Sweet-16 Weekend Starts

The March Madness sequence that involves cutting the field from Sweet-16 to Final Four is usually the best weekend of basketball of the year considering both quality and quantity.  Normally, all the teams playing are playing at a high level of talent and efficiency; there are not nearly as many games as in the first weekend of the tournament, but there are usually no mismatches either.  With that backdrop, I settled in last night to savor what eight of the Sweet-16 teams had to offer.  Here are some comments:

• Iowa 77  Nebraska 71:
  • Iowa sure doesn’t look like a “9-seed” tonight.
  • Game was close from the start; biggest lead was about 10 points.
• Purdue 79  Texas 77:
  • Texas had to win a play-in game to get in the tournament.
  • Giving 2^nd seed Purdue all it can handle.
  • Tramon Mark is a stud.
• Arizona 109  Arkansas 88:
  • Arkansas plays lackadaisical defense; that is fatal against Arizona’s offense.
  • Koa Peat is only 19 years old?
• Illinois 65  Houston 55:
  • Every shot is contested by both defenses – – tenacious defense all around.
  • Illinois grinds out every possession on offense – – no great scorers but no lack of effort.
  • Houston can’t shoot.  [Final stats = 22 of 64 from 2-point range.]

I said in an earlier rant that AJ Dybantsa was the most entertaining player I saw in the first rounds of the tournament and I continue to believe that.  If he were to decide to go to the NBA next year, I suspect he will need to add more than a little muscle to his frame.  Not so with Koa Peat of Arizona.  He is listed at 6’ 8” and 235 lbs.; that might have been accurate back in November at the start of the season, but he looks bigger than that now.  His body is already “NBA ready”.

I want to make one more comment about the Arizona/Arkansas game.  In the second half as Arizona was pulling away to make the outcome completely obvious, the Arkansas players stopped playing basketball for a short period and sought to “thug-up the game”.  There was one incident where the officials had to call a Flagrant-2 foul and eject a player to maintain order on the court.  That is not a good look for the team and specifically for Coach Calipari.  I understand that emotions on the court can sometimes be difficult to control, but the coach on the bench is an adult who is nominally in charge of the team, and it behooves the coach and the game itself for that coach to intervene and put a stop to “thuggery”.

• Not a shining moment for Coach Calipari there …

Moving on …  Thanksgiving is a time for families to come together to celebrate a holiday that acknowledges the blessings that have come to family members; it is nominally a time of camaraderie and fellowship.  There is a household in the Philly area where such may not be the case come November 2026.

Phillies’ infielder, Alec Bohm, just filed a lawsuit against his parents accusing them of defrauding him and mismanaging his money.  He seeks $3M from his parents and a full accounting of “his money”.  According to Spotrac.com Bohm has career earnings of $27.7M and is currently on a 1-year deal for $10.2M which was agreed to as a way to avoid salary arbitration in the MLB offseason.  Not surprisingly, the parents deny any malfeasance in the matter.

We are early in the legal process here; we are at the stage where both sides have issued statements of their position:

Per Bohm’s lawsuit:

“Daniel and Lisa Bohm, used several limited liability companies to funnel money from his personal financial accounts, which they then ‘converted to their own use.’

Per the parents’ lawyer:

“Mr. and Mrs. Bohm love their son very much and have always acted in his best interests, both personally and professionally and still do so to this day.  They are deeply saddened by the allegations made against them in this lawsuit and the sensational false narrative painted here, which they believe are entirely without merit.”

Don’t worry about passing the cranberry sauce in late November here …

Finally, an appropriate closing comment from Clarence Darrow:

“The first half of our lives are ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………