Before I get to notes from last night’s NCAA tournament games, I want to pose a question. Dean Smith left each of his lettermen from his coaching tenure $200 to go out and have a nice dinner on him. Imagine for a moment that you were one of the recipients of that $200 check and also imagine that you are not homeless and hungry. Question:
Do you cash the check and take the money and go out and have a nice dinner on Coach Smith as he “instructed” or do you frame the check and the letter that came with it and hang it up as a memorial to Coach Smith?
I am not sure what I would do in that circumstance…
Here are notes from last night’s games:
Xavier’s Matt Stainbrook blocked a shot early in the first half and I swear you could not have slipped a credit card under his shoes on the play.
In my pre-tournament “Names Rant”. How did I miss Myles Davis from Xavier?
Arizona won by 8 but it was closer than that with less than 5 minutes to go.
Notre Dame guard, Demetrius Jackson, was out of control in the first half but settled down and played excellently in the second half.
You gotta love Pat Connaughton and the way he plays.
Wichita State’s Ron Baker was a no-show last night – and that is being polite.
Did Wichita State leave its game on the floor against Kansas? Looks as if they are playing with a hangover.
One of the announcers said that UNC is a great offensive rebounding team. That is correct; however, he said that just after UNC got an offensive rebound that had bounced on the floor. Great offensive rebounding teams usually get the ball before it bounces…
An official in the UNC/Wisconsin game missed two violations because he forgot a basic tenet of officiating mechanics. As the trail official, never get ahead of the ball coming up the court. He did it twice and missed two calls on the baseline because he was out of position.
Sam Dekker and Nigel Hayes won the game for Wisconsin. Frank Kaminsky sure did not play like a candidate for Player of the Year.
When West Virginia came out and missed three early open shots, it was a death sentence. If their pressure defense was going to work, they needed to set it up on made baskets. They never got it to work.
Has there ever been a Sweet 16 game where the winner doubled the score of the loser?
Comment from my notes with 13:14 on the clock in the first half:
“Game OVER!”
As I said before, I REALLY like Trey Lyles from Kentucky. I think he has a lucrative NBA future ahead of him.
There is an NFL “issue” out there that has nothing to do with “the game” or the CBA or any of those normal issues and it is not getting much attention. There is a legal tussle going on within the family of Saints’ owner Tom Benson for control of the team. This may be a major proxy fight or a mere kerfuffle; it is definitely a family feud so maybe they should get Richard Dawson to mediate the situation. Oh, that won’t work; Richard Dawson got a Celestial Discharge a couple of years ago…
In any event, Benson is 87 years old and owns the Saints and the NBA’s Pelicans and some car dealerships and he evidently decided to change his estate plans in favor of his third wife to the detriment of his daughter and her two children. One report said that he had removed “hundreds of millions of dollars of assets” from the trust funds for his daughter and grand kids. Those aggrieved folks claim that Benson is senile and that he is being manipulated by his current wife. The daughter and grandkids have asked a court to order a mental exam to determine Benson’s mental competence and to appoint a conservator to manage the financial empire.
What Benson removed from the trust funds was a majority interest in both the Saints and the Pelicans; that is indeed no small matter. However, his lawyer claims that he has put in the trust funds a “promissory note” in the amount of $449M. I do not know what a “promissory note” might mean in this context nor would I have any way to know how it might be enforced when Tom Benson joins Richard Dawson in an alternate universe. However, I do have to note that $449M is a lot of cheese…
This situation does not have the sensational value that the Donald Sterling mess had. Nevertheless, this might become very “down-and-dirty” as the kids fight with the wife #3 over an estate that is probably worth something north of $2B.
Finally, to maintain perspective on the popularity of some sports that are not very important here in the US, consider this item from a recent column by Bob Molinaro in the Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot:
“Numbers game: Last weekend’s World Cup cricket match between India and Pakistan was watched by about a billion people – eight times the audience for the Super Bowl. In other words, globally speaking, Katy Perry and her dancing sharks were a lounge act.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………