The two picks that hurt; I picked Notre Dame to win. I picked Purdue to lose. :shock: I deserve to take a dive.
Stu, great line! Terry, It is time for you to become a hockey fan: ND vs. M in the CCHA Finals tonight!
Tennessee has a rough path to the Elite Eight. We have to get past #4 seed Virginia just to get to the Sweet 16. If we get that far, we win the opportuunity for Ohio State to show that they are better than the one point they beat us by in the regular season. As long as we are as hot as we were against Long Beach, we could be a force in this Dance. However, we have been known to go ice cold at times.
Buckeyes will a wild one over Xavier in OT. Oden certainly did not have one of his better days. I had written us off 9 points down with about 3.45 to play. Ron Lewis, Senior had a wonderful day. Oden fouled out and did not play in the overtime session. Don
Certainly has been a great (an unexpected) year for the Irish Hockey team. Hopefully they will beat the bad guys tonight! You get the regionals in Grand Rapids don't you? Is it a big event...ie is Grand Rapids a big College Hockey town? Seems an odd place to have the Regional. Terry
How about all of these close games and teams being forced into OT to win. A great day to watch college basketball. Don
As good as UCLA looked for 37 minutes, IU mental errors at the end contributed to UCLA's victory. Their inability to finish when they have the opponent on the ropes ultimately will be their downfall. Trivia question: Who is the ugliest player in the tournament? Answer: UCLA's Mata (sp?).
Just win baby! It doesn't matter how you get there, just get it done... The Aggies passed a test that couldn't have set up worse for us. Playing in front of 16000 fans wearing Cardinal red certainly wasn't ideal. It was 27 years ago that the Aggies last made the Sweet 16. The team that knocked them out of the tournament back then? Louisville. I'm very proud of our guys. The Aggies got their "fight" back, and that's not good for those left in our bracket. On to San Antonio and a much friendlier venue!
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If you're a pitcher, you like shutouts, crying mothers, furious fathers, and dirty uniforms. If you're a linebacker, you like whining opponents, muddy fields and crackback, featherweight, WRs who honestly believe that you're so stupid that you've forgotten about them and don't realize that they're about to block you. I was a pitcher...and a linebacker...and in basketball, I was a guard. In basketball, the beauty of being a guard is living in other people's faces. You can be as obnoxious as you want. Behavior that would normally get you ejected from a classroom is actually encouraged on a basketball court, for the guards. Wherever they go: you go. They turn around and find you standing right behind them. They drive the lane and you're blocking their way. When you get the ball, you take it to the hoop as if you own the whole court and you act like you're doing everyone a favor in the process. If they don't foul you, you make it look like they did anyway and sprawl on the floor screaming bloody murder like a Mexican midfielder in an honest soccer match. You have to let the immaturity flow... I thought today's UCLA-Indiana game was one of the real classics. Click here to see that this kind of game was predicted: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/ncaatourney07/news/story?id=2800523 To say that this game was physical is an understatement. It was as ugly as an Afghani goat race. I loved it. In the first half, the Bruins held Indiana to 13 points. That's the fewest points ever scored against UCLA in the history of the NCAA Tournament. Can anyone even remember the last high school game they saw where someone was held to 13 points? I can't even think of one. That was amazing... But almost as amazing, was Indiana holding the Bruins to 20! Wow! I ain't had so much fun since the hogs ate yer baby brother! Defense with a capital D! The Bruins had more talent, but Indiana almost pulled off a miracle comeback. The Hoosier coach did a super job of adjusting and tweaking until he found something that worked, and Indiana refused to fold, despite being down by as many as 16 late in the second half. If you taped it, check out the phony foul that the Indiana guard drew with about 1:28 left. If I remember it correctly, he shot it up from downtown, which was about the only place that the Bruin defense didn't cover like a blanket. As he shot, a Bruin defender leaped at the ball and missed. The Indiana guard leaped into him after the shot and lay prone on the floor, writhing in pain, as you're taught to do when they first make a guard out of you...and the refs bought it! Three shots. Three freethrows that can't be missed, because he's a white boy with a hoop at the end of the driveway and shooting freethrows is where you go to hide when you're in trouble for everything else. They're as automatic as excuses for not doing your homework or not dating that nice girl whom your mother recommended... At the end, the Bruins turned the game over to those two guys that I told you to watch for: Darren Collison and Arron Afflalo. They're the reasons that the Hoosiers had such a tough time getting near the basket all night and they were the difference at crunch time. Afflalo drew one foul after another in the final three minutes and calmly sunk the FTs. Collison stole the in-bounds pass in the final seconds to steal Indiana's final hopes. The Bruins are riding on the shoulders of those two and will go as far as those two can take them... UCLA-Indiana is a basketball classic any time they get together, which isn't very often. It was old-school basketball. Butch haircut, oops-sorry-I-tripped-you, say "hello" to the hand, read-the-name-on-my-jersey basketball. No playground crap... Ok, maybe one. That no-look, behind the back, 50 ft skyjam pass that Collison tossed to Mata in the first half... but all the rest was straight roundball. It was tough. It was brutal... and it was beautiful. .............JO'Co
Scott, Congratulations on that win yesterday! Butler upending Maryland and Vandy beating Washington State cost me dearly in Saturday's play. Don
He can definitely make a prince out of a pig.... a concerto out of a jingle.... a diamond out of a lump of clay.... well...you get the picture. How beautiful could that first half have been? 20-13? :shock: Didn't have that game as MSU-UNC was on of course where I live and I'm not complaining...it was a great game to watch.
JO'Co, your point about the beauty of the game from a defensive perspective is well-taken, BUT..... That's bullcrap. You let Len Elmore's whining get to you. Watch the replay again. There is no way the shooter could have gone in any direction but backwards following his release of the ball. The forward momentum of the defender carried him headlong into the shooter. No sir, this was not a Reggie Miller play. IU made a valiant effort to rescue a victory from the abyss of an ignominious defeat. They almost accomplished it, but like the Irish on Friday, their failure to show up earlier in the game is what did them in. UCLA certainly had something to do with that. UCLA truly is an athletic team with a smothering defense. If they end up winning it all, I will be the first to eat crow. I just don't think they have that ability to finish that makes the difference in a tight game. I'm not talikng about the final minute. I'm talking about the letdown in the 35th through the 38th minutes. I'm not even close to being knowledgeable about college BB strategy, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it. We'll see. :twisted:
Tennessee/Virginia has been a game of runs for both teams and missed free throws again for both teams. Tennessee up by 6 with 1:10 left.
Tennessee up by 4 with 27.7 seconds left. Virginia should have been charged with a technical when the virginia player, on defense, jumped up under the goal to try to block a shot. It was a pump fake. The Virginia player grabed hold of the goal, swung from it while fouling the shooter. It was not called a T. Tennessee now up by 2 with 18.7 seconds left and Lofton shooting Free throws. 1st good. Up by 3. 2nd good, up by 4.