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.

The Last Wallflower

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.

Continue reading →

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!

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..

• Michigan State on a neutral court.
• Each other on the road.
• Virginia at home
• NC State at home
• Maryland at home and on the road
• Virginia Tech on the road
• Wake Forest on the road. Continue reading →

I’ll link my magnum opus on Grantland in a second, but at the end of the Ryan Kelly interview, when all the other reporters had trickled away, I couldn’t resist asking him one last question.

Me: You like the nickname ‘White Raven’?

Kelly: (laughs) I’ve heard that one before. Someone actually- someone was just telling me the other day, that now the Cameron Crazies all say that every time I make one, and flap the wings.

Me: What do you think?

Kelly: It’s pretty good.

Amigos,

The Devil Wolf and I had ourselves a chat about an upcoming game you might have heard of- DUKE-CAROLINA. THE ONLY SHOW IN TOWN.

Let the Tobacco Wars begin.

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