Friday, March 18, 2011

Day 2, dinner segment

It took Kansas over 20 minutes to pull away from Boston University. Yes, they were tight, but why does this stuff always happen to Bill Self teams? I still can't believe he won a title, though that was likely the NCAA gods ensuring Calipari wouldn't win one so the NCAA wouldn't be put in the awkward position of having to vacate an actual title. It's one thing to vacate a Final Four berth (UMass), or a final game berth (Memphis), but a whole other can of worms to vacate a title. Remember, USC and Reggie Bush gave up the Heisman, not their titles.

Purdue smoked St. Peters. Lesson here, if you want to be a basilica, St. Peter's is a good name. If you want to be a basketball team that gets taken seriously, pick something else. Second lesson: if you're thinking of backing a team that's named after a single person, slap yourself upside the head, and pick the other team.

While Kansas habitually simply plays poorly for long stretches of torunament games, North Carolina clearly just gets bored for stretches of games. It seems to take years off of Roy Williams' life, but he refuses to use timeouts to re-focus his troops. Except for the 2 years where Tyler Hansbrough was a junior/senior, this has been a problem for Roy's UNC teams, even the one that won the 2005 national title. Is it better to not just chase talent, ensure your kids are coachable, and take 6 months to remove their souls, like Duke does? Sure the high end of your potential is lower but the low end of what you'll actually get is so much higher.

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