- It has been a week since the NCAA released the external report it received regarding
its lack of institutional oversightthe misconduct of a few individuals, but Dennis Dodd is one the first national media member we have seen who took the time to pick it apart to point out the sheer ridiculousness of some of the stuff that the NCAA did. While this information is embarrassing for the NCAA and points to the fact that some more people than just Julie Roe Lach should have gotten fired, the NCAA always makes us cynical and we have a hard time believing that the NCAA revealed all of the bad stuff it did and exactly how high up the chair this type of behavior went. Unfortunately in the end the administrators at the NCAA will probably walk away unscathed. - While many writers watched the Oscars on Sunday night, Dan Spears was busy putting together his mock bracket, but unlike nearly every bracket you will see his is tailored around storylines. We are not sure that this would necessarily boost ratings since it seems like a large portion of the country shuts down for the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament. Still we suspect that every writer would love for this to happen for the overload of storylines to choose from.
- We have mentioned the peculiar case of Ryan Evans‘ free throw shooting as the Wisconsin senior has gone from a fairly reliable (70%+) free throw shooter to an awful one (40%). It appears that Evans and the Wisconsin staff are experimenting with all kinds of potential solutions as he may even start taking jump shots for his free throw attempts. If Evans were do so he would not be first player to take such an approach as the article points out that NBA legend Hal Greer took a similar approach and in more recent times Nick Van Exel who opted to shoot his free throws from 17 feet instead of the customary 15 feet. Of course both Greer and Van Exel were outstanding free and we doubt that even a normal method of shooting would have made either of them 40% shooters.
- After becoming a media darling with their early domination of the SEC Florida has fallen under the radar following losses at Arkansas and Missouri. However, several analysts still consider the Gators to be on the short list of top contenders to cut down the nets in Atlanta. The likelihood of that happening may increase on Saturday when they are expected to get Will Yeguete (knee) and Michael Frazier II (concussion) back. The news of their return will be overshadowed by the imminent return of Ryan Kelly (as all non-Duke news does), but in terms of the national title picture the impact could be similar. Yeguete gives Patric Young some much needed support on the inside and Frazier is actually the Gators’ best three-point shooter connecting 48.9 percent of the time. The Gators finish the regular season with a relatively easy stretch (and yes, we are counting the SEC Tournament) so they should have plenty of time to get these two back into the regular rotation without too much difficulty.
- With Kansas’ win at Iowa State last night Bill Self won his 500th game as a head coach, which is an impressive total, but still leaves him outside of the top 20 winningest coaches in Division I history. That doesn’t stop Jeff Goodman from joining Andy Glockner in pointing out that Self may have the best chance of any current coach of breaking Mike Krzyzewski’s eventual wins record. It is worth pointing out that Self has mocked Glockner’s idea when it was mentioned to him some time later. As Goodman points out with (basic?) statistics, Self has won 33 games per year over the past six seasons and if he does that for “just” 15 more seasons he would be approaching 1,000 victories. While we appreciate Goodman breaking out the calculator it is worth pointing out that the run Self has been on the past six years is one of the more impressive runs in NCAA history (Krzyzewski has never had a six-year run that was as successful if we are just going by overall wins as his best six-year stretch averaged 31.667 wins per year). Honestly the only way we see Self or any other current coach approaching Krzyzewski’s record is if the NCAA adds more games to the season.