Here are notes and comments on the weekend basketball tournament games:
Overall, the games on Thursday and Friday were mediocre while the games on Saturday and Sunday were all very good.
Louisville/North Carolina State was an ugly game particularly in the first half when “neither team can hit ANYTHING.”
North Carolina State got into the 60s; when teams do that to Louisville, they often win. Not here…
Bob Molinaro posed this question regarding NC State in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot:
“Which way is it? After eviscerating Villanova, N.C. State is classified as an overachiever. But couldn’t you make the case that a team good enough to beat a No. 1 seed was guilty of underachievement by finishing only 10-8 in the ACC?”
Neither UCLA nor Gonzaga is proficient in offensive rebounding; “this is a one-and-done contest.” Gonzaga’s big men are not rim protectors.
Bryce Alford hit nine 3-pointers to win a game for UCLA in early round of the tournament; he hit his first 3-pointer with 2:21 to play in this game with UCLA down by 19 at that point.
The Kentucky/Notre Dame game was a GREAT basketball game. Period. “The only thing it lacked was overtime.”
Michigan St/Oklahoma was another ugly game; both teams missed open shots for the whole first half; neither team scored for a 5 minute stretch of the second half. All those missed shots clang off the rims as if they were boulders.
Duke/Utah was not pretty either. Let me reiterate something I said earlier:
Justise Winslow is REALLY GOOD !!
Louisville/Michigan State gave us extra time in a game that was tight from the start. Hard to ask for much more.
The Duke/Gonzaga game was a game of momentum swings; Duke’s win by 14 points is an example of a momentum swing. With 5 minutes left in the game, Duke led by 2 points and then the momentum swung… I think Damontas Sabonis played excellently and demonstrated the power of genetics; he is only a freshman and will not turn 19 for another month; he is going to be a really good NBA player. And now I am going to say something heretical:
Jahlil Okafor needs to return to school for another year instead of going to the NBA. His game is not ready for the NBA; his body is not ready for the NBA.
Please note that I did not say Okafor is not a good player; he is a very good player. The issue is that he is “a big” meaning he will have to bang bodies with centers and power forwards in the NBA and he is not yet ready to do that. He also does not pass well out of double-teams and his footwork on defense needs polishing too. Another year playing NCAA basketball will do him a lot of good.
Three ads that assaulted my consciousness over the weekend need comment:
Two people pull up to the dilapidated hotel with the crazy lady on the porch and use their in-car communication system to get out of there. They ask to be booked at the “furthest 5-star hotel”. Not a good idea because that might be in Beijing or Perth and their car isn’t going to get them there.
Game of War is clearly a computer game that I know nothing about. However, if you can “play for free”, how does the owner of the game find the money to pay for the advertisement and for the time slots in these games? I do not understand the business model here…
A “new show” on CBS will be The Odd Couple. Seriously now, hasn’t that been done to death yet?
Finally, here is another commentary from Bob Molinaro. I was fortunate not to have to listen to any of the radio broadcasts of any tournament games this year, so I did not have the same experience that he did. Nonetheless, he is definitely correct in his commentary:
“Too much static: Out and about in the car, I listened to parts of three NCAA tournament games last weekend, which means I heard a lot of screaming, yelping, screeching, wailing and howling from hysterical play-by-play men. And this was during the first half. When did so much caterwauling – to a supposedly neutral audience – become fashionable?”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………