big 4 state tournament – Rush The Court

The RTC Big Four State Tournament: Championship Game

rtmsf — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 18:27:10 +0000

We’re down to the final two of the RTC Big Four State Tournament, and this is pretty much where we all expected to be when the brackets were released, right? #1 Indiana will take on #2 North Carolina in a classic battle of roundball states chock full of schools who take their hoops very seriously. There are several interesting storylines here, not least of which is the unusual circumstance that Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski and Butler’s Brad Stevens will once again face off with a national title on the line and several of the same players in tow (Duke’s Nolan Smith [...]

The RTC Big Four State Tournament: Final Four

rtmsf — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 20:03:31 +0000

We’re now down to the Final Four of the RTC Big Four State Tournament. Last week was the quarterfinal round, and we saw as three of the favorites (#1 Indiana, #2 North Carolina, #4 Texas) advanced to the Final Four while #3 Pennsylvania was downed at the buzzer by upstart #6 Florida. There was a very strong public consensus among the top two seeds advancing (85% and 90%, respectively), while the fan vote was a little less confident in Pennsylvania (70%) and Texas (72%). Of course, we here at RTC had the Sunshine State (with afternoon rain) squad coached by Billy Donovan [...]

The RTC Big Four State Tournament: Quarterfinals

rtmsf — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 17:51:05 +0000

We’re back with the next round of the RTC Big Four State Tournament. As you likely recall, last week we broke down eight first round matchups between the top sixteen states containing at least four NCAA D1 programs, utilizing star players from each of those programs to come up with the bracket that appears below. We didn’t always agree with the fan vote, picking a couple of true upsets (#9 Illinois over #8 Michigan, and #12 Virginia over #5 Ohio), and disagreeing with the fans on another (#6 Florida over #11 Kentucky). Regardless, we endeavor to carry on.

Yesterday we introduced our 2010 RTC Big Four State Tournament, and it was great to see some of the responses and feedback on it. We’re convinced this is going to be a fun series. Today we’re back for the second day of First Round games (the right side of the below bracket), including our analysis and projected winner, but we encourage you guys to make your picks for each game in the accompanying polls.

In case you missed yesterday’s post explaining what we’re talking about, here’s our selection criteria:

Similar to the Fanhouse post, we picked the top four programs in each of [...]

The RTC Big Four State Tournament: First Round

rtmsf — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:06:54 +0000

A few weeks ago, the four major college basketball programs in the great state of Indiana announced that they would be starting an annual event called the Crossroads Classic, pitting each school against one of its other state rivals (Indiana, Purdue, Notre Dame and Butler) in an annual basketball orgy of Hoosierness. We here at RTC loved this idea, and immediately started thinking of other states in the union who could put on a similarly extravagant annual show of hoops. We were about 99.7% finished with our research when Matt Snyder of Fanhouse published this piece listing the top twenty states that could [...]