So much is being written this week about the NCAA’s money grab to expand the NCAA Tournament, we thought it would be helpful to collate some of the better quotes from articles around the MSM and blogosphere for your perusal.  Pretty much everybody agrees on two key points: it’s all about money, and it sucks.  Discuss.

Gary Parrish, CBS Sports.com

I realize money drives college athletics, and if the NCAA granted me that, I could shrug my shoulders and move on. Obviously, I’ll watch the regular season and NCAA tournament no matter what. But Thursday’s message about creating more opportunities was insincere and, frankly, insulting because expansion isn’t about creating more opportunities. It’s about creating more revenue. Anybody who tells you otherwise is insincere at best, lying at worst. And if my choices are to hear a lie or total silence, I’ll take Greg Shaheen sitting on a stage staring straight ahead, mouth closed, not a word, awkward as it may be.

Dano O’Neil, ESPN.com

To be exact, 2,505 words were uttered in the opening address by Greg Shaheen, the NCAA’s vice president for basketball and business strategies.  Yes, I counted.  And for the record, there were 1,666 words in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Abe Lincoln needed just 268 words to define the importance of the Civil War in his Gettysburg Address.  Which is a long-winded way of saying, this was a spin that Baryshnikov would envy.  By either next season or 2014, the 96-team bracket is coming to a centerfold near you.  So before making the official announcement to destroy what many consider to be the perfect postseason, the NCAA needs you to understand why 96 teams is good for you — even if the folks in charge sound an awful lot like a mom trying to shove Brussels sprouts down a toddler’s throat.

Tommy Craggs, Deadspin

In sports, everyone is a winner—some people just win better than others. Like sportswriter John Feinstein, who badgered a hapless NCAA VP yesterday over tournament expansion and thereby became a hero to anti-expansionists for all the wrong reasons.  The NCAA’s press conference yesterday amounted to little more than a Tupperware demonstration of the locked-in freshness and burping seal of a 96-team tournament

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The biggest news in Comings & Goings in the last 24 hours was the announcement from Wake Forest forward Al-Farouq Aminu that he will be leaving the school for the pros this season.  He will hire an agent, which means his Demon Deacon career is over.  Aminu is a versatile 6’8 player who averaged a double-double (16/11) and can play both on the perimeter and in the post.  He is expected to be chosen in the top half of the lottery this year.  Aminu and fellow big men Tony Woods and Ty Walker were part of the highly-rated recruiting class that pressured Wake Forest brass to hire Dino Gaudio three years ago after the sudden death of coach Skip Prosser.  Only Aminu has developed as expected, though.

The University of Houston yesterday announced that they were hiring James Dickey for their vacant head coaching position.  Dickey is best known for his development of the Texas Tech basketball program from a backwater to a 30-2 Sweet Sixteen season in 1996.  Most recently, he was an assistant coach at Oklahoma State until 2008, but he has been out of coaching since then.  UH is taking a bit of a chance with this hire, as Dickey’s Texas Tech program was put on probation in the mid-90s although Dickey himself was never implicated in those violations. 

In other head coaching news, maybe the rumors involving Tubby Smith leaving Minnesota for Oregon, Auburn, or just about anywhere will die down as he said on Thursday the school is working on an extension for him.  Of course, that means virtually nothing even after the ink dries, but if true, it’s at least a signal to potential suitors that Minnesota is willing to pay for Smith’s services.  Kent State’s Geno Ford received a two-year extension yesterday as well.  In just his second year at the school, he led the Golden Flashes to the NIT and won the MAC Coach of the Year award.

 

Backdoor Cuts is a weekly college basketball discussion between RTC correspondents Dave Zeitlin, Steve Moore and Mike Walsh that occasionally touches on relevant subjects. This week the guys debate the last two weeks of the NCAA Tournament and conclude that it should not be effed with.

MIKE WALSH: Do you guys smell that?

No, it’s not the smell of thousands of the Rock, Chalk faithful burning their brackets … their tears keep putting out the flames. It kind of smells like … chili, with a dash of victory. Can you smell it or is there a stench of defeat draped over you like a full court press? That’s right, kids, my Ohio State Buckeyes may be out, too, but at least they outlasted your sorry Temple and Maryland picks who couldn’t couldn’t even survive the first weekend. But don’t feel bad, boys, it was one of the craziest opening weekends since the Jersey Shore kids hit the Seaside boardwalk for the first time. Oh yeah, that’s a celebratory Jersey Shore reference … I’ve earned it.

At least Steve still has West Virginia to root against. Coach K and the Evil Empire took the stink I was sending Baylor’s way and sent the Bears packing. And Dave, well, Kansas is toast so I guess you’re out of luck, too, buddy. There’s always next year. I suppose you can just sit back and enjoy the Madness as it unfolds. And there’s been plenty to go around so far.

My favorite moment of this year’s tournament, hands down, was in the waning seconds of Northern Iowa’s improbable upset over top-seeded Kansas. Panthers guard Ali Farokhmanesh’s transition three-ball in the last minute of regulation took Blue-Ribbon-at-the-State-Fair-sized onions to even heave up. It was one of the shots where the entire coaching staff yells, “No, no, no, YES!” And here’s the thing, he HAD to take that shot. In any other game, it would have been the kind of shot that gets you sent to the end of the bench – after the freshman manager … but against the top overall seed, you have to go for the kill. If he didn’t make that shot, it just felt like the Jayhawks would find some way to pull it out. But Northern Iowa had nothing to lose and they played like it. It was a shot that Farokhmanesh will be able to brag to his coworkers about when he’s working at some marketing firm next year, because let’s be serious, that’s most likely where he ends up unless he ends up lighting up a pro league in Azerbaijan. Even so, it was a shot of a lifetime and made my tournament. Do you think any other desk jockeys have graced the cover of Sports Illustrated?

The way this tournament has been going, I’m going to need an oxygen mask for the Final Four. I wonder if basketball induced conditions are covered by this new health care reform? I’ll have to look into that.

So what do you guys think? What have your favorite moments been so far? What are you looking forward to this weekend? Is Butler raising a banner? And, most importantly, when can I expect my chili?

DAVE ZEITLIN: Congratulations, Mike. Your Buckeyes were just a little bit less sucky than my Terps and Steve’s Owls (though if Maryland decided to play a little defense in the final seconds, they’d be in the Final Four now instead of Michigan State.) But in reality we are all winners. Forget our friendly wagers and our brackets; the truth is this tournament is for all fans of upsets and mid-majors. And if you don’t like those things, you should be forced to watch only Coach K seminars entitled “How To Be Succesful On and Off the Court” throughout the month of March. (Do those exist? I’m betting they do.)  

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Now that spring is here and the weather has improved over much of the country, we’d like to announce that grilling season officially kicked off today in Indianapolis, but probably not in the way you’re thinking.

The president of the NCAA and/or some other high-ups has always made it a point to take some time on the Thursday or Friday preceding the Final Four to have a press conference to talk about the NCAA Tournament in general and the tournament specific to that year.  This little get-together happened today in Indy.  The media got the chance to hear from Dan Guerrero, chair of the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee; Kevin Lennon, VP for academic and membership affairs; and one Greg Shaheen, the NCAA’s senior VP for basketball and business strategies.

RIGHT HERE is the transcript of this press conference.

IMPORTANT:  Listen, we post a lot of links on this site.  We want you to click every one of them.  We wouldn’t put them up there if we didn’t think it would enhance your enjoyment or understanding of a story or article.  But YOU MUST CLICK ON THAT LINK if you want to get a glimpse into the minds of the people who are trying to change the greatest sporting event in the world, the people who want to increase the number of teams in the NCAA Tournament from 65 to 96.

Before you do that, we need to make sure you understand something — this thing is happening.  The 96-team tournament isn’t something that’s just being discussed, anymore.  This press conference wasn’t an official announcement, but it was everything but that.  We don’t like it any more than you do, but we might as well get used to it. We know why they’re doing it.  Like Joe Pesci said in Casino:

“Always the dollars.  Always the f***in’ dollars…”

You see, the NCAA has to make a decision this summer.  Their current college basketball contract with CBS runs through 2013, but states that the NCAA can opt out of the deal by the end of this July to go searching for a better deal, meaning more money.  The current contract with CBS was finalized in 1999 and is worth about $6 billion.  It also applies to a 65-team tournament.  If they opt out, the NCAA can do whatever it wants to the tournament and market the new version (like, say, one with 96 teams) as their new product as they negotiate for even bigger bucks.  They could even renegotiate with CBS (we wonder if CBS also sees possible bigger profits and actually wants the NCAA to opt out of this thing).

Back to this press conference.  Here’s a little rundown of what happened.  First, Mr. Guerrero took the mic, and to be honest you really don’t have to read his short introduction.  He said very little and then introduced Mr. Lennon.  Lennon’s portion is quite interesting, because he used his time to tell everyone about the improved graduation and retention rates among student-athletes, specifically men’s basketball players.  He noted that student-athletes in ALL sports, and “certainly men’s basketball, are continuing to outperform the student body” as a whole.  Sounds good.

Then came Mr. Shaheen’s turn.  That’s when it got interesting.

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With all the talk about the coming 96-team tournament, many in the sports media have forgotten that there is already another ridiculous major college sport championship in place: the BCS. We took you through this process in a post last year, but it’s worth going over again as the blogosphere is ablaze with opinions on changing our beloved NCAA Tournament.

Here are the basic ground rules:

1. We are following the BCS Football guidelines as closely as possible. Obviously there are some differences. A college basketball team is expected to win more than 9 games (we kept a cut-off at a 75% winning percentage). We replaced the Notre Dame rule with the Duke rule since they both have sketchy TV contracts (Notre Dame with NBC and Duke with ESPN).
2. I used the AP and ESPN/USA Today polls as the human polls and ESPN.com’s InsiderRPI, KenPom.com, and Sagarin’s ratings as the computer polls. The computer polls include data from the NCAA Tournament, but as you will see it didn’t affect the results that significantly.
3. We used the traditional BCS calculations for determining each team’s score weighing the two human polls and the combined computer poll average as 1/3 of a team’s total score each.

Here are the results:

We will let you digest that for a minute and will provide more information/analysis and the BCS Bowls after the jump.

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We’ve been anxiously awaiting the next thirty days for the last eleven months.  You have too.  In fact, if this isn’t your favorite time of year by a healthy margin then you should probably click away from this site for a while.   Because we plan on waterboarding you with March Madness coverage.  Seriously, you’re going to feel like Dick Cheney himself is holding a Spalding-logoed towel over your face.  Your intake will be so voluminous that you’ll be drooling Gus Johnson and bracket residue in your sleep.  Or Seth Davis, if that’s more your style.  The point is that we’re all locked in and ready to go.  Are you?  To help us all get into the mood, we like to click around a fancy little website called YouTube for a daily dose of notable events, happenings, finishes, ups and downs relating to the next month.  We’re going to try to make this video compilation a little smarter, a little edgier, a little historical-er.  Or whatever.  Sure, you’ll see some old favorites that never lose their luster, but you’ll also see some that maybe you’ve forgotten or never knew to begin with.  That’s the hope, at least.  We’ll be matching the videos by the appropriate week, so all of this week we’re heading down memory lane at the Final Four.  Enjoy.

NCAA Final Four

Dateline: 1973 NCAA Championship – UCLA vs. Memphis State

Context: In the 72-year history of the NCAA Tournament, there has never been a more dominant performance than the one Bill Walton laid on Memphis State in 1973.  Walton and his UCLA Bruins came into this game having won 73 consecutive games and the last six national titles.  The big, lanky redhead from San Diego ensured that upstart Memphis State would not be ending that streak.  His 44 points on 21-22 FGs is a record that still stands in the national title game, and the late ankle sprain that he suffered when the game was already put away portended the myriad leg and foot injuries that Walton suffered throughout his professional career.  Take a trip back to a bygone era and enjoy — you’ll probably never see anything quite like this again.

Each day this week during the regional rounds of the NCAA Tournament we’re asking some of our top correspondents to put together a collection of notes and interesting tidbits about each region.  If you know of something that we should include in tomorrow’s submission, hit us up at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

Michigan State (Tom Hager)

• ESPN’s Jemele Hill has never been one to shy away from controversy, but she caused quite a stir when she said that head coach Tom Izzo was the best coach in the history of the state.
• According to guard Korie Lucious, although the Spartans are anticipating a hostile environment, they are used to big crowds cheering against them.
• Ryan Fagan of The Sporting News says that MSU’s experience is what will set them apart, and that the only players who treat the Final Four like an ordinary game have never played at that level before.
• USA Today points out that Michigan State’s win margin of 13 total points in their first four games is the lowest total since the field expanded to 64 teams.
• If the Spartans win on Saturday, East Lansing police can expect some rioting, even before the national championship game.

Butler (Andrew Murawa)

• In the basketball-mad state of Indiana, Butler has now vaulted Indiana University and other stalwarts to the head of the class, if only temporarily.
• The Bulldog roster features 10 players from the state of Indiana, including such key contributors as Gordon Hayward, Matt Howard, Zach Hahn and Andrew Smith.
• But while the Bulldogs may be riding high, they aren’t so famous that head coach Brad Stevens doesn’t get mistaken as a player on the team by a Lucas Oil Field security guard.
• While, thankfully, the Butler/”Hoosiers” comparison has tired out some, it is pretty cool to note that Bobby Plump, the Milan High star upon whom the Jimmy Chitwood character in the movie was based, actually went on to star at Butler.
• Speaking of the movies, Butler junior forward Howard has earned a reputation as quite the actor when trying to draw a charge.

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The Day the NCAA Tournament Died.  Heading into a weekend where we should all be celebrating a great NCAA Tournament with multiple upsets, surprises, twists, turns, shakes and shimmies… we’re all rightfully excoriating the NCAA after its even-feebler-than-imaginable explanation of why Expansion 96 is probably going to happen, as soon as next year.  We’re too depressed to write much more about it right now, but our very own John Stevens says more than enough here on our behalf.

NIT Championship.  Dayton 79, North Carolina 68.  In what may have been the final NIT after over seventy years of history, Dayton ran out to a 45-32 halftime lead and was able to hold off a late UNC charge to win its second-ever title.  UD’s Marcus Johnson had 20 points and teammates Chris Wright and Chris Johnson both added 14/9.  With arguably the Flyers’ top two players set to return in 2010-11 (the two Chrises), this could serve as a great building block for Brian Gregory’s team heading into next year.  As for Carolina, Roy Williams admitted that it was a disappointing season for his team afterward, but he thought that his team started playing hard in the postseason and will have a foundation to build on next season.  This year’s 17 losses (vs. 20 wins) is the second-most in the program’s long and illustrious history of basketball.  The Heels will lose seniors Deon Thompson and Marcus Ginyard and quite possibly sophomore Ed Davis to the NBA Draft, but his team should be healthier next year and welcome another sick recruiting class that includes the #1 player in America in Harrison Barnes.  It’s unlikely that UNC will be back in this event next year, even if it continues to exist.

Rush the Court’s Zach Hayes will deliver a breakdown of each Final Four team every day this week. Here are the Butler, West Virginia and Michigan State previews. The final installment discusses the Duke Blue Devils in their quest to return to college basketball glory.

Crucial Tourney Moment(s): Nolan Smith delivered the best game of his Duke career at the most opportune time. Facing a two point deficit late in the second half against an ultra-talented Baylor team playing in their home state, it was a Lance Thomas offensive rebound kicked out to Nolan Smith for an open three that gave Duke the lead and the momentum. Following a free throw and defensive stop, it was once again the vastly improved Smith knocking down a three to hand his Blue Devils an advantage they wouldn’t surrender. Their back against the wall against a team athletically superior and equally talented, Duke teams in the past four years would have folded up their tents, unable to match the size, physicality and fight of their venerable opponent. This year, toughness has been the mark of a Duke squad that finds themselves labeled Final Four favorites. And Nolan Smith’s back-to-back threes against Baylor were a huge reason the Blue Devils are still standing.

Advantage Area: Duke has the best perimeter scoring of any Final Four team. Nolan Smith can knock down outside shots, beat defenders off the dribble and has established a patented floater that’s impossible to defend. Jon Scheyer loves to drive or find open shots off of ball screens and is a marksman both from long range and the charity stripe. Kyle Singler is the hardest player to defend when he establishes position near the basket and loves to utilize a mastered fade-away jumper. Any one of these three can score 25 points on a given night and it’ll be the task of a stellar West Virginia defense to contain two of them and force the pressure on one of Singler, Smith and Scheyer to carry the load. Duke has also shed the notion this season of being soft. Their forwards- Lance Thomas, Brian Zoubek and the Plumlee brothers- are tremendous at finding prime rebounding position with the sole purpose of kicking out to an open guard for an unchallenged three. Nobody plays with more intensity than Duke, something you simply could not see in previous seasons.

Potential Downfall: The Blue Devils are not a particularly good man-to-man defensive team. They play defense at an efficient rate as a unit. The guards don’t overextend as much as in past years because there’s size under the basket to disrupt shots, meaning the guards don’t feel as pressured to force turnovers on a constant basis. If Da’Sean Butler or Kevin Jones can get Scheyer or Singler into a one-on-one isolation opportunity on the offensive end, they should be able to draw a foul at the very least because none of the Duke guards are exceptionally quick. The problem is that the Mountaineers offense is based more on cutting and screening than penetration. Duke also relies completely on three players for their scoring. Their forwards and centers are just there to set effective screens and hit the boards with authority. If one of the Big Three gets in foul trouble and the other has a poor shooting night, Duke could be in serious trouble because they’re so dependent on Singler, Scheyer and Smith.

X-Factor: Brian Zoubek has improved over the course of three months more than any player in college basketball. His breakout performance came against Maryland in the middle of ACC play and Big Z certainly has not regressed since then. There might not be a better rebounder in the nation right now, forming quite a rebounding tag team with Lance Thomas and/or Miles Plumlee. Zoubek also operates at a more efficient rate when he gets the ball in the low post and can power his way to the foul line with his 7’2 frame. Prior to this season, Zoubek was an offensive liability that just clogged up space on the floor. Now he’s a vital cog on a Final Four team.

Key Semifinal Matchup: Kyle Singler vs. Devin Ebanks. Duke’s second leading scorer is coming off a regional final performance in which he didn’t make a shot for the first time in his career and had to chase LaceDarius Dunn around the floor for almost 40 minutes. The matchup with Ebanks might be easier defensively but should be quite the task on the offensive end. Ebanks is a superior defender, extremely long and loves to draw charges. If Ebanks frustrates Singler into another off night, it’ll be up to Smith and Scheyer to bail Duke out once again. Ebanks should also look to push Singler further and further away from the basket because he’s not particularly proficient at dribble penetration that far away from the rim. Both of these small forwards love to induce contact and live at the foul line.

Crunch Time Performer: Jon Scheyer is the #1 option late in games for Duke, although Nolan Smith can also provide a clutch shot like he did against Baylor, and Kyle Singler isn’t chopped liver himself. If Scheyer receives a ball screen from Zoubek or Thomas and gains momentum going to his right, he’s almost impossible to stop from either scoring or drawing a foul. He  loves to linger around the three-point line when a shot goes up for an offensive rebound and kickback, so even if Smith’s name is called late against West Virginia, Scheyer could still end up with an attempt. Also, if the ball is inbounded under the basket by Scheyer, look for him to receive the ball right back in the corner for a three. Duke runs that play constantly and yet nobody seems to be able to defend it.

Experience: This Duke unit doesn’t possess a plethora of tournament experience. The seniors lost in the first round in 2007, lost in the second round in 2008 and lost in the Sweet 16 in 2009, so none of these players have Final Four experience, a rarity for a Duke roster. I’m pretty sure Mike Krzyzewski has been here before, though. Only Michigan State truly has experience at this stage.

Forecast: Duke is the favorite heading into the Final Four, and for good reason. They’re healthy, efficient on both ends and playing their best basketball at the right time. Jon Scheyer has found his outside stroke just in time for the Final Four and Nolan Smith is also peaking. Even their oft-criticized forwards Thomas and Zoubek have perfected their roles within the Duke game plan. Whether they can contain Da’Sean Butler if the game is tight and rebound as effectively as in previous rounds could be the key to advancing. Many believe the tougher test is Saturday’s contest with the Mountaineers rather than the winner of Butler/Michigan State. I’m not as convinced.

Prediction: Duke hasn’t won a national title since 2001. That seems way too long for a program that’s become the standard bearer of college basketball since the mid 80s. Much like the Yankees finally breaking through at the end of the decade, I see Duke beginning a new era on Monday night. Another banner is hoisted to the rafters of Cameron Indoor Stadium and the Blue Devils are your 2010 National Champions.

Like we wrote yesterday, you’d best prepare yourselves…