Opening Day + NCAA Championship used to be my playground

Opening Day + NCAA Championship Same Day

If you ever want to really draw a harsh line in the sand around “Adulthood,” think of a cherished period of time from your childhood — say, dew-encased summer evenings — and then consider what you’re doing on those same… Continue Reading

Wisconsin > Kentucky is Duke > UNLV 1991

Kentucky Wisconsin UNLV Duke

Follow the bouncing ball here. 1990 National Championship Game: Duke vs. UNLV (UNLV won by 30. Mostly awful game.) 1991 Final Four: Duke vs. UNLV (Duke avenges, wins by 2 over undefeated UNLV team … and in Indianapolis no less.)… Continue Reading

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It’s probably time to fire JT3, Georgetown

Fire JT3 Georgetown

I went to Georgetown University for undergraduate. I’m old, so that was a long time ago (graduated in 2003). Four years after my crew of people graduated, we made a Final Four run with John Wallace and Jeff Green, etc.… Continue Reading

Iowa State, Baylor: Let’s talk about 14-over-3 seed NCAA Tournament upsets

Bad Day For 3-Seeds

Two three seeds lost in the first round of the first day of the first block of the NCAA Tournament earlier: Iowa State (who I had to the Final Four in some brackets) and Baylor. Since the switch to a… Continue Reading

In terms of upsets, the two craziest NCAA Tournaments were 1999 and 2014. UConn won both, interestingly.

The 2014 NCAA Tournament was pretty crazy, for sure — an eight-seed (Kentucky) met a seven-seed (UConn) in the national championship game, after said eight-seed (at one point the No. 1 team in America) had dispatched the only undefeated team… Continue Reading

Florida’s Billy Donovan deserves a little bit more credit as a top-3 to top-5 college coach, no?

Cool subplot to Florida vs. UCLA’s Sweet Sixteen game tonight: in the 1987 Final Four, Providence lost by 14 to Syracuse — Derrick Coleman with 12 boards, eh? — and Indiana beat UNLV by four. Had Providence pulled out that… Continue Reading

Can Mark Few ever win an NCAA title at Gonzaga? (And what does that say about the idea of “mid-majors?”)

If you’re an average individual, chances are you know Gonzaga University because of the above clip — John Stockton went there — or because of the below clip: Secondary note of importance: that UCLA-Gonzaga game may be one of the… Continue Reading

Here’s the broader lesson in Mercer beating Duke in the first major upset of the 2014 NCAA Tournament

The Mercer team had seven seniors. The four guys with the most points for Mercer — Gollon, Coursey, Hall, and White Jr. — are all seniors. They’ve quite possibly played about 100 games together, and had countless more practices. Duke’s five starters contained one senior… Continue Reading