- We would be remiss if we did not start off by mentioning the absolutely ridiculous set of games that we got to see on Saturday. Sure, there were a few duds (Florida absolutely destroying Missouri), but for the most part they were all solid games with the day capped off (for all, but our west coast followers) by a great game with an unbelievable finish (Butler shocking Gonzaga with the buzzer-beater). Bennet Hayes already wrote an excellent recap of the action for us so we won’t get into get into that. We will just say that after a week filled by phony people and lies it was refreshing to just get back to sports and nothing more than that.
- If you are looking for a rundown of the entire week and not just the weekend, Seth Davis apparently was so excited about Saturday’s action that he got out his weekly Fast Breaks out early enough to make it in our Morning Five (or maybe it was the lack of big games yesterday). As usual Seth does a great job touching on some of the players (Tekele Cotton) and teams (Colorado State) that many people might have missed with all the craziness of the weekend not to mention the non-sports sports stories of the preceding weeks so if you weren’t glued to the television and Internet all week and have a legion of Twitter followers giving you updates and have the phone numbers of every major coach in college basketball it is well worth your time.
- The efficiency numbers for teams this year will have already changed (check for daily updates on KenPom), but Luke Winn published an interesting post on Friday taking a look at the efficiency numbers of Elite 8 teams from the past five seasons. In doing so he establishes some general rules for efficiency numbers that teams tend to achieve when they make deep runs. Obviously there will be some exceptions, but in general teams tend to achieve certain levels of efficiency both on the offensive side and defensive side of the ball. Looking at the examples that Winn gives tends to fit in with how we viewed many of this year’s title contenders, but it should also raise some concern for teams that are considered solid threats to make it to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
- After quite a bit of speculation the NCAA took the first step towards streamlining its rule book with the intent of making it “a more flexible manual based on common sense”. Most of the changes will be barely noticed by the average fan, but should limit the number of seemingly pointless investigations and violations that the NCAA is inundated with that probably have no real effect on the competitive balance of college athletics. Among the changes are reducing regulations on texting recruits, allowing an increase in the type of material a program can send a recruit, and allowing schools to pay for medical expenses. As you can see from the above link there are many more changes and it will result in about 25 pages being removed from the NCAA’s rule book. The changes are set to go into effect on August 1.
- We knew it was coming and on Friday Maryland’s Attorney General filed a motion attempting to move the the ACC’s lawsuit against Maryland from North Carolina to Maryland. The lawsuit is over the exit fee of $53 million that the school is supposed to pay the conference. The Attorney General is essentially claiming that the ACC (based in North Carolina) does not have jurisdiction over anything in the state of Maryland and that the ACC’s lawsuit is “an antitrust violation and an illegal penalty”. The ACC has responded by withholding Maryland’s share of ACC’s revenue payments as “collateral”. We are not sure how successful conferences have been in collecting exit fees when schools/states actually go to court to challenge them, but it will be interesting to see what happens if they do so.