- With the end of the regular season rapidly approaching many fans are finally coming to the realization that an undefeated regular season for Wichita State is getting closer. What is interesting is the backlash that the Shockers, a Final Four team last year that came closer to beating eventual national champion Louisville than any other team did, have received. As Mike DeCourcy notes, people are coming up with all sorts of questions about the Shockers and doing so completely ignores the point of how impressive the Shockers have been. Now 30-0, the Shockers are looking at the very real possibility of being a #1 seed. If you don’t think the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee is going to give an undefeated team that went to the Final Four last year a #1 seed we don’t know what to tell you. Yeah, the latter part shouldn’t matter, but the reality is that it does. You can certainly debate whether the Shockers are one of the top four teams in the country and it is a reasonable debate, but don’t let that stop you from appreciating what they are on the verge of doing.
- Kansas released some additional details about the “Fieldhouse Apartments”, which will essentially be its basketball dorm. The primary donor is from Kent McCarthy, a prominent Kansas alum, who appears to have made his money through hedge funds (all with the name “Jayhawk” in them). Interestingly the Kansas legislature denied the school additional funding through bond offerings to help with construction, but the school is still moving forward with its plans. With this coming on the heels of Kentucky’s Wildcat Coal Lodge it seems like we could be entering an era of increasingly ridiculous student housing with each school trying to outdo the others.
- With new NBA commissioner Adam Silver voicing his interest in increasing the age limit for players entering the NBA it is possible that we could be seeing the end of the one-and-done era. Michael Weinreb reflected on the impact of the one-and-done era. We are torn on how we feel about one-and-dones. We obviously low the level of skill and athleticism that they bring to the table, but we do miss getting to see key players develop over years. On the other hand, we are not fans of restricting the ability of individuals to enter a marketplace that has essentially been granted monopoly rights in this country.
- CBS and Turner Sports announced their broadcast teams for the NCAA Tournament yesterday. Outside of the issues around the Final Four, which we have addressed before (semifinals on TBS and with alternate team-specific broadcasts for all of the Final Four games) there is nothing that is particularly surprising compared to last season. There are certainly some notable absences–namely Gus Johnson–not being involved. We would have thought that this was due to contractual obligations, but Bill Raftery is still doing NCAA Tournament games even though he like Johnson works for Fox Sports One now.
- Were you sick of all of the talk about the Duke-Syracuse game including what was featured in this space? Well, that’s too bad because we are going to talk about it again today. Except that we are going to talk about the game that was played on February 1. Why would we talk about that game now? It turns out that two Duke fans–Shane Hackett and Leslie Gilman–were kicked out of the game by someone who has been described by multiple reports as an overzealous security guard. Hackett and Gilman had been going back and forth with Syracuse to figure out a way to compensate them for apparently being unfairly kicked out. Syracuse offered the couple $190 (the face value of the two tickets), but had Hackett turned them down saying that he paid $1,000 for the tickets. So a local Syracuse radio station came to the rescue and offered the couple $500 if they did not sue the school and agreed to never set foot inside the Carrier Dome again. The couple agreed to the terms even though the school was not involved in the deal.