NCAA Hoops Summary

I am going to try my best to get this blog fired back up. If anyone is interested in doing a guest column, please let me know, as I could use the content!

Overall, I was disappointed in the NCAA Tournament this year. In fact, in general, I thought it sucked. Few upsets, not enough buzzer beaters/great games, too many people that no nothing about hoops contending in their pools because it was all chalk, chalk, chalk. What makes the tournament great is a) exciting games, and b) upsets. We did not have enough of either.

While I have not been on the Ohio St. bandwagon for most of their 20+ game winning streak that was snapped last night, I was actually pretty impressed with them in defeat. In fact, I think OSU could beat Florida in a best of 7 series. The difference last night was that Florida hit a ton of threes, while the Buckeyes missed almost all of theirs. To me, this game was great support for Stitzer’s point that we need to move out the three point line, probably out 12-18” would more than do the trick, not necessarily the 5’ old Stitz is lobbying for. But the Bucks got nothing from Butler, Lewis, and Lighty, while Conley only came alive late to support just a monster effort from Oden (picture perfect coming after the over-rated sports guy spent paragraphs yesterday saying how he had not put together a great effort all year, and was unlikely to do it last night). Speaking of the sports guy, I would bet my house that he has not watched 15-16 Ohio State games this year like he claims. Hell, he did not watch 15-16 college basketball games the past 6 years excluding the tournament.

After watching the tournament, my top-12 NBA draft list is something like (this excludes any foreign prospects, although I am sure the sports guy has seen each of them play 15-16 times as well):
Greg Oden
Kevin Durant
Corey Brewer
Julian Wright
Al Horford
Brandon Wright
Mike Conley, Jr.
Acie Law, IV
Yannick Noah’s kid
Big Roy Hibbert
Tyler Hansbrough (he will not be a star but he will be solid for 12 years and plays with a huge motor and I think NBA teams are underrating him because of stupid things like “his arms are too short”)
Jeff Green

Tomorrow or Thursday I will be back to discuss the opening of baseball season. I am too depressed to tackle this now as the Philberts got off to their usual L on opening day by blowing a 3-2 lead in the 8th inning. Although who would not expect Edgar freaking Renteria to beat you with home runs in the 8th inning to tie the game and 10th inning to win it. Ugh.

One more quick baseball point. How can anyone hate the Yankees as much as the Red Sox anymore. After all, it is the Red Sox that now sign all the overpriced free agents (J.D. “the D is for dickhead” Drew for $70 million, are you serious?), not the Yankees. But we have 162 games to get into that….