Ben & Shane break down the brackets, and throw in some Bleacher Report and listener texts for fun.
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Enjoy the games!
Note: In mid-January, I went to Ann Arbor, MI and Evanston, IL to report a story about Northwestern’s push to make its first NCAA tournament. This is the story. It’s feature-length, so maybe it’s best digested section by section. Thanks very much for reading.
In front of an anxious bench, Northwestern’s Bill Carmody crossed his arms and watched his team fall behind. It was happening again. The Wildcats were at home, in Evanston, playing the no. 6 Michigan State Spartans on the second Saturday in January. Down the line, the great Tom Izzo raged and shouted, willing his team to break down Northwestern’s 1-3-1 zone. The Spartans were undefeated in four Big Ten games, while Northwestern was just 1-3. Carmody looked at his assistants, found no answers in their blank expressions, and wrapped his arms tighter. Hunched in his black suit coat, he looked like he might collapse into himself.
There’s a thought that hasn’t left Carmody’s mind for a decade, ever since he accepted the head coaching position at Northwestern. Of the 74 basketball programs in the six major conferences of Division 1, 73 have made the NCAA tournament. Northwestern is the 74th.
This past Sunday, after failing to advance in the Big Ten tournament, the Wildcats gathered at Welsh-Ryan Arena to watch the selection show in a hospitality suite called the “N Closet.” None were really surprised when their name wasn’t called. Despite competing well with the best in the conference from game to game, poor play at critical moments had doomed them again.
The ‘why’ of the problem- the explanation behind the tantalizing flirtations with the NCAA tournament that inevitably fall short- can be seen in microcosm during two games in mid-January. The team’s amazing potential and its agonizing inability to capitalize were perfectly on display against Michigan and Michigan State, and the results linger as artifacts of Northwestern’s latest failure. After a 10-1 start, with quality wins over LSU, Tulsa, and Seton Hall, the Wildcats had lost four of five games, along with every bit of positive momentum. The pessimism surrounding the program had begun to rise again.
As the season hit a critical point, Carmody was faced with the unenviable task of righting the ship against the Spartans.
In this episode, Shane & Ben discuss behind-the-scenes drama from the ACC Tournament, man-crushes on Austin Rivers, the NCAA tournament field, and every thing else you can possibly think of. Time stamps below.
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0:00 – Florida State’s Championship
2:15 – North Carolina’s NCAA bracket
4:30 – Shane’s road trip to the ACC Tournament: Favorite players, UNC locker fight, who’s fun to hang out with on press row, and self-invitations to media parties
14:45 – More of Shane’s trip: Do the players care about the ACC Tournament, how Miami took the loss, and the dumbest press conference question of the weekend
21:00 – Twitter Q&A, Part I … referee conspiracies, Lunardi doing Gottfried a solid, the dominant mascot theory, and disappearing Andre Dawkins
34:40 – Selection Sunday, the “First Four”, and mid-major match-ups
43:00 – Must watch NCAA players and teams in the 1st round, Michael Snaer love, and Harrison Barnes disappointment
55:40 – Bleacher Report trolling: “Four Reasons Why Duke Will Fail Miserably in the NCAA Tournament”
1:02:00 – Twitter Q&A, Part II
Jim and I are back, and we’re talking ’bout the Chuck Norris Bridge in Eastern Europe, the hazards of oral sex, America’s fight record since WW2, and so much more.
SYA will have its own home shortly, but for now it lives on Tobacco Road Blues. For those unfamiliar, this is the comedy podcast done by myself and my pal SlimJim, where we talk about news and life and the world of selfish young Americans.
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If you like it, tell a friend or write a review on iTunes or send me $400. Enjoy!
SCENE: 10 P.M., FRIDAY NIGHT. INSIDE THE PENTHOUSE OF A HOTEL ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF ATLANTA.
The man took a long drag from his cigarette and exhaled. It would be another long night of questions from the man-in-charge. This late in the season, though, he was used to it.
“What’s the status?”
“Nothing new, sir. We thought going to Atlanta would bring us closer to finding him, but our intel must have been wrong.”
The man tapped his cigarette twice before bringing it to his lips. He paused for a second.
“Something might show up tomorrow. But I think our best hope will be Charlotte in a week or so.”
The man-in-charge sneered.
“Dammit, James. You’ve been saying that for weeks.”
“I know, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”
Even this biased Duke fan knows that UNC has a better team, and therefore I won’t waste your time with the argument about which team is better. However, I will waste your time trying to make the point that as of this moment Duke has a better resume than UNC and is more deserving of a #1 seed. Why? They have beaten better teams. The good news with Duke/UNC is that it is pretty easy to compare their schedules. In the interest of comparing the two teams I am going to cross off similar games. If they both played at Maryland and won then neither team can claim that win as an advantage over the other team. By deleting the similar games my goal was to show you the games that differentiate Duke and UNC this year.
First let’s go over the games that I deleted because they were either exactly the same or similiar enough. Here were the two ground rules that you can feel free to disagree with – 1) Margin of victory did not matter. A loss is a loss regardless of if it is by 1 point or 33 points. 2) Sub-200 wins were deleted.
Exact games: Duke/UNC both beat..
As Duke fans will remember from three weeks ago, the joy of winning a rivalry game is much sweeter when the game is away. On top of the extra satisfaction of overcoming the opponent’s home court advantage, the best part about rivalry road wins are getting to see the priceless expressions of disbelief and disgust on the faces of your enemies. Few fans will ever know what that experience feels like in person, but for one group of UNC students, the dream came true in March 2006. It was, in my estimation, the greatest possible fan experience ever achieved: an unexpected victory on Duke’s senior night, surrounded by 9000 miserable and embarrassed fans.
At that point in the season, Duke had only been ranked only #1 or #2, losing just two games at Georgetown and Florida State. It was almost a storybook season that featured Shelden Williams recording Duke’s first triple double, a much-hyped five man freshmen class, Sean Dockery’s 40-foot buzzer beater against Virginia Tech, and classic lights out 40 point performances from JJ Redick against Texas and Virginia. A month earlier, Duke had beaten UNC at the Smith Center behind 35 points from Redick and a sweet reverse alley-oop from Dockery to McRoberts. On top of all that, it was senior night for fan favorites Dockery and Lee Melchionni (who kissed center-court during introductions), and Duke’s leading career rebounder and mayonnaise sandwich eater (Williams and Redick).
The ACC Tournament is a waste of time.
There. I said it.
Va Tech fans know this Thinker pose well.
Now, before you get all pissy: if you’re a Clemson or Florida State fan or, God help you, a Virginia fan, then the ACC Tournament is a valuable tool to enhance your seeding or your resume for the tournament. Actually, if you’re one of those fans, why are you reading this? And if you’re a Maryland fan, I’m still not over the fact that Greivis Vasquez played for you, so you get no love from me.
The general gist of the anti-tournament argument goes something like this: for the conference royalty, UNC and Duke, seeding for the NCAA tournament is usually pretty set by the time the tournament comes around. The tournament thus serves merely a fatigue machine serving up two, maybe three more games for your star players to risk injury. At the very best, it’s forty to 120 more minutes of wear on already-beaten bodies.
(Don’t miss the Walk-Ons’ ACC Tourney preview podcast here!)
This year has been a strange one in Durham. This team’s performance has given Duke fans plenty to debate about when it comes to the question about whether or not they are any good. If you think they are good you point out the teams they have beaten, their undefeated ACC road record and the fight they show when down double digits. If you think they aren’t very good then you point out their last game against UNC, their struggles at home and the fact that they routinely find themselves down double digits.
What did we learn from this past Duke/UNC game? Besides the fact that *Vegas was handing out free money by favoring Duke by 1.5, I don’t know if we really found out much.
*One of the rules I follow in life is not to bet on Duke/UNC. There is enough on the line that I don’t need to complicate things with a financial wager. I came close to breaking that rule on Saturday considering the absurdity of that line. I understand Duke beat UNC the first time and if I was seeding the NCAA tournament even today I would give them the #1 seed over UNC. Still that doesn’t take away that UNC is a better team than Duke, and for Duke to win many more things have to go right for them than UNC.
It’s not like we just found out that UNC has a lot of top-level talent. Any Duke/UNC fan knew that UNC has four projected 1st round lottery picks. It also wasn’t a surprise that Duke matched up poorly with UNC considering their weaknesses (front line play and defensive rebounding) were Carolina’s strengths. I guess it was a little unexpected that Marshall and Henson would hit so many outside shots considering both are terrible shooters. That was the difference between the game being a 5-10 point loss and the actual result of a blowout.
If you want to be positive as a Duke fan consider that this game will be forgotten. They will be replaying Austin Rivers shot a million more times, but nobody will really think about this random Duke/UNC game. It was a mismatch and those aren’t that appealing to watch on ESPN Classic. Also, it was kind of nice watching the Plumlees play decent basketball. Mason Plumlee specifically seemed to break out of the funk he has been since the Maryland game. He still did some Mason Plumlee like things (why go for a block you can’t get and leave your man to get the offensive rebound?) but still his energy and offensive game were an improvement over recent games. Finally, one positive thought is that this Duke team plays much better away from Cameron and they no longer have to play there this season. I did write that it has been a strange year – right?
If you want to be negative then you might look at Austin Rivers struggles at the free throw line, Coach K’s lack of trust in Andre Dawkins (11 minutes?) or basically every outside shooter being off in the same game. It was certainly a frustrating game to watch, but it doesn’t really change what we knew all along. The logical conclusion to come to after that game is that Duke isn’t that bad, but UNC could be that good. Maybe that is reason enough for Duke fans to be depressed after Saturday’s debacle.
Well, s—. That wasn’t fun.
The pain from a loss like Saturday’s is completely different than from a buzzer-beater loss–not better or worse, just different. A buzzer-beater loss is vivid, exciting, and intense–you can look back to one or two plays and question the team’s strategy: “Why did Andre Dawkins help off of Michael Snaer? Why didn’t Tyler Zeller put his arms up and prevent a 3-pointer?” It’s a brutal, heart-breaking way to lose, but you have that belief in your team right until the final buzzer. The margin between winning and losing is so thin that it’s–literally–awesome, and the final result will, in some way or another, shock you.
But losses like Saturday? There’s no excitement, no sweaty palms, no nail-biting. No joy or belief that your team just needs one play right here to pull out a win. No crushing disappointment at the final buzzer, just gratitude that there’s no coda to drag out your pain further. Losses like that are just pure sadness and anger, wrapped in a bundle of unmet expectations and topped with a bow of rising frustration.
