NCAA B-Ball Tournament Quiz: OK, the first round is long history, but I’m doing this anyway. 1) Name the seven 15-seeds to pull off upsets in tournament history. 2) Name the only 15-seed to then win a second-round game. 3) Georgia State and UAB were the 19th and 20th 14-seeds to win a first-round game last week. Name the only two 14s to win a second-round contest. Answers below.
March Madness
–Michigan State coach Tom Izzo and Louisville coach Rick Pitino each have 13 Sweet Sixteen appearances.
—UCLA at 11 is the last remaining double-digit seed in the Sweet 16, the fewest since 2009. The record of double-digit seeds in the Sweet 16 since 1985 is 13-52.
“Bill Self’s worst nightmare unfolded in front of him and nearly 20,000 other people at CenturyLink Center in Omaha on Sunday.
“No. 7 Wichita State, most certainly an underseeded Shockers team, took out No. 2 Kansas 78-65 to advance to the Sweet 16….
“The 15th all-time meeting between these two (the first came 107 years ago, in 1908) went to Wichita State. It was WSU’s first win over Kansas since 1987 and the first tilt between the teams since January of 1993.
“From a postseason perspective, this was a throwback to 1981, when the Wheat Shockers beat the Jayhawks 66-65 in the Sweet 16….
“Thank you, selection committee, for giving us a chance at this. It offered Wichita State a possibility to prove its worth to basketball royalty in its own state, a team that won’t even invite the Shockers over for dinner….
“For Wichita State fans, this has been a surprise gift a year in the making. All the sting from losing in the Round of 32 last year to a blue blood isn’t gone, but it’s been as atoned for as possible in the best conceivable way.
“A perfect season ended in 2014 by Kentucky.
“Now a charmed tournament run continues in 2015 with the most satisfying victory imaginable.”
Now if the Shockers defeat Notre Dame, they’ll most likely have a rematch with Kentucky. Look what coach Gregg Marshall has done. A Final Four two years ago. The perfect season last year that was interrupted by the Selection Committee absurdly putting an underseeded Kentucky in the same bracket. But now a return to the Sweet 16.
Most schools, save for a mere handful, would kill for this record.
But Matt Norlander writes that Marshall is as hot a commodity as the sport has, and this may be true, but Marshall made his decision last year after his spectacular success. He’s staying. I’d be shockered, err, shocked, if he left now after all the good things he said last year in turning down god knows how many offers.
Now if you tell me VanVleet is going into the draft, maybe we have a different story, but I’d like to think he returns with his buddy, Baker, and they’ll be solid next season too.
—Dr. W. still has his Elite Eight in the hunt, with Arizona beating Gonzaga in the title game. Should he win the SI million-dollar challenge, next December at Kiawah he is buying my meals and paying for our caddie at the Ocean Course. [Dr., I’ll pay my own greens fee.]
—My bracket is busted just off the East alone, where I didn’t have one of the four right for the Sweet Sixteen. Actually, of the more than 11.57 million Tournament Challenge brackets through ESPN.com, just 14 have all Sweet 16 correct.
“I understand that the likes of John Calipari, Roy Williams and Jim Boeheim are paid to win basketball games; they’re just driving the getaway car in this high-end heist. But they act as if they’re doing God’s work when all they’re doing is teaching 19-year-olds to box out. Trust me, Williams doesn’t care whether his players haven’t been to class in a month of Sundays. He just cares that they know their assignments on Big Mondays.
“Boeheim? If he walked into my home, I believe my dog, Sapphire, an excellent judge of human character, would bite him.
“But these icons answer to no one, and if they had their druthers – usually, they get a luxury carload of druthers – they literally wouldn’t answer a single question about their programs.
“Calipari – coach of the 1996 Massachusetts Final Four appearance vacated because of impropriety, coach of the 2008 Memphis Final Four appearance vacated because of impropriety, master of the much lauded one-and-done Kentucky empire – on detractors: ‘I want to tell you all, no one will steal my joy. If you want to attack what we’re doing, be nasty about it, have at it. You’re not stealing my joy.’
“Williams, asked about nearly two decades of academic shenanigans at North Carolina: ‘You want to talk about basketball, we’ll talk basketball. But I’m not going to rehash all that other crap.’
“Boeheim – head-in-the-sand about Fab Melo, academic misconduct, impermissible booster activity, et al – queried about public perception of Syracuse: ‘I’m not talking about the NCAA investigation. And another thing for your question: I don’t give a [expletive] what those people think.’
“These basketball behemoths are enabled by the culture we live in, by college presidents who bow to a bottom line rather than set a higher standard.”
–Arizona State fired coach Herb Sendek after he guided the Sun Devils to an 18-16 record and missed the NCAA tournament. In nine seasons he went 159-137, including 8-22 his first year. After that he had a number of 20-win seasons and a few NCAA appearances, but didn’t attain the heights of in-state rival Arizona.
Jeff Capel, former head coach at VCU and Oklahoma, and now an assistant at Duke, reportedly would receive the job if he wanted it.
–In catching up on some reading from the last 10 days or so, I had to include this passage from Murray A. Sperber, who in an opinion piece for the Washington Post, wrote of “Five myths about college sports.”
One of them was, Title IX has allowed women to participate equally in college sports.
“In many ways, Title IX, the law prohibiting gender-based discrimination in schools, has succeeded. When it was implemented in 1972, just 16,000 women played college sports; today the number is more than 200,000.
“But in one glaring way, the law’s passage has seen equality for women in sports decrease: coaching. As of 2012, only 43 percent of women’s college teams were led by women, down from more than 90 percent in 1972, the year two former professors began tracking the numbers. Title IX created higher salaries for the coaches of women’s programs – and the better pay ended up attracting men to those positions. Judy Sweet, the first woman to be president of the NCAA, has said she doesn’t expect the downward trend to stop: ‘It requires breaking this cycle of male university presidents hiring male board members hiring male athletic directors hiring male coaches.’
“And even the presence of men has not led to pay parity for the coaches of women’s programs. The average salary for a coach of an NCAA Division I men’s team was $267,007 in 2010. Coaches of women’s teams on average earned $98,106.”
“Countless publications and entire TV networks cover college sports, and schools pay nothing for those sweeping shots of the campus broadcast during big games. Applications tend to spike for schools appearing in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. ‘We couldn’t afford to buy the kind of exposure our team earned,’ Butler athletic director Barry Collier said of the school’s surprise success in the 2010 tournament. George Mason University estimated that its 2006 tournament run won it $677 million worth of free publicity.
“But when scandals occur on or off the field, the media does not disappear – in fact, more reporters arrive on campus – and the bad PR costs schools dearly. After enjoying years of good press for its athletics, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is now being roiled by a massive academic fraud scandal in its athletic program.”
Mina Kimes, writing in ESPN The Magazine’s current issue, has a different take on NCAA runs and the PR impact. That above-referenced George Mason team’s performance led to a 21% surge in applications, but since, applications have barely budged. A study done by BYU’s Jaren Pope and his brother Devin, a University of Chicago professor, “found that a trip to the Sweet 16 prompts, on average, a 3.8 percent increase. ‘It’s a temporary bump for two or three years,’ Jaren Pope says. That might explain what happened at Butler, which saw a 41 percent increase in applications after the college made it to the NCAA championship game in 2010 but only a 2 percent jump after it returned to the final in 2011 as an even bigger underdog.
“Other schools see barely any uptick. When Davidson made a run to the Elite Eight in 2008, as a 10-seed led by Steph Curry, several stories trumpeted a surge in applications to the tiny college. The actual bump? Eighty-two more students applied the next year.” [Ed. I was shocked by this one.]
Even talk of big bumps in donations can be deceiving. “At Wichita State, bequests skyrocketed in 2013 and ’14, right after the school reached its first Final Four since 1965. It’s tempting to presume cause and effect – and some did – but the biggest gift actually came from the estate of a donor who died in 2012, months before the Shockers upset Gonzaga. Patsy Selby, a vice president at the WSU Foundation, says the benefactor was a patron of the school’s engineering program. ‘That had nothing to do with athletics,’ she says.”
–I’ve decided the NIT is a better tournament today than it’s been in a while, just a feeling of mine. It can certainly help a school’s profile in terms of recruiting if it can get to the Garden as Murray State is attempting to do.
As I’ve noted before, I’ve had a soft spot for the Racers since tabbing them a few years ago and spending a weekend in Murray, Ky., to catch one of their games. This year I said that despite going 16-0 in the OVC they needed to win their conference tournament and they then had that heartbreaking loss to Belmont and were rightfully excluded. Just no way you could give that conference two bids.
So Murray State headed to the NIT and I watched them roll over Tulsa on Monday, 83-62, to get to within one game of the Garden and the NIT semifinals. The Racers, now 29-5, are exciting, with a helluva point guard in sophomore Cameron Payne. MSU shot 14 of 25 from the 3-point line in the win…awesome. They now head to Old Dominion for the quarterfinals on Wednesday. I’ll don my Racers shirt for that one.
[It will be interesting to see what Payne does. He should definitely stay one more year, but the Racers don’t return much next season, unless I’m missing some big recruits or transfers, the latter a specialty of Steve Prohm’s program. Payne is currently projected as a second-rounder if he goes now.]
–In the NCAA women’s basketball tournament, Rutgers coach C. Vivian Stringer led her Scarlet Knights to a 91-55 dismantling at the hands of No. 1 UConn (34-1). Stringer, the first or second highest-paid New Jersey public employee (Rutgers being a state university) earned $850,000 this year, including a bonus for beating Seton Hall in the first round. The women’s program loses gobs of money.
Meanwhile, UConn coach Geno Auriemma notched his 99th career NCAA tournament victory on his 61st birthday.
AL East…Red Sox
AL Central…Tigers
AL West…Mariners
NL East…Nationals
NL Central…Cardinals
NL West…Dodgers
Like everyone else, they have the Nationals winning it all.
For Mets and Yankees fans, ESPN has the Mets third (at a projected 80-82), the Yankees fourth (81-81). Boy, if the Mets finish 80-82, I’m committing hari-kari (assuming Johnny Mac gives me my sword back that he is hiding for my own good).
—ESPN interviewed 117 players anonymously to get their take on various topics.
37% say the Nationals will win the Series, 17% the Mariners.
61% say Mike Trout is the best overall player in the game.
41% say Bryce Harper is the most overrated.
–Some Mets fans are apoplectic that Matt Harvey is not starting opening day in Washington, April 6 (41-year-old Bartolo Colon is), nor the Mets home opener (Jacob deGrom), April 13, with Mets GM Sandy Alderson admitting that part of the reason for setting up the rotation the first few weeks the way they have was to put more fans in the seats the second home game, April 14, that Harvey will start. [Harvey is starting the third game in Washington, April 9, as well.] The opener is almost always a sellout, but the second game’s attendance can be deadly.
How dare the Mets not start Harvey opening day and the Mets home opener! the fans have been screaming.
Geezuz, chill out, boys and girls. It just doesn’t matter, plus with Harvey coming back from Tommy John surgery after being out for over a year, I hope the team protects him and keeps from pitching in lousy early April weather.
And as for management trying to generate more revenue, whatever. Just get off to a good start, Metsies. If they are 20-20, manager Terry Collins is probably gone.
–Ted Berg of USA TODAY Sports had a story on the ongoing lawsuit filed by three former minor leaguers that seeks to apply the terms of the Fair Labor Standards Act to minor league players, despite MLB’s antitrust exemption.
The original suit was combined with a similar one and the defendants are MLB, former commissioner Bud Selig and the 30 big-league franchises.
While a trial is not scheduled until February 2017, the basis for the lawsuit is pretty simple.
“Minor league salaries have increased by only 75% since 1976, despite more than 400% inflation during that time period. And though some players sign for big bonuses out of the draft or in international free agency, minor leaguers start out making only $1,100 a month for the length of their seasons, with no additional compensation for the year-round conditioning work expected of professional ballplayers.”
Since minor leaguers aren’t represented by the major league union, and without a collective voice, the owners just refer to their antitrust exemption and collude on salaries to keep them ridiculously low. Plus they get only $20 to $25 a day for meal money and many share awful apartments.
—Wilson Sporting Goods announced it was acquiring the intellectual property of Louisville slugger from its original owner, Hillerich & Bradsby. The cost is $70 million.
H&B will continue to make the bats in Louisville, but do so exclusively for Wilson. H&B faced growing competition from the likes of Mariucci and DeMarini brands. H&B admitted they succumbed to the “challenges of the global business climate,” including limited resources.
H&B has also been hit by lawsuits due to injuries resulting from metal bats.
Louisville Slugger is the official bat of MLB, though players can use or endorse other brands. Wilson is the official fielding glove.
Honus Wagner was Louisville Slugger’s first endorser, placing Wagner bats with his signature on them in stores.
—More fallout on Pete Rose’s appeal to Commissioner Rob Manfred for reinstatement to Major League Baseball.
Fay Vincent weighed in again, forever defending his friend Bart Giamatti’s call. In an interview with the New York Times’ Tyler Kepner, Vincent said that to view the case from Rose’s point of view misses the critical point.
“The issue is the deterrent,” Vincent said. “The reason the deterrent works is that nobody has ever been let back.”
But teammate and Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt said, “I think they have proven a point, through Pete, very strongly, to the players,” Schmidt said. “If there was ever a player that thought he might place a bet on a game, or his team, I think that the Pete Rose example has driven it home. I don’t think we’ll ever see a player consider betting on a game that he’s involved in, or any other game, if he’s a major league baseball player.”
Hall of Famer Paul Molitor said, “The one rule that is read in every clubhouse, every spring training, for I don’t know how many decades, has been made clear that if this is violated, this is the consequence. Now, if they decide to make a change in the stance that they’ve taken to this point, you are going to say that every time we read that, we really didn’t mean it.”
If Rose were reinstated, the Hall of Fame said the earliest he would be considered would be December 2016, by the veterans’ committee.
NBA Lottery Chase (thru Tuesday)
Knicks 14-57
T’Wolves 16-54
76ers 17-54
Lakers 18-51
Fred Kerber has a story in the New York Post on the consensus top picks these days: Duke’s Jahlil Okafor, Kentucky center Karl-Anthony Towns and Ohio State guard D’Angelo Russell. “A fourth name, Congo-born point guard Emmanuel Mudiay, in China after forgoing SMU, also receives consideration.”
Heck, I actually think Kentucky’s other big man, Willie Cauley-Stein, has as much potential as Towns. But regardless of what ping-pong ball the Knicks end up with, it’s going to be hard to blow this one.
Golf Balls
–Great piece in Golfworld by Tim Rosaforte on Arnold Palmer and his determination to hit the first tee shot at Augusta, despite dislocating his shoulder last December. He’s 85, after all. But Arnie said last weekend at his event at Bay Hill, “I have every intention of hitting the first drive.” Said grandson Sam Saunders, who played well last week, “Even if he hits it 50 yards off the tee, it doesn’t matter. The point is, he’s there.”
“Why is this tee shot so important? Because as so many who played in and attended last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational felt or expressed, it’s a now singular opportunity for the most important golfer in history to freeze time and provide a long collective moment to savor his incredible career.
“ ‘I think there’s a sense when Arnold doesn’t do it anymore, it will be the end of an era, sort of the bridge to somewhere in the past being lost,’ said Palmer’s business manager, Alastair Johnston. ‘With all due respect to Gary and Jack, Arnold was basically the guy that really launched Augusta and the Masters into the public mindset.’…
“The problem is that Palmer cannot get his right arm above shoulder height. That hasn’t stopped him from signing the piles of autograph requests that built up on his desk, or commit to be in Washington, D.C. Tuesday to see Nicklaus receive the Congressional Medal of Honor, or look forward to attending the British Open at St. Andrews.”
Arnie was down after his fall last December, but Alastair Johnston pushed him to go out to California to do a commercial. “I told him, ‘I’m coming out there and we’re going to have some fun.’”
As Rosaforte notes: “The commercial ends with Palmer knocking in a putt and giving a little fist pump, a scene done in one take.
–The NFL opened its annual meeting Monday and it seems a certainty the league is adding two teams in Los Angeles for the 2016 season. New England owner Robert Kraft is one of those echoing that sentiment this week. Kraft also said the owners do not intend to expand the NFL playoff field from 12 to 14 teams in the 2015 season.
Regarding L.A., it’s about the Rams, Raiders and Chargers vying for the two spots…maybe just one. Certainly for the kind of stadium they are looking at for L.A., two teams would seem to be a requirement.
As for the Calvin Johnson catch rule that came into play in the Cowboys-Packers playoff game when Dallas receiver Dez Bryant’s catch was ruled an incompletion; the rule is being reworded to require a player to have control of the ball once he hits the turf and with both feet on the ground. Actually, nothing has changed. We’ll deal with this next season.
One more…the NFL is also not messing with the extra-point for now, or at least it seems like nothing will change for the upcoming season. The Pats have proposed having the ball snapped from the 15-yard line, making the extra point the equivalent of a 33-yard field goal. There is also talk of moving the ball to the 1-yard line to encourage two-point conversions. [Mark Maske / Washington Post]
You need 24 of the 32 owners to approve any rule change. The owners did vote to approve a one-year suspension of the NFL’s blackout policy for local TV broadcasts. There weren’t any last season and just two in 2013. Heretofore, a game was to be sold out 72 hours before kickoff to be carried in the local TV market of the home team.
–The other day I noted College Hockey’s main event that leads to the Frozen Four. Boston College is among the 16 that square off this weekend and it’s an excuse to mention that B.C.’s own Johnny Gaudreau, who was the college player of the year for 2013-14, is the NHL’s leading rookie scorer with 20 goals and 37 assists for Calgary thru Tuesday’s play. Nashville center Filip Forsberg is second among rookies, one point behind, with 22 and 34. Gaudreau is all of 5’9”, 150 lbs.
—Baseball America’s College Poll (Mar. 23)
1. LSU
2. Vanderbilt
3. Texas A&M
4. Florida
5. TCU
6. Central Florida
15. Dallas Baptist
–OK, Kentucky Derby fans…this is a huge Saturday coming up. Among the stakes races are two biggies, the Florida Derby at Gulfstream and the Louisiana Derby at the Fair Grounds. [Plus the UAE Derby at Meydan].
American Pharoah is back in the conversation after a long absence, taking the March 14 Rebel Stakes at Oaklawn, though Dortmund remains No. 1 on the Louisville Courier-Journal’s panel of experts’ list. No. 2 is Carpe Diem, then Pharaoh.
Last fall, the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile was won by Texas Red, which is now rated No. 10.
[I assume NBC will be running the Florida and Louisiana Derbies back-to-back on Saturday…not looking this up.]
–We’re just about five weeks from the historic Manny Pacquiao / Floyd Mayweather bout, the night of the Kentucky Derby, May 2. ESPN is expecting it to generate at least $400 million in revenue, with ticket prices starting…starting…at $1,500, then scaling up to $10,000; meaning the live gate at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas will be $74 million from the 15,000 available tickets. [1,100 are priced at $10,000.]
–Washington Wizards guard John Wall told Sports Illustrated’s Dan Patrick that he wasn’t exactly impressed with President Obama’s hoops game. “He missed like seven or eight shots in a row,” Wall told Patrick “He had to shoot a layup because kids were picking on him. Usually lefties have pretty form. His form is not too pretty.”
–Funny piece in the Jerusalem Post (where you don’t often find humor). “Archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) have uncovered a 1,400-year-old ceramic oil lamp with the help of an unlikely aide – a porcupine.
“Last week, during a routine patrol at the Horbat Siv ancient ruins – a Roman-Byzantine site near Emek Hefer in central Israel, anti-antiquities theft inspectors found the oil lamp on top of a pile of dirt that a porcupine had unearthed while digging a burrow.
“Porcupine’s live in underground burrows that can stretch to as long as 15 meters.
“Ira Horovitz from the anti-antiquities theft unit of the IAA said that ‘the porcupine is an excellent archaeologist, a relentless digger…It often happens that porcupines dig their burrows at the site of archaeological digs…he skillfully throws the dirt aside, and with it whatever archaeological findings are in his path.’”
So here at Bar Chat, we sent a contractor overseas to talk to the porcupine and found him to be quite the character. He explained, “Yeah, I see this oil lamp and I’m like, I do my thing in the dark and don’t need the lamp, plus I know these guys have been looking for stuff like this so I did what any self-respecting porcupine would do and left it on the mound. Now I’m being treated like some kind of hero and it’s all a bit too much.”
With the porcupine’s permission, we have outfitted him with a Go-Pro camera so he can catch the dirtballs who are stealing antiquities. We also notified him that because of his good work, ‘Porcupine’ has been elevated to No. 29 on the All-Species List. A certificate suitable for framing will be mailed to him at a future date.
One more, the IAA issued a call for “all porcupines to avoid digging burrows at archaeological sites,” warning it could be a criminal offense.
This was supposedly said in jest, but with tensions the way they are in the region these days, porcupine nation is not laughing. Our hero, J’Danian Porcupine, offered up, “We were here before Moses, for cryin’ out loud!”
–From Melissa Gregory / USA TODAY: “An 18-wheeler stuck in some mud alongside Interstate 49 in Natchitoches Parish in Louisiana was in danger of tipper over but help came from the truck’s cargo.
“The big rig was hauling three elephants from New Orleans to Dallas when the driver of the 2000 Kenworth pulled over and became stuck in the mud. Natchitoches Parish Sheriff’s deputies were sent to the scene near the Powhatan exit to help around 7:30 a.m. Tuesday.
“ When deputies arrived on scene, they were astounded to find two elephants keeping the eighteen wheeler from overturning,’ reads the release.”
Yet another reason why ‘elephant’ is No. 2 on the ASL behind ‘dog’.
Top 3 songs for the week 3/24/79: #1 “Tragedy” (Bee Gees…just dreadful…the song, that is…) #2 “I Will Survive” (Gloria Gaynor) #3 “What A Fool Believes” (The Doobie Brothers…eh, they did better…)…and…#4 “Heaven Knows” (Donna Summer with Brooklyn Dreams) #5 “Shake Your Groove Thing” (Peaches & Herb) #6 “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” (Rod Stewart…not really…I prefer Britt, Mr. Stewart….) #7 “Sultans Of Swing” (Dire Straits…just goes on and on and on…) #8 “Fire” (Pointer Sisters…blows …) #9 “What You Won’t Do For Love” (Bobby Caldwell… not bad…given what an otherwise awful week it was…) #10 “A Little More Love” (Olivia Newton-John… finishing up junior year…it would be touch and go re graduation…)
NCAA Basketball Quiz Answers: 1) Seven 15-seeds to win a game: 2013 Florida Gulf Coast defeated Georgetown. 2012 Lehigh def. Duke; 2012 Norfolk State def. Missouri; 2001 Hampton def. Iowa State; 1997 Coppin State def. South Carolina; 1993 Santa Clara def. Arizona; 1991 Richmond def. Syracuse. 2) Only Florida Gulf Coast then won its next game. 3) The only 14-seeds to win a second-round game to advance to the Sweet 16 were 1997 Chattanooga over (6) Illinois and 1986 Cleveland State over (6) St. Joseph’s.
