MPrior

I can't stand his attitude. Trade the bum. He should be sprinting around those bases.

I thought that for awhile, but their defense was very good against Louisville And against Washington State. Don't get me wrong, their defense is good, and it's gotten better over the course of the season, but it's still not the stifling defense of Kansas, Memphis, or UCLA. All I'm saying is that UNC is not close to a prohibitive favorite at all, as many people seem to be suggesting. I don't think they have any better chance at the whole thing than any of the other teams, and there's an argument that could be made (http://www.kenpom.com/stats.php) that they have the worst chance of the four, however slight the difference may be. They could win it all, sure - I'll be very happy if they do. I just don't understand why people seem so convinced they'll win. I wished I shared such confidence.

There's probably something funny I could say about this.

Recently in this thread, there's been a lot of UNC hatred - which I obviously don't understand, but that's not really the point. There've also been a bunch of references to UNC as the "favorite" or the overwhelming choice for overall #1, or whatever. I don't get that at all. Yeah, they're playing very well right now, and I think that's where their hope lies, because they're statistically not as strong as any of the other three teams. Their offense is obviously very good, and can be overwhelmingly powerful, but their defense just isn't at the same level as Kansas, UCLA, or Memphis. Snood, you say you feel like KU is the underdog going into this game - well that's how I feel about UNC. Maybe it's just homer insecurity on both our parts. But I think to describe any of the four teams as true underdogs in their games is probably inaccurate. Both games seem to me like basic coin flips. In any case, it should be a good final four. I would be looking forward to it if I wasn't painfully aware of just how shot my nerves are gonna be through the whole game on Saturday (and hopefully the game on Monday!), and how depressed I'll be if/when UNC loses.

I'm only seeing the Texas-Stanford game, but the Davidson-Wisconsin score is getting ridiculous.

As a North Carolina boy who had friends go to Davidson, I would SO be rooting for them. Unfortunately, I have Wisconsin winning this game in my bracket, and as long as I don't miss any games, I can nurse a delusion that I might actually win 10 grand. Where did you grow up? Asheville, the single greatest city in the universe.

As a North Carolina boy who had friends go to Davidson, I would SO be rooting for them. Unfortunately, I have Wisconsin winning this game in my bracket, and as long as I don't miss any games, I can nurse a delusion that I might actually win 10 grand.

Says the guy with a Northwestern logo staring at me, I gotta run Wisconsin is playing their Sweet 16 game right now. Hey now, us defenseless Northwesterners don't deserve your ridicule. Besides, our basketball may not be great, but our, um ... well, our debate team is badass. So there.

So just for kicks, I took a look at some of the leading brackets on ESPN. Good news! No one ahead of me has the exact same remaining picks as me, so I could conceivably win the whole thing (yeah, right). Bad news: there are three people who are tied with me who do have the exact same remaining picks, and one of them even has almost identical tiebreaker points. I chose UNC over UCLA in the final, 74-71. He has it 74-70. That's what I get for being too busy to compete in any smaller pools this year, I guess.

i am... not doing quite as well. I'm pretty thoroughly convinced that it's mostly luck. There have been enough games that could have easily gone either way, and just happened to go in my favor. And despite my good showing so far, all it takes is one missed game to drop hundreds of spots, probably.

I'm now tied for 26th on ESPN with 700 out of a possible 800 points. The leaders have 720 points. So tomorrow, I need Wisconsin, Memphis, Texas, and Kansas to win.

UCLA has been looking a lot more vulnerable than I would have predicted. They're arguably the best team in the country, and no worse than 3rd (I personally think they're 2nd behind Kansas), but they've struggled a lot more than they should have against a pretty tame schedule. I have them in my final game, and I still think they'll make it, but that's really only because they have a relatively easy road there. If they keep playing like they are, they could get into trouble pretty quick.

I'm very impressed with UNC's play today. They buckled down on defense, and were able to maintain a very efficient offense despite Wazzu's pace and stingy defense. I expected that game to be much closer. Also, if the current leads hold up, I'll be 4 for 4 today on my bracket, and may climb into the top 50 on ESPN (I'm #78 right now).

Agreed. Bilas, Aikman and Johnston are quite good - despite the fact that I really don't like their teams. Yeah, I especially want to hate Bilas, as a UNC fan. But he's actually pretty good at what he does, and I tend to agree with what he says.

J.J. Putz already uses it. Poorly, I might add. Oh. Well crap.

Wait, I'm confused. You have a "cheesy consideration" category, and also included "Living on a Prayer" OUTSIDE of said cheesy category? That makes no sense. As for me, my vote goes to Thunderstruck by AC/DC, but I think I might just be on that kind of kick right now.

Yeah, my fiance is from Kansas, and when Roy was in his stay-or-go quandary, there was some good-natured ribbing on both sides. I can see where there might be some bad feelings after he left on the part of Kansas fans - it was pretty abrupt.

I'm partial to Roy, too, but I'm probably biased; he coaches my team, and I'm pretty fanatically devoted, he's a North Carolina boy (the best state in the nation, clearly), and he's a Dean Smith protege, and Dean Smith was a BRILLIANT coach. Plus, his offensive system is not only enormously effective, but it's also a lot of fun to watch. His shortcomings as a coach, as far as I can tell, do lie on the defensive end, but from what I hear, it's not for lack of effort. If you ask him, he emphasizes defense a TON in practice. Maybe he's just not great at teaching it; maybe his players are just not that good at it; maybe his run-and-gun system just makes playing good defense hard to do. Last year's team was one of the best defensive teams in the nation, though (I think Pomeroy ratings had them as the #2 most effective defense out there at some point late in the season), so he can't be that bad at it. That probably owed a lot to Brandan Wright's wingspan, though. All that said, Washington State scares the crap out of me, because they're too good a team to be swept up in Carolina's pace - I think they'll slow things down pretty effectively, and then their defense might pick UNC apart. Who knows. It's a little frustrating to know that, despite the #1 overall seed (not that I think the Heels deserve it), they have the hardest path to San Antonio, and that difference has only been exacerbated by all the upsets in the other brackets. Washington State (who was underseeded) and then (hopefully) either Tenn or Louisville is a pretty daunting path.

Maybe they ranked them by most recognizable names. Williams, Calipari, and Huggins are mediocre coaches. The first 2 just get great talent. Huggins is a great motivator. My top 5 would be Howland, Ryan, Miller, Bennett, Izzo. I don't necessarily disagree with your top 5 (although any attempt at ranking coaches is pretty arbitrary), but the bolded seems pretty suspicious to me. The single most important thing a college coach of an elite program does is recruit. Getting great talent is part of what makes them great coaches. Similarly, motivating players is a big part of being a good coach. But even if you narrowly define coaching as only strategic in-game decisions, execution of a system, and management of practice drills, as it seems you're doing, then whether or not a coach recruits well or motivates well is irrelevant to whether or not they're good coaches, and you haven't provided any reasoning to support your argument that they're mediocre. It's not that I necessarily disagree with you - it's actually that I'm interested, because I've never thought of any of those guys as mediocre, and I'd like to hear why you think they are. It's probably worth saying that I'm not being a smartass here - I'm genuinely interested in this, because my knowledge of of the ins and outs of coaching is limited.

I'm 190th on ESPN right now. No, it's not super impressive, but it's pretty decent, considering there are something like 3 million brackets. I'm fully convinced that it really just boils down mostly to luck, though, as long as you don't make too many silly calls.

So far I'm doing well - I only missed four games in the first round, and Clemson is my only Sweet 16 team gone. What bothers me is that two of my misses - Texas A&M and USC - I reneged on in my later bracket, and just forgot to change in this one before the tourney started. There's no way I do well in the long run, though. My final four is three 1 seeds and a 2 seed. Even if it happens, there'll be a ton of people who have picked the same thing. Also, I have UNC winning the whole thing. Which, again, is highly unlikely - in my bracket they have to go through Kansas and UCLA to do so, both of which are probably better teams than UNC. Crap.

So the upshot of this is that UCLA's trip to the final four just got even easier. Well, I'll be on UCLA's campus most the way, wearing my Tar Heels shirt. I'm going to be very unpopular indeed if they meet in the championship game (which they probably won't, but still). Kind of like when I was in Chicago for the 2005 finals. This should be fun one way or the other.

Another sad story, kind of the Nats version of Prior. I thought this guy was going to be a strike out king in the NL for years. Oh no. Only Cub hitters are strikeout kings. Didn't you hear?

Sometimes I hate filling out brackets. As a complete UNC homer, I HAVE to pick them to win the whole thing, at least when they have a reasonable chance of doing so (and they do). Logically, though, I know that they're probably the weakest 1 seed, and they're also in the toughest bracket, so if I had to bet on one top seed NOT to make the final four, I'd pick them. But I have to pick them to win the whole thing. You see my dilemma.

Final game as in national title game? Clemson isn't very good. I respectfully disagree. Clemson is very good. No, I don't think they're going to make the title game, but they're still very good. I think people don't give them much credit because, well, they're Clemson. And everyone remembers last year when they started out hot, but it turned out to be smoke and mirrors once they started play in the ACC. This year's team is different, and I would not want to see them in the tournament. Ken Pomeroy's efficiency statistics have them at #13 in the nation, they're very athletic, and defend pretty durn well, especially on the perimiter.