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Let us count the ways NCAA tournament committee reaches new lows in 2002Posted: Wednesday March 13, 2002 6:11 PM
ALBUQUERQUE -- Surprise, surprise. This is the hoops capital of America this weekend (how crazy is the prospect of a second-round tilt between No. 6 Gonzaga and No. 7 Arizona?). After a trip through town, however, I'd also call it the Low-Rider Capital of America -- and the city that most closely resembles the set for a Mad Max movie ... For the record, the NCAA tournament committee did its worst job ever this year. But this is what happens when you rely on political apparatchiks to make fair decisions in a smoke-filled room. Asking ADs and conference commissioners to watch tapes of Gonzaga is just as fruitless as asking coaches to vote in a Top 25 poll each week. There's so much $$$ in the tournament, the least they could do is make being on the selection committee a full-time job ... CD of the week: the five-disc set from the Ken Burns series on jazz. Great stuff ... Why all the negative reactions to Sports Illustrated's LeBron James cover? If an 8-year-old piano prodigy were playing for pay at Carnegie Hall and appeared on the front of The New York Times Magazine , nobody would be bent out of shape. Can't we just appreciate the kid's talent? ... Just received my copy of Bob Knight: My Story , which makes me wonder: Is this the first time in recorded history that someone has been overexposed nationally after moving to Lubbock, Texas? ... Two of the best in the business: ESPN's always thoughtful Len Elmore (who should be on the Sports Reporters every week) and The Kansas City Star's Joe Posnanski (though it's time you started liking soccer, pal) ... Jerks of the Week: the people at Advantage Rent-A-Car, who are using the rental car shortage here to jack up prices from $39 to $150 a day. These are the kind of guys who would charge $30 for a bottle of water after an earthquake ... And finally, we criticize because we care. This tournament is the best thing American sports has to offer. It just needs to be run by people who care about more than the bottom line. Time for some questions ... I have to say that early indications are poor for the pod system. Why should
Illinois, a No. 4 seed, get a home-court advantage in Chicago while Georgia, a
No. 3 seed, has to travel to Chicago? A system that gives the No. 4 seeds such
an advantage just because a sub-regional is close to home is unfair.
Well, after years of preventing home-court advantages the tournament committee is (strangely) taking all the credit for bringing them back. Of course it's unfair that 3-seed Mississippi State may have to play 6-seed Texas in Dallas, and that 5-seed Florida is looking at taking on 4-seed Illinois in Chicago. The silliest thing I read all day today was the quote from CBS's Jim Nantz in USA Today about how the pods had to be set up because nobody went to the opening rounds in New Orleans last year. Well, duh -- the first two rounds shouldn't have been in the Superdome to begin with. What team or teams do you see causing problems for Kansas' extremely
effective offense? Or do you think no one can stop the Jayhawks? They just have
so many weapons inside and out, I don't see very many tams, if any, giving them
difficulty.
I assume you wrote this, Chris, before the Jayhawks' loss to Oklahoma in the Big 12 title game. The Sooners proved that if you're going to have any chance of beating Kansas, you have to out-tough the Jayhawks, clog the lanes and slow them down. (Holding KU to 19 points in the first half was easily one of the top 10 achievements of the college hoops season.) If you can believe it, I think Kansas will have a tougher time during the opening weekend than it will during the second weekend. Stanford and Western Kentucky are seeded way too low, particularly the Hilltoppers, which I see as being similar to St. Joe's last year (a ranked team that gets jobbed with a 9-seed, beats a big-conference team in the opening round and gives the top-seeded team fits in Round 2). How strange is it, after all, that Stanford and WKU are the 8- and 9-seeds, while Oregon and Mississippi State are the 2- and 3-seeds in the Midwest? Strange days indeed. Has there ever been a better SAT matchup than Cal-Penn in the first round?
Combined, their US News and World Report RPI number is under 10.
Too bad Princeton didn't get Stanford in the first round last year. On the sad note of Cole Field House's last Maryland game: I remember you
named your favorite arenas some time ago, and Cole wasn't on that short list.
That surprised me somewhat. Where would you rate it as a place to watch a game?
Is it on a longer list? (You have to love a place where you can just wander in a
couple hours after the game and just, well, soak it in.)
One of the great shames of my life (akin to not having seen Star Wars for the first time until college; long story) is that I never got to see a game in Cole. In fact, because SI has always had an "ACC guy," I am pained to say that I have never seen a game in an ACC arena. Sad but true, and something I hope to correct in the near future. (I'm still 28, guys, so give me time.) It's funny how you mentioned the hair of the Oregon Lukes. When the Ducks
came to play at Maples Pavilion last month, we in the Sixth Man club had a chant
of "Frodo Baggins!" for Ridnour and "Bilbo Baggins!" for
Jackson, as the players' hairstyles looked straight out of Lord of the Rings
. What would you think about an All-Hobbit team, consisting of Ridnour,
Jackson, Dan Dickau of Gonzaga, Kirk Hinrich of Kansas and Rick Anderson of
Arizona?
Solid, solid picks, Tolu. For subs I'd suggest San Diego State's Tuffy Walton, his bro Luke at Arizona (before his recent buzz) and former Kansas player Luke Axtell (emeritus member). How serious a title contender are any of the six tournament teams from the
Pac-10?
I like USC as a Final Four team, and I would have felt that way about Arizona had it not drawn a possible matchup with Gonzaga in the second round. Cal got stiffed by the committee (opening-round games in Pittsburgh against Penn and probably Pitt), Oregon probably didn't deserve a No. 2 seed (and has to play Pepperdine in the first round), UCLA is too flighty, and Stanford is stuck with two tough opening games against Western Kentucky and Kansas. Over the past few years, I've heard a lot of complaints about the
disappearance of the mid-range jump shot. While this shot is useful on the NBA
level, is there really a reason to use it in the college ranks? If you are a
couple steps inside the 3-point line you should either do one of two things:
drive to the basket for an easy layup or pull back and take a three. The
mid-range shot might look pretty, but in most cases, you will hit this about as
often as a three. So what is all the worry about?
Good point, Phillip. For the most part. In the college game, a 17-footer is a silly, silly shot. I do think mid-range shots from, say, 10 to 15 feet have some use in the college ranks. Lute Olson has always told me that guards make a big mistake by thinking that closer is always better, and that he and his staff are always working with their guards on mid-range shots as an alternative to taking it to the hole. Last year Casey Jacobsen told me he had been working a lot on his mid-range game, and while that was surely in part to impress NBA scouts, it also makes drives easier because your defender will come out to guard you. WATN: BARRY GOHEEN FOUND!I'm happy to say I located Barry Goheen, Vanderbilt's uncanny buzzer-beating gunner from the late '80s. Goheen hit seven different buzzer-beaters during his career, none more important than the 3-pointer he made in the 1988 tourney to lead his seventh-seeded Commodores into OT (and eventual victory) against No. 2 seed Pitt. For the past six years, Goheen has been practicing law at the largest firm in Atlanta, King & Spalding ("spelled like the basketball," he says), specializing in business defense cases ("though I was never known much for defense") and, as you can see, one-liners. And though he hasn't picked up a ball in five years, he says, Goheen stays in touch with old teammates Will Perdue and Barry Booker, and he keeps cobweb-covered tapes of his buzzer-beaters at home in Atlanta. "Every year there are four or five games in the tournament that come down to shots at the buzzer," says the King of the Last-Second Shot. "It's the greatest feeling in the world to hit one." Best of luck, Barry. And thus ends our last 'Bag of the year. Enjoy the tournament, and let's do this again next year. Sports Illustrated senior writer Grant Wahl covers college basketball for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com
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