In continuing a tradition we began a few years ago, my wife and I went to NCAA tournament games this weekend. Over the past five Marches, we have been to games in California, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and, this past weekend, Maryland. This year, we attended the first and second-round games of the women’s tournament held at the Comcast Center in College Park. Last night’s game featured second-seeded Maryland against seventh-seeded Louisville. My big takeaway from the game, which is probably the best women’s college game I’ve ever attended live, is that Louisville coach Jeff Walz cost his team any chance of surviving and advancing by putting the game into the hands of the lone senior on his active roster.
The Cardinals inbounded the ball under their own basket trailing by 3 with 15.2 seconds left in regulation. The play Walz called in the preceding timeout was to give senior Becky Burke a three for the tie. I understand that college coaches trust seniors, and I understand that Burke would appreciate having the continuation of her career be in her hands. BUT…at the time, Burke was 1-5 shooting from the field in the game. The single made field goal was a fast-break layup at the receiving end of a gorgeous 60-foot pass by sophomore Shoni Schimmel for an and-one. All four misses were from beyond the three-point arc. In Saturday’s first-round game versus Michigan State, Burke shot 3-10 (2-6 from 3), so she was on a 4-15 (2-10) stretch in the Comcast Center. Clearly, the game-saving shot should have been taken by someone else.
It was a poor choice by Walz, whose team had played a tough, gutsy game. In my opinion, he robbed his Cardinals of a chance to send the game into overtime. I feel bad for Burke; she did the best she could. She, Shoni Schimmel, and the rest of the Louisville team was let down by the man charged with leading them.
Don’t get me wrong; I actually like Walz. He’s done a great job in Louisville. He just made a bad decision last night, and it cost his team its season.
Showing posts with label college basketball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label college basketball. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Sunday, April 3, 2011
The Myth of the Best
Last night, I got into a debate on Twitter. My tweet that sparked said debate reads, “A 9th place conference team playing for the national championship hurts the credibility of the sport.” What I mean by that statement is that the college basketball regular season is rather meaningless when it comes to determining the national champion. Connecticut, who finished tied for 9th place in the Big East, and Butler will play for the NCAA Men’s Basketball national championship tomorrow night. If you believe either of these teams is among the fifteen best in the nation, I have serious doubts about how much college basketball you know and watch.
But that is my point here. The NCAA tournament is fun and exciting; and the primary reason for that is the high level of unpredictability. From day to day, game to game, and half to half, we really have no idea what is going to happen. These games are played by teenagers and early twenty-somethings whose emotions are on a rollercoaster. We never know for sure what we’re going to get. It’s wonderful. That’s why it’s one of the most popular sporting events in America. But les us all go into it without the illusion that this tournament is about determining who is the country’s best college basketball team. Being the best team and being the champion are two things that often have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
The NCAA tournament is a crapshoot. We see it every year. A team can get hot for a few games and make a deep run. Often, the two or three best teams are beaten before they even reach the Final Four. All we remember are the Final Four and the national champion. What does the regular season mean? What relevance does that long grind hold?
But it’s not just college basketball. Major League Baseball and NHL hockey also hold crapshoot postseason tournaments. Once you get in, anything can happen. I’m not saying this is a bad thing; I’m just calling it what it is. Let’s not pretend that it’s the best team and not the team with the hottest goaltender and peaking sniper who holds up the Stanley Cup. And let us not pretend that a hot pitcher and one hot hitter aren’t the determining factor in winning the World Series.
Some people may—and have—brought up the fact that the Green Bay Packers just won the Super Bowl as the 6th seed in the NFC playoffs. My counter is this: how many times during the past decade have you thought a mediocre team played in the Super Bowl? I give you the 2008 Cardinals. That’s it. Plus, injuries affect NFL teams’ playoff seeding more than they do teams in any other sport. Scheduling also greatly affects seeding. In fact, I wrote a blog post earlier this year about how the schedule often provides the wrong teams with playoff byes. Sure, there are upsets in the NFL playoffs, but more often than not, road teams winning is a righting of the ship that was thrown off course by inflated records. And, yes, I believe the ridiculous scheduling formula diminishes the meaning of the NFL regular season, but it still does mean something.
The best of seven NBA playoffs are the realest playoffs around. Only once every decade or so do you ever leave the playoffs with the feeling that the best team did not win the championship. That’s why, in a sport when the best players don’t often change teams, only a few select players have led their teams to championships.
In college football, it’s often too hard to figure out who the best team is. But the NCAA doesn’t try to fool us. They neither award nor acknowledge a Division I-FBS champion. The playoff proponents often yell out the spiel that we deserve to see who the best team is. What a crock. A playoff won’t do that for these people any more than the bowls will.
When interviewers question underdogs about their ability to win, they often ask if they believe they are better than the favorite. I’ve always found it to be a stupid question. They don’t have to be better; they just have to win. And that’s championships are about. You don’t have to be the best; you just have to win.
To bring this back to college basketball, let me close by saying that I enjoy the tournament. I hope I enjoy the Connecticut-Butler game tomorrow night. But the tournament allows 68 teams in. It’s moving toward 96 teams (I happen to be in favor of the expansion to 96). But you have to understand that every team added to the tournament further diminishes the meaning of the regular season. The more teams involved, especially when teams are eliminated after one defeat, the less likely it is you’ll see one of the top teams win it all. The belief that we are crowning college basketball’s best team is just a myth. We’re crowning the champion. That’s it. Just the champion. Don’t make it out to be anything more than that.
But that is my point here. The NCAA tournament is fun and exciting; and the primary reason for that is the high level of unpredictability. From day to day, game to game, and half to half, we really have no idea what is going to happen. These games are played by teenagers and early twenty-somethings whose emotions are on a rollercoaster. We never know for sure what we’re going to get. It’s wonderful. That’s why it’s one of the most popular sporting events in America. But les us all go into it without the illusion that this tournament is about determining who is the country’s best college basketball team. Being the best team and being the champion are two things that often have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
The NCAA tournament is a crapshoot. We see it every year. A team can get hot for a few games and make a deep run. Often, the two or three best teams are beaten before they even reach the Final Four. All we remember are the Final Four and the national champion. What does the regular season mean? What relevance does that long grind hold?
But it’s not just college basketball. Major League Baseball and NHL hockey also hold crapshoot postseason tournaments. Once you get in, anything can happen. I’m not saying this is a bad thing; I’m just calling it what it is. Let’s not pretend that it’s the best team and not the team with the hottest goaltender and peaking sniper who holds up the Stanley Cup. And let us not pretend that a hot pitcher and one hot hitter aren’t the determining factor in winning the World Series.
Some people may—and have—brought up the fact that the Green Bay Packers just won the Super Bowl as the 6th seed in the NFC playoffs. My counter is this: how many times during the past decade have you thought a mediocre team played in the Super Bowl? I give you the 2008 Cardinals. That’s it. Plus, injuries affect NFL teams’ playoff seeding more than they do teams in any other sport. Scheduling also greatly affects seeding. In fact, I wrote a blog post earlier this year about how the schedule often provides the wrong teams with playoff byes. Sure, there are upsets in the NFL playoffs, but more often than not, road teams winning is a righting of the ship that was thrown off course by inflated records. And, yes, I believe the ridiculous scheduling formula diminishes the meaning of the NFL regular season, but it still does mean something.
The best of seven NBA playoffs are the realest playoffs around. Only once every decade or so do you ever leave the playoffs with the feeling that the best team did not win the championship. That’s why, in a sport when the best players don’t often change teams, only a few select players have led their teams to championships.
In college football, it’s often too hard to figure out who the best team is. But the NCAA doesn’t try to fool us. They neither award nor acknowledge a Division I-FBS champion. The playoff proponents often yell out the spiel that we deserve to see who the best team is. What a crock. A playoff won’t do that for these people any more than the bowls will.
When interviewers question underdogs about their ability to win, they often ask if they believe they are better than the favorite. I’ve always found it to be a stupid question. They don’t have to be better; they just have to win. And that’s championships are about. You don’t have to be the best; you just have to win.
To bring this back to college basketball, let me close by saying that I enjoy the tournament. I hope I enjoy the Connecticut-Butler game tomorrow night. But the tournament allows 68 teams in. It’s moving toward 96 teams (I happen to be in favor of the expansion to 96). But you have to understand that every team added to the tournament further diminishes the meaning of the regular season. The more teams involved, especially when teams are eliminated after one defeat, the less likely it is you’ll see one of the top teams win it all. The belief that we are crowning college basketball’s best team is just a myth. We’re crowning the champion. That’s it. Just the champion. Don’t make it out to be anything more than that.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Audition
This afternoon I read this column by Tim Keown of ESPN.com’s Page 2. I often like and/or agree with the things Keown says. Today…not so much. In today’s column, he committed one of this generation’s most manipulative, yet effective, argument techniques: he pulled something completely out of context and reshaped it to fit his point. This is one of the least effective ways to argue with me, but I find that the vast majority of people fall prey to it day after day after day.
What Tim Keown pulled out of context in this instance is Harrison Barnes’ attempted pass to himself in North Carolina’s game Sunday versus Kentucky. If you did not see the game, Barnes drove to the basket, got surrounded by Wildcats, and could not find an open teammate. Instead of trying a low percentage pass, he threw it off the backboard and tried to catch it himself. Unfortunately for the Tar Heels, Barnes mistimed his jump and Kentucky secured the ball. As someone who believes a bad shot is better—that is, less defensively destructive—than a bad pass, I thought it was a smart play by Barnes. Keown saw it differently. He wrote, “And so, in one act of self-glorification, Barnes exemplified why everybody is so excited about VCU and Butler in the Final Four.” A couple of paragraphs later, Keown added, “Nothing against Barnes. It's just that he's the one who thought to pass to himself in an Elite Eight game at a time when it's becoming increasingly clear that balancing team basketball and future NBA plans is not the simple act we once supposed.” Please correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds to me like the writer took an arguably intelligent act in a moment of basketball desperation and described it to the masses as an act of selfishness exemplifying a me-first attitude. Pardon me, but would a me-first player who is billed as a scorer just shot the 10-foot turnaround?
But Keown doesn’t stop there. Nope, his very next words are “For what it's worth, I'd pay to see Barnes play before I'd pay to see any single player on VCU or Butler. But the thing is, I'd pay to see VCU or Butler before I'd pay to see Barnes.” With these two statements, Keown employed the technique of saying something utterly stupid and expecting people to nod their heads in agreement. Unfortunately, too many people do just that. What does that statement even mean? If you break down what Keown says here, he is saying he’d rather spend his entertainment dollar on lesser skilled players who work together than higher skilled players who work alone. Maybe that’s a fair point, but he hasn’t yet shown me that Harrison Barnes works alone.
To emphasize this point, the writer invoked the name Kyrie Irving. Of the Duke freshman, he wrote, “Kyrie Irving is another fabulous freshman talent, but his play against Arizona is the main reason the Blue Devils' season ended before most people thought it would.” Flat out lie. If you watched that game and came to any conclusion other than Irving’s play kept the game as close as it was, then you don’t know basketball. But Keown had a point to make here, and he was not going to let facts or circumstances get in his way of making them. He added, “It was nearly impossible to believe that Duke’s game plan was to have Irving take over while the best player on the court—Nolan Smith—was reduced to an innocent bystander.” There was no mention of the fact that Kyrie Irving is a true point guard and Nolan Smith is not. There was no mention that this was Smith’s first year playing as the primary ball handler and that moving to the point after Irving’s December injury may have been as responsible for his improved statistics as anything else(for evidence of this, look at Smith’s freshman through junior year statistics as well as how much his numbers improved this season once Irving went down and Krzyzewski was forced to move him to the point). It seemed to me that both Irving and Smith need the ball to play their best; it also seemed to me that Irving’s best is significantly better than Smith’s best. You can chalk Duke’s poor play in the second half versus Arizona to poor coaching, a talent deficiency, or to one of those nights. But you absolutely cannot say it was Kyrie Irving’s fault. You just can’t. Keown did it anyway.
Near the end, Keown wrote that he feels like he’s watching an audition when he watches “these guys” play. He doesn’t fully define these guys, but logic dictates that we can use the phrase as a euphemism for talented players with realistic NBA dreams. Well, Tim, considering the way professional team sports operate, wouldn’t you say these are their auditions? At the same time, wouldn’t you also admit that each player’s career is more important than a college basketball team? And wouldn’t you agree that showcasing talent while playing in the framework of a team is what the NBA coaches and general managers want to see?
He wrote, “It's rare to find a team relying on a one-and-done player who displays the same kind of camaraderie and share-the-ball philosophy we see in the upstarts.” He then listed Kemba Walker, Derrick Rose, and Derrick Williams as exceptions who “manage to combine transcendent talent with the ability to make their teammates better.” I counter that Kemba Walker is nothing close to a one-and-done player. He is a junior who still causes scouts to wonder if he can play in the NBA. I would also add that we have seen plenty of other one-and-done players raise the level of their teams. Players like John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Michael Beasley, and many others took their college teams to levels far beyond what their teams’ talent and coaching should have achieved.
I fully understand the point that Keown wants to make in this column. The one-and-done players do present a challenge for coaches trying to build programs and win championships. But they are not evil. They are not the problem. They most definitely do not make teams like Butler and VCU more enjoyable to watch. And they aren’t all selfishly bad teammates.
Keown took his point, backed it up with manipulated evidence that does not at all support his point, and will, I am sure, convince the majority of people who read the column that he is 100% right. And it pisses me off.
What Tim Keown pulled out of context in this instance is Harrison Barnes’ attempted pass to himself in North Carolina’s game Sunday versus Kentucky. If you did not see the game, Barnes drove to the basket, got surrounded by Wildcats, and could not find an open teammate. Instead of trying a low percentage pass, he threw it off the backboard and tried to catch it himself. Unfortunately for the Tar Heels, Barnes mistimed his jump and Kentucky secured the ball. As someone who believes a bad shot is better—that is, less defensively destructive—than a bad pass, I thought it was a smart play by Barnes. Keown saw it differently. He wrote, “And so, in one act of self-glorification, Barnes exemplified why everybody is so excited about VCU and Butler in the Final Four.” A couple of paragraphs later, Keown added, “Nothing against Barnes. It's just that he's the one who thought to pass to himself in an Elite Eight game at a time when it's becoming increasingly clear that balancing team basketball and future NBA plans is not the simple act we once supposed.” Please correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds to me like the writer took an arguably intelligent act in a moment of basketball desperation and described it to the masses as an act of selfishness exemplifying a me-first attitude. Pardon me, but would a me-first player who is billed as a scorer just shot the 10-foot turnaround?
But Keown doesn’t stop there. Nope, his very next words are “For what it's worth, I'd pay to see Barnes play before I'd pay to see any single player on VCU or Butler. But the thing is, I'd pay to see VCU or Butler before I'd pay to see Barnes.” With these two statements, Keown employed the technique of saying something utterly stupid and expecting people to nod their heads in agreement. Unfortunately, too many people do just that. What does that statement even mean? If you break down what Keown says here, he is saying he’d rather spend his entertainment dollar on lesser skilled players who work together than higher skilled players who work alone. Maybe that’s a fair point, but he hasn’t yet shown me that Harrison Barnes works alone.
To emphasize this point, the writer invoked the name Kyrie Irving. Of the Duke freshman, he wrote, “Kyrie Irving is another fabulous freshman talent, but his play against Arizona is the main reason the Blue Devils' season ended before most people thought it would.” Flat out lie. If you watched that game and came to any conclusion other than Irving’s play kept the game as close as it was, then you don’t know basketball. But Keown had a point to make here, and he was not going to let facts or circumstances get in his way of making them. He added, “It was nearly impossible to believe that Duke’s game plan was to have Irving take over while the best player on the court—Nolan Smith—was reduced to an innocent bystander.” There was no mention of the fact that Kyrie Irving is a true point guard and Nolan Smith is not. There was no mention that this was Smith’s first year playing as the primary ball handler and that moving to the point after Irving’s December injury may have been as responsible for his improved statistics as anything else(for evidence of this, look at Smith’s freshman through junior year statistics as well as how much his numbers improved this season once Irving went down and Krzyzewski was forced to move him to the point). It seemed to me that both Irving and Smith need the ball to play their best; it also seemed to me that Irving’s best is significantly better than Smith’s best. You can chalk Duke’s poor play in the second half versus Arizona to poor coaching, a talent deficiency, or to one of those nights. But you absolutely cannot say it was Kyrie Irving’s fault. You just can’t. Keown did it anyway.
Near the end, Keown wrote that he feels like he’s watching an audition when he watches “these guys” play. He doesn’t fully define these guys, but logic dictates that we can use the phrase as a euphemism for talented players with realistic NBA dreams. Well, Tim, considering the way professional team sports operate, wouldn’t you say these are their auditions? At the same time, wouldn’t you also admit that each player’s career is more important than a college basketball team? And wouldn’t you agree that showcasing talent while playing in the framework of a team is what the NBA coaches and general managers want to see?
He wrote, “It's rare to find a team relying on a one-and-done player who displays the same kind of camaraderie and share-the-ball philosophy we see in the upstarts.” He then listed Kemba Walker, Derrick Rose, and Derrick Williams as exceptions who “manage to combine transcendent talent with the ability to make their teammates better.” I counter that Kemba Walker is nothing close to a one-and-done player. He is a junior who still causes scouts to wonder if he can play in the NBA. I would also add that we have seen plenty of other one-and-done players raise the level of their teams. Players like John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Michael Beasley, and many others took their college teams to levels far beyond what their teams’ talent and coaching should have achieved.
I fully understand the point that Keown wants to make in this column. The one-and-done players do present a challenge for coaches trying to build programs and win championships. But they are not evil. They are not the problem. They most definitely do not make teams like Butler and VCU more enjoyable to watch. And they aren’t all selfishly bad teammates.
Keown took his point, backed it up with manipulated evidence that does not at all support his point, and will, I am sure, convince the majority of people who read the column that he is 100% right. And it pisses me off.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Changing the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament
The big change in the NCAA man’s basketball tournament this year is the First Four. I believe I am one of just a small number of people who thought the First Four was a good idea. A lot of people slammed the idea. I heard all the noise, and before the tournament began I stated that the First Four would never have any relevance with fans until the year after one of those teams reached the Sweet Sixteen. When it comes to the NCAA tournament, fans only care about three things: their team, their team’s biggest rival, and their brackets. I think it’s safe to say that Virginia Commonwealth destroyed a few brackets these past two weekends.
First, before any new early rounds can be fully accepted and appreciated by the public, they must start on the Thursday after selection Sunday. This year, the First Four began on Tuesday, about 24 hours after the brackets were released. That’s not enough time for people to fill out brackets and put money into their office pools.
(And if you happen to be one of those people who believes that the NCAA tournament would be a big deal in America without the brackets and pools, then this planet Earth is not quite the place for you. The NCAA must consider the brackets in every change they make to their big moneymaker. And since the NCAA neither benefits from nor runs the bowls, this is their big moneymaker.)
If the First Four began on Thursday—and were televised on a network not named TruTV—there would have been a bigger buzz for those games. Also, the NCAA could have made the First Four matchups between the last eight at-large teams selected for the field. Nobody cares about the lowest rund of automatic qualifiers outside of those schools’ fans and alumni. A First Four comprised entirely of BCS, MVC, and A-10 conference teams would have been a much bigger ratings draw.
But I want to be more drastic than that. Taking into consideration VCU’s run this March as well as those made in recent years by George Mason, Davidson, and even BCS conference schools like Marquette, I think it’s time to do a full expansion of the tournament. The mini-expansions from 64 to 65 and 65 to 68 were small changes without much effect. Remember, the brackets are the big thing.
I’ve read various pundits suggest changes for the selection committee. I saw one man say that Selection Sunday should occur before the conference tournaments because teams that feel assured of a place in the field don’t take the tournament seriously anyway and teams that don’t really belong in the field play their way in. I don’t happen to believe that, but fine, that guy is entitled to his opinion. It got me thinking though…
There are enough teams out there that can compete. Maybe there aren’t 50 schools that can reasonable win a national championship each year, but there are a hundred or so who can compete on a night-to-night basis. Teams’ tournament profiles are judged on records versus the RPI top 50 and top 100. Isn’t it time the tournament fields 96 teams? I think so.
A 96-team tournament would feature 32 first round games that would produce winners to face 32 teams who had earned first-round byes. And I say let’s give the byes to the teams who earned their conferences’ automatic bids (I know there are only 31 conferences; they can create another or we could just give the last bye to the highest ranked team who did not earn an automatic berth).
24 teams per region. The top seed would face the winner of the game between the teams seeded 16 and 17 in the region. I know what you’re wondering. What if a top-seeded team failed to win its conference tournament? Of this year’s top seeds, only Pittsburgh failed to win a conference tournament. In such a case, Pittsburgh could have been seeded #1 in the Southeast. They would have played a first round game against the 24th (lowest) seeded team. Teams with byes don’t necessarily have to play teams that played a first round game. This can be flexible depending on who wins conference championships and who doesn’t. The only hard rule would be 8 byes per region.
This makes sense to me. It gives teams a reason to play for the conference championship, it is more inclusive, and it gives fans who care about such things a reasonable expectation that any team left out of the field wasn’t going to win the thing anyway. Tell me what the downside is.
First, before any new early rounds can be fully accepted and appreciated by the public, they must start on the Thursday after selection Sunday. This year, the First Four began on Tuesday, about 24 hours after the brackets were released. That’s not enough time for people to fill out brackets and put money into their office pools.
(And if you happen to be one of those people who believes that the NCAA tournament would be a big deal in America without the brackets and pools, then this planet Earth is not quite the place for you. The NCAA must consider the brackets in every change they make to their big moneymaker. And since the NCAA neither benefits from nor runs the bowls, this is their big moneymaker.)
If the First Four began on Thursday—and were televised on a network not named TruTV—there would have been a bigger buzz for those games. Also, the NCAA could have made the First Four matchups between the last eight at-large teams selected for the field. Nobody cares about the lowest rund of automatic qualifiers outside of those schools’ fans and alumni. A First Four comprised entirely of BCS, MVC, and A-10 conference teams would have been a much bigger ratings draw.
But I want to be more drastic than that. Taking into consideration VCU’s run this March as well as those made in recent years by George Mason, Davidson, and even BCS conference schools like Marquette, I think it’s time to do a full expansion of the tournament. The mini-expansions from 64 to 65 and 65 to 68 were small changes without much effect. Remember, the brackets are the big thing.
I’ve read various pundits suggest changes for the selection committee. I saw one man say that Selection Sunday should occur before the conference tournaments because teams that feel assured of a place in the field don’t take the tournament seriously anyway and teams that don’t really belong in the field play their way in. I don’t happen to believe that, but fine, that guy is entitled to his opinion. It got me thinking though…
There are enough teams out there that can compete. Maybe there aren’t 50 schools that can reasonable win a national championship each year, but there are a hundred or so who can compete on a night-to-night basis. Teams’ tournament profiles are judged on records versus the RPI top 50 and top 100. Isn’t it time the tournament fields 96 teams? I think so.
A 96-team tournament would feature 32 first round games that would produce winners to face 32 teams who had earned first-round byes. And I say let’s give the byes to the teams who earned their conferences’ automatic bids (I know there are only 31 conferences; they can create another or we could just give the last bye to the highest ranked team who did not earn an automatic berth).
24 teams per region. The top seed would face the winner of the game between the teams seeded 16 and 17 in the region. I know what you’re wondering. What if a top-seeded team failed to win its conference tournament? Of this year’s top seeds, only Pittsburgh failed to win a conference tournament. In such a case, Pittsburgh could have been seeded #1 in the Southeast. They would have played a first round game against the 24th (lowest) seeded team. Teams with byes don’t necessarily have to play teams that played a first round game. This can be flexible depending on who wins conference championships and who doesn’t. The only hard rule would be 8 byes per region.
This makes sense to me. It gives teams a reason to play for the conference championship, it is more inclusive, and it gives fans who care about such things a reasonable expectation that any team left out of the field wasn’t going to win the thing anyway. Tell me what the downside is.
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