Somebody call MJ.  We may have found him a gambling buddy.

Tar Heel point guard Ty Lawson’s Big Toe may have arrived in Detroit Wednesday, but within hours of arrival, he’d already made his way down to the Greektown Casino and won himself $250 at the craps tables. From the AP report:

“We got in last night, and Coach (Roy Williams) gave us a curfew of 1:30,” Lawson said when asked if he had visited any casinos. “I went over to Greektown and won about $250. So I already had my time there. It’s probably the last time I go there before the games start.”  Lawson said he played only craps and earned his winnings in about an hour.  “The only time I lost was in Reno; that’s when everybody on the team lost,” he said. “It’s the only place I lost. The other five or six times I did gamble, I won at least $500.”  Team spokesman Steve Kirschner said the 21-year-old is legally of age to visit a casino.

Far be it from us to disparage a guy who clearly has this gambling thing figured out already.  The important part is that he’s a winner, and a winner always wins, no matter how far down you get.  Right, Mr. Mahowny Lawson?

Here we are, the Final Four of the RTC Modern Bracket – the four very best individual teams of the last quarter-century?  Does anyone have any major issue with any of these four?  If so, let us know in the comments.

We’re left with three #1 seeds and an unreal #2 seed, which happens to be the only team that didn’t win the national title during this span.  The cream always rises, so they say.

For the full 64-team bracket, click here.  The game analyses are below the bracket.

Instant Analysis

#1 Duke 1992 def. #2 Georgetown 1985 – Going into this game a lot of the older journalists were overheard talking about how Patrick Ewing will destroy Christian Laettner on the inside. When some of the journalists ask Coach K about this, he explodes and says that Laettner will be able to hold his own again and then he questions them on when the media and the country turned on him. After a pre-game pep talk from assistant coach Jay Bilas, Laettner decides to go right at Ewing, which has a predictable result (7 first half blocks for Ewing). Despite having a huge edge on the inside, the Hoyas are clinging to a 2-point lead because of Duke’s outstanding perimeter play. At halftime, Coach K convinces Laettner to stop trying to make this into a physical match-up because he has no shot at beating Ewing in the post. After halftime, Laettner hangs out about 18-20 feet away from the basket. John Thompson instructs Ewing to stay in the middle and make Laettner hit some shots from the outside, which he promptly does making three straight 3-pointers over a 2 minute stretch (after the game Thompson finds out that Laettner was 54/97 from 3-point range for the season). A confused Ewing, who never had to deal with a 3-point line in college, finally comes out and guards Laettner, which frees up the lane for Bobby Hurley, Grant Hill, and Brian Davis. After watching the Blue Devils build a double-digit lead against a disoriented Hoya team, which was accustomed to having Ewing clean up their mistakes when opposing guards got past them, Thompson calls a time out with 8 minutes remaining in the game. During the timeout, Thompson decides to put Reggie Williams on Laettner and keep Ewing back in the paint. The plan works wonders for the Hoyas as they come storming back to tie it with 20 seconds left on a rebound dunk by Ewing. Coach K calls his last time out and draws up a play that sets a double screen for Bobby Hurley to either shoot it from the top of the key or dish it to Laettner underneath. The play works perfectly except that Thompson, realizing that Coach K would go to his superstar, has put Ewing back on him for the last play. When Hurley comes around off the screen he has an open look but stumbles and dishes to Laettner. Laettner tries to draw a foul on Ewing with a couple pump fakes but the Hoya great doesn’t bite. In a last gasp attempt Laettner leaves his feet and Ewing finally does the same, but Laettner finds a streaking Brian Davis underneath as David Wingate and the rest of the Georgetown defense (and the 20,000+ in attendance) are transfixed on the two giants underneath. Davis, who had been quiet most of the night, lays it in as time expires to give the Duke 1992 team its second “Great Game Ever” victory.

#1 UNLV 1990 def. #3 Duke 2001 – On paper this looks like a great match-up with both teams loaded with NBA lottery picks, but the Runnin’ Rebels were perhaps the hottest team coming into the tournament and right off the bat their amoeba defense wreaks havoc on the Blue Devil offense, which lacks a true point guard. On the other side of the ball, the Blue Devils can’t keep the athletic UNLV guards in front of them. Even Shane Battier, the national defensive player of the year, gets lit up by Larry Johnson. With UNLV up by 20 points in the first half, Coach K calls a timeout and asks his players what they are scared of because they can’t get any more embarrassed than they already are. With the UNLV fans (read: local gamblers with thousands riding on the game) feeling pretty confident that UNLV (-6) will cover, they start the “Over-rated!” chant, which fires up Jason Williams who starts to pick apart the UNLV defense repeatedly abusing Greg Anthony and helps cut the lead down to 6 at halftime. During the halftime show, Seth Davis lays into Greg Anthony (version 1990) for his poor defense while his colleague Greg Anthony (version 2009) grows increasingly agitated. During halftime, Jerry Tarkanian decides to put Stacey Augmon on Williams in the hopes that his athleticism and length (a topic of great interest for Jay Bilas) can slow Williams. Much to the UNLV fans’ delight, it works wonders and Williams grows increasingly frustrated. Meanwhile, Greg Anthony, who is freed of getting abused by Williams, goes to work on Chris Duhon and picks apart the freshman and finds a red hot Anderson Hunt. Hunt’s 2nd half 3-point barrage leads the way as the Runnin’ Rebels win by a dozen. Walking off the court, George Ackles looks wearily at the group of the UNLV fans who are relieved that their team covered. After the game, Greg Anthony (version 2009) interviews Greg Anthony (version 1990) and they taunt Seth Davis mercilessly about how they are going to knock all the remaining Duke teams out of the tournament.

#1 Kentucky 1996 def. #2 Duke 1999 – The best game of the tournament. Top to bottom, these rosters may be the most talented in the entire tournament. Going into the game, Rick Pitino repeatedly uses the media to question the committee for their decision to put his Wildcats in the same region against what he considers the 2nd best team in the tournament. Once the game starts, the fireworks begin with Trajan Langdon hitting three 3-pointers in the first 5 minutes against Ron Mercer who responds by yelling at Antoine Walker for not showing off the screen. Antoine responds the only way he knows how. . . by taking back-to-back 3s on 3-on-1 fast breaks. Fortunately for the Wildcats, the rest of their game is clicking with Tony Delk matching Langdon from beyond the arc. Much to the surprise of Duke fans, the Wildcats interior players are able to contain Elton Brand with Mark Pope and Walter McCarty. They are able to do this despite having weaker players on the inside thanks to their ability to seemingly double Brand before the ball gets there, but still managing to not leave the Duke perimeter players open. After halftime, Pitino decides to put Derek Anderson on Langdon, who promptly shuts down the Duke All-American. In the end, Kentucky’s superior depth wins out with Delk and Anderson closing out the game at the free throw line. In his post-game press conference, a tearful Coach K talks about how upset he is that Trajan Langdon will leave Durham without a title, but tells reporters that they will never find a better person. After the game, Coach K soothes the Duke boosters by telling them that he has a feeling that his team next year may end up being his best ever with all of his players returning (nobody has left before) and the addition of Jason Williams, Mike Dunleavy Jr., and Carlos Boozer.

#2 UNLV 1991 def. #8 Oklahoma 1988 – After the previous game, which analysts are already calling the best of all-time, some analysts are wondering if this match-up of two up-tempo teams can possibly match what they just saw. The short answer: No. The first half looks promising with Mookie Blaylock and Stacey King running up and down the court matching UNLV and going into half the Sooners are holding a 60-58 lead. At halftime, Tarkanian lays into his team for not playing defense and he reminds them that defense is the one thing that this UNLV team has that the Sooners don’t. As halftime is ending,a stadium official informs Tarkanian that a man named Richard Perry would like to come into the locker room, but Tarkanian refuses to let him in, which raises a few eyebrows from the players. Having been read the riot act by the normally calm Tarkanian, the Runnin’ Rebels come out pressuring Blaylock and force him into four early 2nd half turnovers. By the 10 minute mark, UNLV has a 14-point lead and rolls from there. Following the game, when reporters question Tarkanian about whether his team can handle the pressure that Rick Pitino’s Wildcats will throw at them, he laughs and says that his team will be fine as long as they are focused and then offers to take the reporters out to meet a few of his lady friends.

Buzz: The SEC East Just Got Tougher. Reports from Reno are that Nevada head coach Mark Fox is set to take the open job at Georgia tomorrow.  Fox took Nevada to three NCAA Tournaments in his five years at Nevada, but Georgia fans are so far not sure about the hire (an AJC poll shows a 52/48 split on whether it was a good hire).  With the additions of Fox and John Calipari at Kentucky, it’s arguable that there is now more coaching talent in the SEC East than most conferences in America (Billy Donovan, Bruce Pearl, Darrin Horn and Kevin Stallings are the others).  Throw in Anthony Grant at Alabama and Trent Johnson at LSU and it’s clear that the SEC is serious about making noise on the basketball landscape.

Ben from Dear Old UVa is once again back to statistically analyze the NCAA Tournament for us. 

Let first begin by saying: I am a nerd.  I am a complete and total nerd.

Now that my admission is out of the way, I can share with you a model I once built.  In 2007, when I was in graduate school, I took a computational economics course.  While learning about all the interesting mathematical techniques used to study economic systems, I decided that I would build an artificial neural network (ANN) to predict the point spread in Virginia basketball games.

Basically, an ANN is a statistical model that finds complex and often non-linear relationships between the inputs and the outputs.  In this case, most of the inputs are culled from that outstanding website, kenpom.com and the outputs are the point spread. 

I set up the point spread as a function of the opponents’ characteristics.  When UConn beat Gonzaga by five on December 12^th, the model estimates the spread as a function of Gonzaga’s season-ending characteristics of pace, defensive efficiency, turnover percentage and so on. This is known as “training the model.”   The estimates are then applied to their future opponents’ characteristics to give some sense of how they’ll play against the competition. 

It sounds goofy, but when I originally set the ANN up, I correctly predicted, within two points, the scores of two consecutive Virginia basketball games.  It predicted that Virginia would beat Longwood by 43 points (they won by 41) and that they’d beat FSU by 5 (won by 3).  I haven’t broken out the model much since then, but I did for this year’s final four.

The model is somewhat peculiar in that it does not predict spreads symmetrically: it predicts a different spread for the UNC-Villanova game when “trained” on Villanova than when it was trained on UNC.

Speaking of which – let’s see how the model does for the favorite: UNC.

The model actually does a decent job predicting for UNC.  However, you might notice that the model does not predict any losses for the Tar Heels.  Maybe all that talk about an undefeated season wasn’t just a bunch of hooey. 

You can see how out of character those losses to BC and Wake in early January were for this team.  While the world was predicting a cataclysm in Chapel Hill, all the Heels had to do was put their shoes on and go to work.

The other salient feature of the model is that it predicts a complete blowout win versus the Wildcats.  In fact, it predicts a 32 point win!  Whoa!

Let’s look at it from the Wildcats’ perspective:

As you can see, the model does a worse job with Villanova.  It missed badly on the big loss to West Virginia in mid-February and it has predicted especially poorly in the tournament.  The margins in wins versus UCLA and Duke were totally unexpected by the model.

Interestingly, the model picks the Wildcats to beat the Tar Heels by two.  But how can this be?  Both teams can’t win!

Ahhhh…. but therein lies the interpretation.  The Heels model fit better and predicted a big win.  The Wildcats one predicted poorer and a tight victory for the Cats.

I’d have to say “Heels in a walk.”  My hunch is that this game will be a 20 point snoozer.   I hope I’m wrong.  I’ll do the other two teams tomorrow.

Buzz:  Memphis Offers Bruce Pearl $21M over 7 Years.  News out of Tennessee is contradictory depending on which end of the state you’re on, but we’re reading that Memphis has targeted Bruce Pearl as the man to keep the uptempo Memphis style moving forward.  UT is scrambling to make sure they don’t lose their most talented basketball property. 

Buzz:  Jamie Dixon Considering the USC Job?  On its face, this sounds absurd, but when you learn that Dixon is a North Hollywood kid whose wife is a graduate of USC, this rumor starts to make a little more sense.  We’d still be utterly shocked to see this happen, as USC is a football school first, second, and third, but it’s worth mentioning and tracking. 

Apparently the fellas at PTI gave the denizens of Kentucky a heart attack yesterday afternoon, as their annual April Fool’s prank went on for a solid two minutes before they broke character and fessed up to the deception.  So what was the news that put an entire state, still giddy over its hire of John Calipari, into a panic?  That former Kentucky capo Rick Pitino was heading back to Lexington to take over the vacated position in a last-minute whirlabout from the Calipari hire.  It was enough drama to turn even the hardiest of UK fans into a tub of steaming blue goo…

[h/t Awful Announcing]

We’re down to the Elite Eight of the RTC Modern Bracket.

There was some serious talent and accomplished teams on display in tonight’s games, but we’re left with three #1 seeds, three #2 seeds, a #3 seed, and (egads) a #8 seed.  Cinderella is still rollin’ in the Modern Bracket.

Interestingly, we only have four national champions remaining, three runners-up and one at-large team.  For the full 64-team bracket, click here.  The game analyses are below the bracket.

Instant Analysis

#1 Duke 1992 def. #13 St. John’s 1985 – This one is a closer match-up than the seeding suggests (perhaps the Redmen were underseeded) as Lou Carnesecca’s squad keeps it close for the first 30 minutes, but in the end Duke’s championship mettle wins out (remember this St. John’s team never won anything). Mark Jackson gets the better of Bobby Hurley in this one, but Hurley doesn’t back down much like what happened in his 1993 match-up against Jason Kidd. This time, Hurley has a completely healthy Grant Hill who does a phenomenal job chasing Chris Mullin around the court and preventing him from lighting it up from beyond the arc (something that he has lived on in the tournament and constantly talked about how much he loves this new rule that wasn’t around when he was in college), but most importantly Hurley has Christian Laettner. Laettner has his hands full in the 1st half battling Walter Berry, but his variety of tricks ends up getting Berry in foul trouble and as a result Berry has to be more cautious on both ends of the court. Over the last 10 minutes of the game Laettner picks him apart and gets some weakside help from Brian Davis and Thomas Hill on the defensive end. Laettner isn’t quite perfect tonight, but he’s close enough to get Coach K into the Elite 8.

#2 Georgetown 1985 def. #3 UNC 1993 – In contrast to the earlier game, this one isn’t as close as the seeding would indicate. This is just a bad match-up for the Tar Heels with Patrick Ewing and Reggie Williams destroying Eric Montross and George Lynch on the inside. Dean Smith’s Tar Heels don’t know what hit them and by halftime they are out of it. The Tar Heels only have one legitimate outside threat and John Thompson is able to have his guards focus on Donald Williams because the Tar Heels cannot get anything inside against the Hoyas great frontline. After the game, Smith is visibly irate at the lack of goaltending calls against Ewing who notched 11 blocks in the game. Smith’s mood finally lightens up when the North Carolina media asks him about how his team’s chances next year when they bring in Jerry Stackhouse, Rasheed Wallace, and Jeff McInnis to play with this group that only loses George Lynch.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here we go with the Elite Eight matches of Mascot Death Match.  We’ll have the Final Four up this weekend.

BUZZ: Ernie Kent Retained at Oregon.  There’d been some buzz about Ernie Kent getting fired at Oregon so that Gonzaga’s Mark Few could return to his alma mater, but that apparently will be put on hold for another season.  Oregon announced today that Kent will be retained, but they will also be bringing on former Arizona assistant Mike Dunlap to help turn the program around.

Update: Apparently, the mainstream media is no more reliable than blogs as ESPN was completely wrong about Floyd accepting the Arizona job. Instead, he has decided to stay at USC perhaps comforted by the fact that he has Mike Dunleavy coaching in the same city to make him look like a coaching genius.

After unsuccessfully trying to woo Rick Pitino and reportedly going after Mark Few and Jeff Capel, Arizona is set to name Tim Floyd as its new head coach according to reports. In the wake of the Lute Olson fiasco last off-season, the Wildcats turned to Russ Pennell to lead the team as an interim head coach. Along with Mike Dunlap, who acted as a co-coach, Pennell guided the Wildcats to their nation-leading 25th consecutive NCAA tournament appearance (if you ignore trips that were later vacated). The Wildcats, who in the eyes of many had underachieved all year long with one of the nation’s most talented trios (Nic Wise, Chase Budinger, and Jordan Hill), managed to get to the Sweet 16 with victories over Utah and Cleveland State before getting crushed by Louisville by 39 points to end the season.

Floyd built his coaching reputation at Iowa State where he is the only coach in the program’s history to lead them to 3 consecutive 20-win seasons as he finished his 4 years there with a 81-49 record. However he is most well-known nationally for picking up the scraps of the Chicago Bulls team following the departure of Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Phil Jackson, has only been moderately successful at USC making it to the NCAA tournament his past 3 years including a trip to the Sweet 16 two years ago.

Floyd’s first order of business when he takes over in Tucson will be to try to convince his 3 stars to come back next year. If he is able to do that, the Wildcats should be able to make the NCAA tournament. Once he does that he will need to start recruiting again as the Wildcats’ recruiting has fallen off considerably with all the uncertainty regarding their coaching situation the last 2 years.