The Tournament Starts Now
Tuesday night, the fun begins. At 7 p.m. ET, the quarterfinals commence in the Big South Conference and the Horizon League tournaments. At 7:30, the Ohio Valley Conference follows suit.As of that moment, The Minutes counts 308 Division I teams harboring hopes of an NCAA tournament berth. A handful still will be competing to squeeze into the 299 conference tournament slots, since some leagues don't have an all-comers tourney. (Boo to them. And hooray to the Big East for getting it right this year.) A few more teams will be tussling for the Ivy League title.
So for everyone who starts whining at this time of year that college basketball ought to expand its tournament from 65 to 68 or 96 or 1.6 million teams, The Minutes has a simple and succinct answer:
You're already in. You just don't realize it.
Just about everyone has a chance to use the Little Dance as a vehicle for reaching the Big Dance. You have the opportunity to win your way in through your league tourney.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
The Madness Is Near
ESPN.com's Pat Forde understands why the NCAA basketball tournament should not be expanded:
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2 comments:
Thursday through Sunday of the opening weekend are the best 4 days of the year!
Carolina stinks.
Sincerely,
Coach K
Thanks for the opening, Coach MJM, I mean, K. I've been wanting to rant about this, but didn't want to write an entire post about it - the comment section is a good place.
These two similar situations sum up the difference between Coach K and Roy Williams:
1) UNC @ Duke; a Carolina guard (Ty Lawson, I believe) gets knocked down in the backcourt by a screen. Roy Williams goes nuts. Not on an official (because it was a legal screen), but on the reigning Player of the Year, Tyler Hansbrough, for not letting his teammate know the screen was coming. Even though Hansbrough ended the play by drawing a charge, Roy takes him out of the game and lets him have it.
2) Duke @ Maryland; Duke guard Nolan Smith gets knocked down (& out) in the backcourt by a legal screen. Coach K, rather than using it as a teaching opportunity with his team (a la Roy), freaks out on the officials. Reminds me of my favorite song ever played during a Kodak TV ad, "I see your true colors shining through!"
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