UMFan83

Yes but now Oliver Prunell is coaching at the one place where his inability to win an NCAA game his entire career won't hurt him. So it only seemed natural that Clemson would win the other night.

Vitters? yes in my fantasy world, Vitters will make it to the majors by next season and be the 29th best player in baseball with his amazing turnaround in plate discipline :)

Top 100 players of 2013 4. Pujols 11. Castro 29. Vitters 47. Cashner 68. Marmol 73. B. Jackson 91. Soto 99. Garza A man can dream can't he?

I don't really mind that he's out, but earlier in the week it was implied that he'd be back tonight. I remember Jazz fans warning me that Boozer would often be day to day for long periods of time, where he'd be expected to be back on a certain date, and then have it be 2-3 more games before he finally returned. At this point though, I am ok if he wants to wait until he is fully healthy to return.

Or maybe it would be fun to somehow have the same 8 teams, but have the last 4 at larges each play the last 4 automatic qualifiers. At least you could have some drama there with tiny schools playing major programs. It probably sucks for these schools to win their conference tournament and then have to play another crappy school no ones heard of before to really "get in" Texas-San Antonio vs. UNC Asheville really doesn't do it for me at all. Texas-SA vs. Clemson might get me to watch to see if the little guy can stay competitive against a major conference team. Just a thought...not my preferred way but another idea. The problem there is...where do you stick the winner? It's essentially a 12 seed vs. a 16 seed. A 1 seed has earned better than to play the 12 seed in their first game, and the 16 seeds chosen for the First Four haven't earned the right to play a lower seed. It would essentially make it so you'd want to be one of the worst four auto-bids so you could avoid the 1 seeds. I know...its not a well thought out plan. I'm just throwing ideas out there that would specifically make those play-in games slightly more interesting. I'm all for letting all automatic qualifiers into the tournament and letting the last 8 at large teams play for the four 12 seeds.

Damn sold on the Big Ten I guess? Nah, I always do a homer bracket every year for fun, just in case the Big Ten goes berserk. I think it actually worked a couple times. 05 with MSU and Illinois?

I've never had a more difficult region to fill out than the SE region this year. I kept wanting to pick St. Johns to go to the Final Four, but decided to say screw it and picked Pittsburgh vs. Florida in the Elite 8. They are both schools that I'm really not big on. Florida is horribly seeded at #2, but at the end of the day, you have BYU without Davies, Wisconsin and their recent tourament history, KState with a underseeded Utah State in the 1st round. Can't pick Utah State because I might as well burn my money if I think a 12 seed is going to the final 4. insane region.

Or maybe it would be fun to somehow have the same 8 teams, but have the last 4 at larges each play the last 4 automatic qualifiers. At least you could have some drama there with tiny schools playing major programs. It probably sucks for these schools to win their conference tournament and then have to play another crappy school no ones heard of before to really "get in" Texas-San Antonio vs. UNC Asheville really doesn't do it for me at all. Texas-SA vs. Clemson might get me to watch to see if the little guy can stay competitive against a major conference team. Just a thought...not my preferred way but another idea.

Anaheim won tonight, meaning that we are 3 points clear of a playoff spot. Actually the team that's 3 points behind us is Calgary who we have 2 full games in hand on, so its not even that bad. Also, Nashville is 4 points back of the Hawks. Detroit beat Washington tonight, lessening the already tiny chance we can catch up to Detroit before the end of the season. I feel like a broken record, but tomorrow's game is huge once again. That said, its not as big as a few others have been this year. Dallas is 2 points behind us right now for the 6th seed. We should probably win tomorrow though because a majority of our competition have favorable matchups (for them). Phoenix is playing hapless Edmonton, Calgary is playing equally hapless Colorado, Los Angeles is playing the slumping Blues, barely relevant at this point Minnesota is playing San Jose, and Nashville is playing Boston

What are your guys thoughts on these playin games? I have no interest in them. I keep trying to watch, but I get bored and turn on something else. All the games have been either awful, or between 2 teams that I don't care about and will get slaughtered in 2 days. If you are going to do this, you should consider them real play-in games, not the "First Round". When USC loses this, does anyone really consider them to have made the NCAA tourney? Technically yes but not really. I guess I just don't see the point in these games. Do these games make much money at all for the networks and NCAA? I say either make a 96 team bracket and have every team play a play-in game, or just go back to 64 teams. It just seems rather pointless that 4 teams in the "Second round" got in through a play-in game, while the other 64 didn't.

Richmond, Marquette, and Gonzaga winning in the first round is basically the entire list of upsets there, and two or all three are fashionable picks, right? I'm pretty sure he pulled the same crap last year. If I were him I would use "swing states" as a consideration when picking the teams. For instance, UConn, located in a solid blue state vs. Bucknell, located in PA, which is a bit more of a swing state, I'm picking Bucknell.

Based on their wacky evaluations, maybe. But Ramirez did have like a .740 OPS last year, so I can understand him not making the cut.

Michael Young instead of CJ Wilson and the rest is right. 5. Hamilton 51. Beltre 47. Feliz 63. Kinsler 67. Cruz 90. Young 95. Andrus

Giants had Lincecum and maybe Cain and they won it last year. Nobody really on the cusp. Who did the Padres have last year? Heath Bell, and nobody on the cusp. I don't think it's a requirement to have multiple guys in the top 100. Buster Posey could definitely be on the cusp for the Giants. And the Padres had a pretty good 1st baseman The thing that discredits this mlb network list is that they have Buster Posey not on the crusp, but actually 16th in their rankings. Padres also had AGonz last year and you could probably put Latos on the crusp.

Here, I broke down the MLB network list by team. Yankees: 9 Red Sox: 8 Phillies: 7 Rangers: 7 Cardinals: 5 Tigers: 5 Reds: 5 Braves: 5 Giants: 4 Brewers: 4 Mets: 4 Angels: 4 Orioles: 4 Marlins: 3 Rockies: 3 Indians: 3 Dodgers: 3 Twins: 2 Mariners: 2 Rays: 2 Nationals: 2 Athletics: 2 White Sox: 2 Royals: 1 Blue Jays: 1 Pirates: 1 Padres: 1 Diamondbacks: 1 Cubs: 1 Astros: 0 Cubs were the 26th team listed in terms of when their first top 100 player was listed.

2008 players who were or had an argument to be in the top 100: Alfonso Soriano, Derrek Lee, Aramis Ramirez, Kerry Wood, Carlos Zambrano, and Rich Harden. Plus, guys like DeRosa, Theriot, Soto, Edmonds, Dempster, Fontenot, and Marmol had amazing seasons. 2011 players who may have an argument for top 100. Marmol, Soto, and Ramirez. Pena, Soriano, Zambrano Dempster and Wood have had good enough seasons in the last 3 years that if they can repeat them can get in the conversation, but it's a stretch that they will. Not people who had an argument, people who were in the top 100. In 2008 I'm guessing the only people who would have been in the top 100 were Lee, Ramirez and Z. Those other guys had amazing seasons, and that is why we won 97 games, but we did it without a lot of top end talent. That was the one thing, we were a fantastic team and had a great season but we didn't really have that hitter that pitchers were petrified to face. We had a lot great hitters, 6 of our 8 starters had an .823+ OPS, but only 1 was over .900. Pitching wise, again we had a lot of very good pitchers, but none of the starters were really ace quality. They all were good but had one flaw, whether it was Dempsters control, Zambrano's inconsistency, Harden's high pitch counts that limited his IPs, Lilly's 32 HR allowed, Marquis's lack of ability.

Lack of "elite talent" has been evident on this team for awhile. How many top 100 players would you say we had in 2008 even?

Defense doesn't peak IMO. Sure there are bad matchups and off nights, but in general Thibs defensive system is proven to work. Look at how he took a group of mediocre to poor defenders (along with a couple of good ones) and turned them into the best defensive team in the league. If we can stop an opponent from scoring, we should see a pretty successful playoff run. Maybe not a championship, but that's certainly not out of the question.

Bulls offense is mediocre no doubt and I want to accept that as an argument, but how bad would the Bulls offense be without Rose? The Bulls have very little in the way of playmakers on the team outside of Rose. This makes him valuable. Also, he is using one metric for evaluating defense and ignoring several other ones that show Rose has improved to at least a mediocre defender. That said, I am not going to blindly dismiss his arguments because I'm a homer. Its not insane to make a convincing argument for a player like Dirk. All I care about is that it's acknowledged that Rose is a contender for MVP, and Hollinger doesn't seem to want to admit that. He also said in that chat that Bryant, Wade, James, Nowitzki and Howard are his easy call for All-NBA first team and that they are clearly the 5 best players in the NBA this year. Meh, no matter what opinion I make about Rose, I can't prove that my bias towards Rose isn't affecting it.

Kelsey Barlow suspended for the rest of the season for Purdue. Also Kyrie Irving back for Duke

Dammit Noah, why did you go out partying the night before a game. We still probably beat Washington without Noah and Boozer, but the margin for error is lessened.

http://piczasso.com/i/imwkr.bmp

Well he was telling the truth with Aaron Rodgers though.

I have the Blackhawks text alerts that they send me after games, and for some reason whenever the Hawks win, I get the text telling me they won within minutes. When they lose, it sometimes comes 20-30 minutes later hah.

This is what happens whenever one good team manages to embarrass another good team. The 2nd game always seems to be a different story. (Miami-San Antonio)