Exile on Waveland

Oh, I forgot to ask: does anyone want to reconvene the Izzo-is-better-than-Coach K argument?

You could look at it that way, or you could look at it as mid major teams becoming more competitive in the past few years, which might lead to more opportunities. If Michigan State can make it to the final 4 as often as they have, I've got to believe mid majors will have more opportunities. Butler's only losing one player (Veasley) so who knows, they could have another shot next year. Really though this was the weakest field ever. College bball should be a lot better next year. I doubt Butler gets this far again. They had a great shot against a less than super opponent. Gave it a hell of a run. Why will college basketball be better next year? I don't think I can agree with that. Second, while I doubt Butler makes it back to the title game, they figure to be even better next year (assuming, as I do, that Hayward returns).

Willful ignorance is equivalent to stupidity.

Julian Wright doesn't have a title.

2006 and 2010 now for me. So I can blame you guys for the 2006 title game... :x Well, I did go with a Florida grad . . .

2006 and 2010 now for me. May you have better seats than I (or, at least, what I believe my seats to be)!

People are very, very dumb. Sit in the crowd at any MLB game and listen to the fans near you discuss the game. They are morons. Making stats easier to understand with minimal explanation can only be helpful. Is there a reason that you're resistant to the idea? Or is it just "I like it the way it is and I don't wanna have to change"? I once heard a (Cardinal fan in St. Louis, if you must know) explain to his girlfriend that slugging percentage was "um, uh . . . possible doubles?" So, yeah, people are very, very dumb. On topic, that was a very, very good article coming from Simmons.

Probably be a radio/gamecast game for me today, though hopefully I can catch the end after work. Pretty excited.

Scalped some seats for the game tonight from some Michigan State fans for less than half of face value. I'm on a four year cycle of seeing title games: 2002 ( :( ), 2006, now 2010.

Except as it stands now, only a handful of those crappy teams get in, not every single one of them. Like I said in another thread, we're talking about a 30 game season with schedules that are wildly different. The difference between at large #10 and at large #50 isn't really that great on a true ability level, which means the only difference in those play in games is in our perspective of the teams. Again, ridiculous. The No. 10 at-large this year was roughly Michigan State, while the No. 50 at-large would roughly be, I don't know, someone like Cincinnati. And we've still got 10 more spots to go. You think Michigan State (28-8, Final Four) isn't that much different from Cincinnati (19-16)? Much less someone 10 pegs worse? Michigan State is a bit of a loaded example because of their injury circumstances, why not use Temple or Vandy? Can you say with a great deal of confidence that they'd be so much better than a Cincinnati over a similar 50 or 75 game schedule that it's ridiculous they'd be grouped anywhere near together? In a perfect world, the expansion wouldn't go all the way to 96, but I'm okay with it. It makes the pursuit of a bye more compelling(if there's such a chasm between the bubble and the at larges who make it, wouldn't it be better if those teams had a lot to play for instead of the bubble?) while keeping the pursuit of the teams on the bubble, and it adds more games to the tournament. For all the "no one cares about Minnesota v. Stony Brook" talk, no one cares about BYU/Florida or Vandy/Murray St. if the game is in November. It's the inclusion in the tournament that makes the game compelling, and I really don't buy that it would be so much more watered down by the expansion. I chose the loaded example of Michigan State intentionally, as I'm sure you're aware. Temple wasn't an at-large team. But taking Pomeroy No. 35 Vanderbilt, a team that was 24-9 and 12-4 in a power conference, and saying they'd still look better than No. 74 Cincinnati (19-16, 7-11) after 20 more games isn't terribly difficult in my opinion (though I could've used a better team to support my point, as I actually believe Cincy is pretty damn good and likely would have picked them to upset Vandy). Basketball isn't baseball where you really need a plethora of games to separate the good from the mediocre. I don't see how it's debatable expansion will water the tournament down. I think it's already watered down -- garbage teams like UTEP, Utah State, etc., already get at-large berths -- and adding 31 middling teams waters it down even more. It makes the product on the court worse, with no redeeming qualities that I can see. Other than, of course, money for a not-for-profit.

The wild card system is great. It allowed some outstanding teams to enter the playoffs that otherwise wouldn't have due to somewhat random chance (divisional alignment). The NCAA Tournament remedied that situation years ago. Oh, and sometimes different is worse. Some people are reluctant of change no matter what, some are reluctant of change for the worse.

Except as it stands now, only a handful of those crappy teams get in, not every single one of them. Like I said in another thread, we're talking about a 30 game season with schedules that are wildly different. The difference between at large #10 and at large #50 isn't really that great on a true ability level, which means the only difference in those play in games is in our perspective of the teams. Again, ridiculous. The No. 10 at-large this year was roughly Michigan State, while the No. 50 at-large would roughly be, I don't know, someone like Cincinnati. And we've still got 10 more spots to go. You think Michigan State (28-8, Final Four) isn't that much different from Cincinnati (19-16)? Much less someone 10 pegs worse?

That's incredibly dense. Automatic bids exist, you know? Reducing the amount of teams to 32 or 16 either forces the NCAA to (i) eliminate at-large berths (AWFUL) or (ii) eliminate non-BCS automatic bids (everyone loves that in football, right?). Plus, again, there is a big difference between a few crappy, undeserving at-large teams getting bids and 30+ crappy, undeserving at-large teams getting in.

A.J. Edds or best CB available (Alterraun Verner/Javier Arenas/Akwasi Owusu-Ansah)?

Not a chance. Though if the Cubs did win the World Series this year, then maybe.

Again, this exact same things were said when the field was expanded to 64 teams. "The big six won't allow any of those at large to be mid-major teams" "Any big six team with a .500 conference record will be let in the tourney" "The extra game will kill the chances of the smaller schools to make a run" yada yada yada I can pretty much promise you no references to the "Big Six" were made the last time the tournament expanded (excluding the inconsequential move from 64 to 65). The year was 1985. Consolidation of the would-be BCS conferences had not taken place. Penn State was in the Atlantic 10. Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Baylor, and Arkansas were in the SWC. Notre Dame was independent. Memphis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Florida State, Virginia Tech, and South Carolina were in the Metro. Miami (FL) didn't have a program. The current BCS conferences had not flexed their muscles to the point they have now. Finally, comparing this to the last expansion isn't terribly instructive. The last expansion went from 53 teams to 64 teams. That was actually the biggest ever expansion, as nine was the largest in history prior to 1985. This expansion would add 31 teams -- which is almost half the current field. It's completely unprecedented.

Is Volquez even a lock to pitch this year? He had surgery in August, I believe. He may come back but it likely won't be until pretty late in the year. I'm not sure counting on him for much of anything is reasonable.

Fifth? That seems pretty silly.

I think it did following the Bozeman-Thompson-Patterson class. Lavin wasn't getting full classes nor was he filling needs on the roster. He had resorted to giving scholarships to players who were lower-tier Pac-10 level or not even Pac-10 level players. The results were there to see in his last season and Ben Howland's first season. Well, you may be right the last two years. He brought in a quality player each year, but not much else. I'm just tainted by some of the recruiting class disasters IU has had this decade -- zero-star, unranked Jessan Gray-Ashley in 2003 -- that it's hard for me to call any class with an NBA player an "abyss."

Eh, they'd probably take Cole Aldrich regardless of where they were drafting anyway (outside of the top couple spots, at least).

I didn't follow UCLA that closely but he either had to have been a good recruiter or slightly better coach than he gets credit for. I know it's UCLA but still he wasn't that bad. And yeah it sucks to not have him doing Big Ten games. His recruiting was great early on (had the #1 class in...I want to say 1998) but it tailed off big time as the program continued to stall out in the Sweet 16 and you got further and further away from the 1995 national championship. He couldn't coach if his life depended on it. Getting to the Sweet 16 all the time isn't necessarily something to sneeze at. I figured Lavin was a better tourney coach than a regular season coach. Weren't some of those Sweet 16 "runs" pretty surprising at the time? Lavin definitely over-achieved in the tournament by seeding, though I think that has a lot to do with under-performance in the regular season. As I've said, most of his teams were very talented and athletic. He made the Elite Eight as 2-seed in 1997, the Sweet 16 as a 6-seed in 1998, lost in the first round as a 5-seed in 1999 (with me in attendance and Baron Davis in a Bruin uniform), the Sweet 16 as a 6-seed in 2000, the Sweet 16 as a 4-seed in 2001, and the Sweet 16 as an 8-seed in 2002. The 2002 run was surprising by seed, but not in actuality, in my opinion. I actually picked them to go to even further to the Elite Eight that year -- the 1-seed was an extremely overrated Cincinnati team. The destruction of Maryland in the 2000 second round (105-70) was quite surprising.

Yes, that will often be true. But instead of having one or two or a handful of those sub-par teams included, now you're going to have over 30. I don't see how that does anything other than dilute the tournament.

96 teams making the tournament = miss the tournament, you're fired. I just don't understand that line of thinking. One must assume that all fans and administrators will ignore the expansion of the tournament and consider a berth of the same importance as before (i.e., one must assume all fans/administrators are morons).

I didn't follow UCLA that closely but he either had to have been a good recruiter or slightly better coach than he gets credit for. I know it's UCLA but still he wasn't that bad. And yeah it sucks to not have him doing Big Ten games. His recruiting was great early on (had the #1 class in...I want to say 1998) but it tailed off big time as the program continued to stall out in the Sweet 16 and you got further and further away from the 1995 national championship. He couldn't coach if his life depended on it. The 2001 was very highly ranked, and, from memory, may have also been the top-ranked national class (it included Cedric Bozeman, Dijon Thompson, Andre Patterson, and Michael Fey). The 2002 class included Ryan Hollins. His last class (2003) included 5-star Trevor Ariza. There may have been some recruiting slippage -- the last two years didn't include enough players and Evan Burns couldn't qualify -- but it's not like his recruiting fell off into an abyss.

His recruiting was really good. His teams were consistently pretty stacked. His coaching? Uh, not so much.