Comments on: After the Buzzer: The Opening Night That Isn’t

By: rtmsf

rtmsf — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 20:18:00 +0000

In reply to Andrew.

Let me clarify my stance on this, because it seems to be that folks are confusing what I’m calling an “event” with having a bunch of marquee games. I honestly don’t care if most teams are playing Nothern Iowas at home in their first games. What I do care about is that it’s stuck on a Friday night with almost no television coverage to speak of. Many of the games in next week’s 24HoH are not marquee games, but they’re still part of the event whose express purpose is to get people fired up. This is the problem. Whether it’s 135 games of cupcakes is of lesser importance to me — what I want is the fanfare. Every other sport gets it because they think it through correctly.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 17:54:24 +0000

I for one don’t mind the soft roll-out of the season. It usually gives the teams to get a chance to get a game or two under their belts before the more marquee matchups and let’s them work through their rustiness and sloppiness. I would hate to see, for instance, Michigan State/Duke on opening night for fear that what would otherwise be an excellent game anywhere else in the season would be diminished by the characteristic poor play of the opener…

By: WakeFan

WakeFan — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 17:07:55 +0000

I believe Jeff Bzdelik just had the shortest honeymoon period in the history of college basketball. First ever home opener loss at the Joel. The team looked to be just as poorly coached as they did in Dino Gaudio’s worst game (which I would consider to be vs Miami in the 2010 ACC-T or @NCSU 2010). We were completely ineffective against Stetson’s zone (which was pretty good actually), kind of ironic given that if Dino could have figured out how to crack a zone he would likely still be employed. The defense was atrocious. Bzdelik’s system is focused more on forcing turnovers than on forcing bad shots. Well that’s fine if you are effective in forcing turnovers, but we weren’t, not even against a Stetson team almost as young as us.

Our half court offense was atrocious. Pretty much the same thing we saw under Dino. Lots and lots of dribbling, very little passing.

I know it’s one game with a very young team and new offensive and defensive systems, but my optimism just went out the window. We looked bad.

By: garik16

garik16 — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 15:43:54 +0000

Bevo, this is why the preseason tournaments are so big. Gets teams off their home floors.

That said, I’d argue that the good teams know you can’t be like VT and schedule no one, or you can be screwed in your seeding.

And then of course, there’s the tournament, which unlike college football requires 6 wins on a (mostly) neutral floor.

By: bevo

bevo — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 13:10:36 +0000

I am sure Kentucky would love to open the season against Duke. Michigan State would travel to Los Angeles to play UCLA in the season opener. The same lousy scheduling in college football permeates college basketball.

Do you think Syracuse would ever leave New York for an out of conference game?

You do not notice it because there are so many games. Look at each in isolation. How many teams travel out of state and out of time zone to play an out of conference game against a team from a multi-bid conference? I would be shocked if it is more than 20%.

The other 80% of games are home games against Twinkie opponents.