A No. 1 Final Four

All you Sally’s that picked all four No. 1 seeds to make the Final Four must be as happy as a slippery elephant on Christmas morning. Way to go “out on a limb” and pick the best four teams. I hope you are proud of yourself this morning.

 

Take out the Davidson-Kansas game and it really wasn’t a very entertaining series of games. Throw in a Cavs game against Detroit where even Davidson, hell even Coppin State could have beat them, and it was a Saturday night I’d rather be watching Sex in the City than watching the games (Graig may have been doing this). 

 

Friday night gave us no close games. The only game worth watching was the Davidson game because of Stephen Curry. The rest, blow outs, much like Thursday’s games minus Xavier-WVU.

 

Other thoughts from the weekend of college basketball.

 

> North Carolina is really good. They are so good even outplayed Washington State at their slow down game, out ran Louisville and over came the coaching/usually early exits of Roy Williams. 

 

> UCLA is not. I can’t enjoy watching them play. The main reason, besides how lucky the get with how sloppy they play, one Lorenzo Mata-Real. My goodness is that one ugly kid. He makes Kevin Love look like a GQ model. Remember when Lorenzo Mata-Real was just Lorenzo Mata? Remember when he was a starter on their Final Four team two years ago? Why the name change? Does he want to get Real with it? How bad do you have to be to lose your starting spot when you become a junior and senior? Because of him, and that stupid golden ‘C’ on the uniforms, I hate UCLA.

 

>I’m glad I’m one of the six people outside of Memphis to pick them. They are going to win it all. 

 

>Kansas, damn you. Thanks for ruining everyone’s Sunday. If KU can’t handle Davidson and one scorer, what are they going to do with North Carolina?

 

> Stephen Curry, I still love you but where did you go in the second half? I don’t agree with the idea of letting Curry bring the ball up the court in those final 16 seconds, down two? Kansas knows he is going to want to shoot the ball so all they have to do is jump and double team him. Davidson should have let Richards bring the ball up the court, run Curry of screens and look to shoot. That’s what got them to the Elite 8, that’s what  could have got them to the Final Four. Even if Curry doesn’t get open, Richards could have taken it to the hoop scored like he did several times during the game. Or, use Curry as a decoy and give it to that Barr guy who was knocking down 3′s like he was Curry. It just wasn’t the smart play. 

 

> I just really hope UNC doesn’t win it all. You know that would mean, right? A about a week of SportsCenter spending 54 of the 60 minutes on Tyler Hansbourgh. 

 

> The final minutes of the UNC-L’ville game was like a tribute to him. Jim Nance and Billy Packer took turns praising him and loving him and worshiping him and basically doing everything but running out on to the court and bowing to him. I don’t get it. He’s a good college player, maybe even a great one, but he isn’t anything we haven’t seen before. Christian Laettner? Cherokee Parks? Bobby Hurley? Everyone praise him for how hard he works. One, shouldn’t everyone work as hard as they can all the time? Why praise him for something everyone should be doing? Two, he has to work harder than everyone else. He’s just a white guy who isn’t as talented as the others on the floor. I just hope he goes pro this year so we don’t have to hear about him next year and he can fade into oblivion with the rest of the white college all stars who can’t do anything in the NBA.

 

> This tournament reminded me again how great DVR  is. I watched a lot of the games on tape delay and so happy I did. CBS is trying so hard to push commercial breaks down our throats like we are $5 prostitutes. Stop it. We don’t need to know that your better is better than my better every stoppage of play. When a team calls a 30 second timeout in the final minute, how about letting the announcers do their job and break down the game. The only time commercial breaks should happen every dead ball is when Billy Packer is doing a game. Then you go to commercial but tell Packer he is still live and let him talk so we won’t hear what he as to say when the game comes back on. This commercial break pattern is more annoying than the touchdown-commercial-kickoff-commercial routine in football. 

 

> My favorite moment(s) of all the games this weekend were the shots of the band. Band people are funny. Most have never played the sport, or any sport for that matter and have no idea what is going on in the game. They only cheer when the fans around them do. During the UNC-L’ville game, after a big bucket, it might have been one of Hansbourgh’s shots to put the game out of reach, the cameras cut to the UNC band. There were about three or four fat white guys trying to high-five each other. They did the girlie high five with the hand flat and perpendicular to the ground and then extended their arm in the direction of the person do the same thing, hoping their hand movement would result in a high five and in return, show people they knew their basketball. However, several of the high five attempts missed and while two were attempting this ritual they don’t fully understand, the other was left with his hand, still in the high five form, looking around aimlessly for someone in his same situation.

 

> Can someone please tell me what “I Am Legend” has to do with introducing a basketball game? These pregame preveiws/highlights/set the stage videos used to be one of my favorite things to watch. Now they suck. Saturday’s was centered on that horrible Will Smith movie and Sunday’s was on Pontiac’s new car that ended with the phrase “Buckle up!” Creative CBS.

 

If you didn’t notice, I was kind of disappointed with the games this weekend. But the Selection Committee must be patting themselves on the back for having their top four teams make it to the Final Four. And CBS must be extremely happy. They can market this as the “first time ever” and the “four best survived” to get viewers to their broadcasts. It actually should be a good Final Four. I’ll still with my original prediction of Memphis over UNC in the final. 

 

But, hey, enough basketball talk. Today is Opening Day for the Tribe. The game isn’t until 3:00 so we have a while to wait but it’s worth it. I’ll be back during the game for some updates and thoughts on the season as I listen to the greatest baseball play-by-play man in the game, Tom Hamilton. 

 

GO TRIBE!!! (Seal and Wes, I expect some good stories tomorrow from the game.)

 

 

Fratello

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