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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?
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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?
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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. |
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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. |
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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. |
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Ugly game. Makes you wonder what happened to Howlands policy of "playing the best defender, regardless of offensive ability/experience" |
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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.
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I'm pretty sure it's not CBS, it's the NCAA. |
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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. |
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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). |
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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.
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Nice adjustment right off the bat to get Harden to the line.
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I don't see the fatigue thing coming into play - what has it been, 9 days since the double-OT game?
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