[Note: Posted 2:30 p.m., Wednesday, amidst rumors Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni resigned.]
NCAA Basketball Quiz: You all know a 16-seed has never won in the NCAA tourney. But name the four 15-seeds to win. Answer below.
Let the Madness Begin
OK, let’s look at this week’s AP poll and then match it up with the tournament seeding. For those of you who aren’t too familiar with this kind of thing…if you have four regions and you are a 6-seed, that means you are basically ranked the 21st to 24th best team in the country. So you’ll see two teams below that have a right to complain.
1. Kentucky…1-seed
2. Syracuse…1
3. Missouri…2
4. North Carolina…1
5. Michigan State…1
6. Kansas…2
7. Ohio State…2
8. Duke…2
9. Baylor…3
10. Florida State…3
11. Marquette…3
12. Murray State…6
13. Michigan…4
14. Wisconsin…4
15. Georgetown…3
16. Indiana…4
17. Louisville…4
18. Wichita State…5
19. Creighton…8
20. Vanderbilt…5
21. New Mexico…5
22. San Diego State…6
23. UNLV…6
24. Saint Mary’s…7
25. Florida…7
Looking at the above, of course two stand out…Murray State and Creighton. I thought all along Murray would get a 4-seed. A 6?! Heck, the USA TODAY/ESPN Coaches poll has Murray No. 9! I mean, c’mon. They lost once, and then beat that same team twice after.
McDermott is correct to believe “the NCAA tournament selection committee let the potential for an intriguing story line trump a fair seeding for the Bluejays.” [AP]
You see, Creighton’s star, Doug McDermott, son of Greg, was a teammate of Carolina’s Harrison Barnes at Ames (Iowa) High School and the two won 53 straight games. McDermott said, “Unfortunately sometimes people are after a story. I think we all know what the story is to some extent.”
But then I like what he says next. “The reality of it is we have to leave home to get where we want to get anyway. So we’ll take ‘em down one at a time.”
Very good…but wait…that means my preseason selection of Carolina goes down the drain! We can’t have that here at Bar Chat, where my record of picking national title or Super Bowl and World Series winners before the season starts is like 3-40, which is better than 2-41, you have to admit.
Anyway…bottom line…Creighton and Murray State got screwed. For Murray there is a huge difference in facing a 13- vs. an 11-seed. For Creighton, forget the 8-9 matchup vs. a 5-12; they are just too good to be forced to play a No. 1 in the second round. Not fair…and I insist Congress open up hearings once the election is over. [To do so before November would just be too contentious.]
Oh, one other. Notice Temple’s absence in the AP poll? They received a 5-seed. An incredulous Mark R., back from Costa Rica where he was doing reconnaissance for [can’t mention…top secret], said, “What the [heck] was that all about?” referring to the Owls.
Lastly, the only big upset I have in the first round (13-seed or higher) is New Mexico St. over Indiana. [OK, I have 12-seed Long Beach State beating New Mexico, which I really just don’t see as an upset were it to come to pass.]
But…I did my bracket on Monday, as did many of you, I imagine, before word came out that Syracuse’s center Fab Melo was ruled ineligible by the school, for what is assumed to be an academic issue, though the school said nothing due to privacy rules. Melo, a 7-footer, is a major force down low and this is a huge blow to the Orange’s title hopes; let alone destroying many a bracket. [Does UNC-Asheville suddenly have a shot as a 16-seed on Thursday? Hmmm.]
…So Let the Madness Begin!
I watched the first play-in game, or what the tourney folks want us to call the ‘first-round,’ Western Kentucky vs. Mississippi Valley State, and first off, since I criticize President Obama from time to time, especially in that other column I do…the one I sign…major kudos to him for being in attendance (even if it was Ohio, a crucial state come November). He’s a great fan of the sport and if it encourages a few of the young ones to go outside and shoot hoops with some friends rather than waste their lives playing video games, then that is good.
And kudos to British Prime Minister David Cameron. I always liked him and if you saw his interview with CBS’ Clark Kellogg at halftime, Cameron, I imagine, won over some Americans. He just seems like a good man, regardless of how you feel about his own politics.
As for the game itself, with less than five minutes to go, MVS was up 52-36 but proceeded to lose, 59-58, in the worst choke job in NCAA tournament history with less than five minutes to play. As Obama observed at half, it was a game where neither team shot well…as in the caliber of play was horrid, befitting two 16 seeds, but the effort was terrific. [Take note, New York Knickerbockers.]
Western Kentucky was 19 of 62 from the field, 19 of 33 from the foul line, and committed 27 turnovers!
Mississippi Valley State was 22 of 61 from the field, 10 of 22 in free throws! Good lord. Just dreadful. WKU won despite one of their guys missing four straight from the line down the stretch.
So Obama and Cameron stayed to the end and witnessed history. Then, while they were winging their way back to Washington on Air Force Once, BYU took the court against Iona.
Iona, as noted last chat, was a bit of a controversial pick to get in, especially over Drexel, but they proved they belonged in taking a 55-30 lead over the Cougars with 4:30 left in the first half. Talk about a blitz! The nation’s highest-scoring team showed just why it is.
But then they went scoreless the rest of the half and led 55-40 at the break. And the rest is history. BYU won 78-72, for the biggest comeback, period, in NCAA tournament history. Unreal. Iona scored 7 points over a 16 ½ minute stretch. The biggest choke job ever. What a thing to be known for the rest of your life. I don’t know if you know this, but the NCAA demands you sign a release form when you perform like this, requiring that “choke artist” be on every player’s tombstone; which is why they’ll all go for cremation to avoid the embarrassment.
First 15:26 of the game, Iona was 24 of 35 from the field. Last 24:34, the Gaels shot 7 of 35.
Bits and Pieces…from Rachel Bachman and Ben Cohen / Wall Street Journal
“Just three of the last 35 Naismith college players of the year have won the national championship: Duke’s Shane Battier in 2001 and Christian Laettner in 1992, and Kansas’ Danny Manning in 1988.
“The two players competing for college basketball’s top individual honor this year are Kentucky’s Anthony Davis and Thomas Robinson of Kansas – which means you might want to reconsider that Wildcats-Jayhawks final in your bracket.”
“Since the tournament expanded to 64 teams (now 68) in 1985, No. 2 seeds have lost in the opening weekend 35% of the time.”
1. There is only one certainty to filling out a March Madness bracket, and it is this: You will lose to someone who has never watched an NCAA basketball game in his or her life. You will also lose to a 7-year-old, a golden retriever and a lobster.
4. Do not pick all four number-one seeds to make the Final Four. Jeez. That’s like going to Paris and dining at Pizza Hut.
13. It’s okay to love the NCAA anthem “One Shining Moment.” But true story: “One Shining Moment” was written by a unicorn living in Barry Manilow’s backyard.
14. Cheer for Harvard, but be careful: You don’t want Harvard people thinking they’re something special.
19. If you are planning to go to the Final Four in New Orleans, please be aware that the bars close promptly at never.
20. Best thing about March Madness: Next week, everyone’s going to be talking about a lovable school you have never heard of.
21. Of course, days later, that lovable school you have never heard of will get smoked by 40 by Kentucky. Oh well.
23. Don’t worry: None of us has any idea how to spell “Krzyzewski.”
And did you know…Since 1982, 16 teams – and five of the last six champions – cut down the nets at their conference tournaments before also doing so at the Final Four? Only nine national champs entered the NCAA tournament coming off a loss. [Ben Cohen / Wall Street Journal]
Finally…Go Murray State Racers!
And a shout out to South Dakota State Jackrabbit alum Doug B., out of Scottsdale, AZ, a fellow quaffer of domestic…so says friend Shu.
Women’s Hoops…AP Poll
1. Baylor
2. Stanford
3. UConn
4. Notre Dame
5. Maryland
6. Duke
7. Delaware!
8. Miami (Fla.)
9. Tennessee
10. Green Bay!
Of course the Women’s tournament is all about undefeated Baylor and their superstar, Brittney Griner.
Top four seeds…Baylor, Stanford, UConn and Notre Dame.
—Tiger Woods said he will be OK, after withdrawing from the WGC event at Doral with an Achilles issue. He said docs told him it’s a mild strain and he plans on playing at Arnie’s Bay Hill event along with the Masters.
–In the Peyton Manning watch, Tennessee entered the chase and is definitely in the running, along with Miami, Denver and Arizona. [Some even say San Francisco.] Peyton said he’ll act quickly, partly out of respect for the teams bidding for him. For example, Arizona owes QB Kevin Kolb $7 million if he’s on the roster this Saturday, which no way the Cardinals pay if Manning were to sign in the next 48-72 hours.
1. Andrew Luck, QB, Stanford
2. Robert Griffin III, QB, Baylor
3. Matt Kalil, T, USC
4. Morris Claiborne, CB, LSU
5. Justin Blackmon, WR, Oklahoma State
6. Trent Richardson, RB, Alabama
7. Riley Reiff, T, Iowa
8. Quinton Coples, DE, North Carolina
9. Melvin Ingram, OLB, South Carolina
10. Michael Brockers, DT, LSU
11. Ryan Tannehill, QB, Texas A&M…just surprised how far he’s moved up.
So I bring this up because a certain Wake Forest Demon Deacon who is coming out a year early, wide receiver Chris Givens, is rocketing up the listings. Givens, who I wrote many an admiring comment on during his career, is now projected as the number seven receiver in the draft after turning a scorching 4.41, 40-yard time [Blackmon did a 4.54; Notre Dame’s Michael Floyd, the second receiver on the list (at 13 overall) was timed in 4.47.] Givens doesn’t have great size, but he’ll be a player (maybe as a return man, initially). I didn’t even realize until about a month ago that he had gone out early because he wasn’t showing up on any of my lists. Meanwhile, Wake outside linebacker Kyle Wilber is now ranked No. 14 at this position and a 3rd- or 4th-rounder.
Among quarterbacks, as I search for someone the Jets can get with a later pick, a player who can still help in 2-3 years, Wisconsin QB Russell Wilson is the 10th-rated signal-caller and a projected 5-6 round selection, while Kellen Moore of Boise State is No. 12 and a 6-7 rounder. OK, last time for a few weeks that I say this. Promise.
C’mon, Jets! Take either one of these guys and you’ve got a winner without using earlier picks for more immediate pressing needs. And that’ s a memo.
–So the other week I said former quarterback Fran Tarkenton was more than a bit disingenuous when, in talking about the NFL Bounty issue in an op-ed, he said that in his day the players didn’t try to hurt each other. I cited the play of the Oakland Raiders of his era as part of my rebuttal.
Well, William C. Rhoden addressed the issue in his column for the New York Times the other day. George Atkinson, a Raiders safety in the late 1960s and ‘70s, said: “When you look at your contract, you’re getting paid. You can call that a bounty.” Atkinson teamed with notorious Jack Tatum to form “the most intimidating safety combination in modern NFL history,” as Rhoden writes, and I concur.
“Atkinson said that early in their tenure together, he and Tatum made bets with each other about who would deliver the hardest hits.
“ ‘We would put up a small pot; whoever gets the best hit wins the pot,’ Atkinson said. ‘That was just between us.
“ ‘We did it game to game or opponent to opponent, depending on who we were playing. It wasn’t a bounty, it was a bet – the hardest hit was judged by the actual result of the game and the receivers you were covering. If they guy’s laying out on the field, that speaks for itself.’”
—Knicks Suck, continued…
[Ed. not changing any of the following…written before word D’Antoni resigned.]
Think about this. Outside of the Linsanity 7-game winning streak when Jeremy Lin took the world by storm, in the rest of the games this season (prior to Wednesday’s contest against Portland), the Knicks are 11-24! A veritable suckathon. One of the local sports radio guys put it best; the Knicks for those seven games when Lin burst on the scene were the ultimate tease.
After Sunday’s 106-94 desultory loss to the Sixers at the Garden, Carmelo Anthony, who we’re told is a “superstar,” said, “Playing out there is not fun. There’s no type of confidence out there when we get down. Just seemed like our whole energy just goes out the door.”
In Tuesday’s loss to the Bulls, where at least the Knicks showed up, Anthony sat on the bench during a huddle, which other Knicks have taken to doing. Anthony also got visibly upset when he didn’t get the ball one time…as the cameras caught, making him even more hated in Gotham when he appears on the Garden floor tonight (as I write).
And now, Anthony is demanding a trade, according to one source, though his agent denies it. Please, management…accommodate him! Unfortunately, it appears Madison Square Garden Chairman Jim Dolan doesn’t want him to be moved by Thursday’s deadline.
Heading into Wednesday’s game, the Knicks are 2-8 since Anthony returned from an injury. The Knicks are 2-11 when he has 20 or more shot attempts in a game.
–I didn’t realize Tony Stewart, winner of last week’s Sprint Cup event in Las Vegas, has now won six of the last 13 races (including a record five of the last ten in 2011 to take the Cup title away from Jimmie Johnson, winner of the previous five). Stewart is now up to 45 career wins as well.
—North Carolina’s football program was officially docked 15 scholarships and banned from a bowl after this coming season, while being placed on probation for three years following a two-year investigation involving former assistant coach John Blake that also cost the jobs of head coach Butch Davis and AD Dick Baddour. Improper benefits, academic fraud and failure to monitor the program were Carolina’s offenses. But they still have very cute cheerleaders. [Can I say that without the NCAA coming down on me?]
—Mets Manager Terry Collins is super frustrated by all the little injuries his players seem to get that other teams don’t, though regarding one, oblique strains, it’s an epidemic in baseball the last few years.
“This didn’t happen 20 years ago,” Collins said. “I think it’s a combination of dehydration. I think it’s a combination that they’re so strong. And I think it’s a combination that they work their butts off.”
The Mets’ training staff is suggesting the number of swings taken during batting practice be reduced, for one, while during morning stretch, the players are being asked to focus on the activity rather than sleepwalk through it.
“Do something, for crying out loud!” screamed your editor, a Mets fan.
–We note the passing of basketball coach, Dick Harter, 81. Harter, who I met a long, long time ago when I was a kid, compiled a 295-196 record at Rider University, Penn, Oregon and Penn State, winning two Ivy League championships with Penn. He was then the first head coach of the expansion Charlotte Hornets in 1988, and later Larry Bird’s defensive coach at Indiana. Harter was an assistant in the NBA for numerous other teams, including the Knicks and Celtics.
It was on Feb. 21, 1976, though, that Harter led his Oregon team to UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, where the Bruins hadn’t lost in 98 contests, since 1970. Oregon won, 65-45. Harter led the Ducks to a 113-81 record and was Pac-8 coach of the year in 1977.
Harter was born in Pottstown, Pa., and a graduate of Penn. He struck me as a quality guy.
–I watched the first episode of HBO’s “Luck” and didn’t feel compelled to watch another. But now production has been suspended because of a third equine death linked to the racetrack drama. This was a day after the American Humane Association, which oversees Hollywood productions, issued an immediate demand “that all production involving horses shut down,” barring “a complete, thorough, and comprehensive investigation.”
The third victim was being led to a Santa Anita Park racetrack stable by a groom when it pitched backwards, suffering a head injury, according to HBO. The horse was put down. [The series is filmed at Santa Anita.] Earlier, two horses were hurt during racing scenes and put to sleep.
—George Kerchner, one of the heroes of D-Day, died. He was 93. Kerchner was an Army Ranger, one of those storming the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc.
“These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc,” President Ronald Reagan declared at the 40th anniversary of D-Day in 1984, in one of the most moving presidential speeches ever. “These are the champions who helped free a continent.”
“Lieutenant Kerchner was among more than 200 men from the Second Ranger Battalion who climbed Pointe du Hoc on a mission to seize a cliff-top outpost, kill its German defenders and knock out their 155-millimeter guns, which could have brought devastating fire on the American troops landing at the beaches code-named Omaha and Utah.
“But nearly everything went wrong at the outset. A landing craft carrying the commander of Lieutenant’s Kerchner’s D Company and many of his men foundered in the English Channel, forcing their return to England. The three Ranger companies designated for the morning assault approached the French coast at the wrong spot because of a navigational error, and while reassembling along the coastline, they were visible to the Germans, losing the element of surprise.
“When Lieutenant Kerchner left his landing craft, he stepped into water over his head and made it to shore, where he became his company’s new commander.
“ ‘We were being fired on by a machine gun from the top of the cliff off to the left,’ he said in an interview with the Eisenhower Center for American Studies in New Orleans. ‘Two men in my boat crew were immediately hit. I don’t know how they missed me because they were right next to me.’
“But ‘climbing the cliff was very easy,’ he recalled.”
The company managed to get on top of the 130-foot cliff and in short order disabled the five big guns in a camouflaged spot.
I went to Pointe du Hoc in 1996 and it’s an amazing sight. I was there on a beautiful, hazy, September day and you can sit in the German bunker and look through the slits as they did and just let your imagination run wild that morning, June 6, 1944, and think of what their reactions must have been when the morning haze lifted and the enormity of what was on the horizon hit them.
As for Kerchner, he led 15 of his men to a coastal road where he was forced to hold his position for 2 ½ days before the soldiers were relieved. Kerchner was later wounded at St. Lo, France, and sent back to the United States. After his service ended, he became the president of a family ice cream company. God bless him.
–You can’t make this stuff up. The gift shop at the Gettysburg National Military Park visitors’ center was selling John Wilkes Booth bobblehead dolls. I saw a photo. It has Booth holding a gun. The Gettysburg Foundation removed them when a local reporter spotted the dolls and asked about them. They are selling reasonably well online, but, c’mon…people. What a dumb idea to sell them at Gettysburg. So the Gettysburg Foundation gets thrown in the December file for yearend consideration in the “Jerk” category. [Pssst….just don’t tell anyone I have a painting of Nathan Bedford Forrest in my living room.]
–“Mad Men” star Jon Hamm, on the dumbing down of America:
“We’re at a place where the idea of being ‘elite’ is somehow considered negative….Whether it’s Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian or whoever, stupidity is certainly celebrated…Being a [f’n] idiot is a valuable commodity in this culture because you’re rewarded significantly….It’s celebrated. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
And for this, Jon Hamm, you go into the Bar Chat December file for consideration for “Man of the Year”!!!
Top 3 songs for the week 3/13/82: #1 “Centerfold” (The J. Geils Band…OK, I guess) #2 “Open Arms” (Journey…not in the mood for this kind of schmaltz about now) #3 “I Love Rock ‘N Roll” (Joan Jett & The Blackhearts…couldn’t stand her)…and…#4 “Shake It Up” (The Cars…oh gawd…going to get sick) #5 “That Girl” (Stevie Wonder…far from his best…mailed it in) #6 “Sweet Dreams” (Air Supply…blows) #7 “We Got The Beat” (Go-Go’s…just a very depressing time for the kid…was partying too much…meaning, it was a good time, but then turned into a baaaad time) #8 “Mirror, Mirror” (Diana Ross…no one likes her) #9 “Leader Of The Band” (Dan Fogelberg…geezuz, he’s been dead 4 ½ years! Time flies…except when you have to write about this pathetic era for music) “#10 “Take It Easy On Me” (Little River Band..I liked these guys…so I’ll cut them some slack for this listless effort)
NCAA Basketball Quiz Answer: [Girls, I expect you to use this information to wow your boyfriends or husbands. And when he asks, “Where the heck did you get all that?” Just smugly say, “His name is The Editor,” and walk away, leaving him wondering if he needs to find a new home.]
15-seed upsets:
2001…Hampton defeats Iowa State, 58-57
1997…Coppin State defeats South Carolina, 78-65
1993…Santa Clara defeats Arizona, 64-61
1991…Richmond defeats Syracuse, 73-69
