I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'

Auburn's head football coach, as I'm sure virtually every reader of this blog is aware, is currently enjoying a six-day tour visiting the members of our Armed Forces in the Middle East.

There are fewer than 100 days until the start of the 2008 season. 2009 recruiting is in full swing. Why is our head football coach spending a week halfway around the world?

Partly to honor his father. Partly because, as he tells Scarbinsky, he's "gotta get away from it," meaning the coaching grind. Mostly because, I think, they asked and Tubby--for all the less-than-nice things I have occasionally said about him--is generally, as they say, Good People. All of these reasons kick ass.

I doubt very much that every Division 1 head football coach would have accepted the offer. "I think a few people said no," Tubby told Scarbinsky, and given the timing and length of commitment to the tour, that doesn't surprise me. Taking the pressures of coaching at this level into consideration, I can't say I blame them too terribly much.

But: for obvious reasons it remains an unapologetic point of pride for me that Auburn's head football coach did say Yes. For equally obvious reasons--namely, that I openly despise the man--I have to wonder: would our state's resident Coachbot, the sort of man who has come to embody the polar opposite of "getting away from it," have said the same?

It's quite possible, maybe even likely, he would have. It's not like Saban doesn't have a charitable background. It's not as if he hasn't been willing to make appearances for good causes and been gregarious and engaging in doing so. Scarbinsky suggests Tubby's "people said no" quote may have been in jest and besides, it's not like we have any idea who got asked and who didn't. This (as far as Google can tell me) is the first year of the program, so maybe in 2008 it's Auburn's guy, in 2009's it's 'Bama's--and if Saban does go over next year, this blog will be more than happy to give him his due credit.

However: boil down Tubby's and Saban's respective offseasons into a single lingering image, and Tubby's will very likely be the one sent back from Kuwait; Saban's will be yet another reporter* bullied from behind a press conference podium. Forgive me my orange-and-blue-tinted glasses, but once again I am glad we have our coach, and they have theirs.

-----------

*Admittedly, the barely-disguised glee said reporter takes in needling Saban is less than professional. I can't blame King Crimson for disliking the guy. But is the high road still so difficult to take? Is asking Saban to show the same professionalism towards the reporters he dislikes as well as the ones he likes (or comes closest to liking, I should say) really asking too much?

The Works, what the Daddy tomato said to the baby tomato-style

Catch-up.

APRil showers. For all the endless LOLlygagging out there about Auburn football's academics--hyuck hyuck they take sociology classes hyuck hyuck hyuck they're the only ones hyuck--the NCAA's APR hammer has not only passed the Tigers by for another year, it wasn't even close. The team's 953 was well above the 925 scholarship ax-point and the fourth-best score in the SEC, behind Georgia, Florida, and Vandy and three spots ahead of ... let me see ... just want to double-check ... I mean, I'm just curious, that's all ... hmm, seems to be the Tide.

Actually, I think what might be most impressive about that is that it was he fourth-best score at AU, behind only golf and the two cross country teams. (Let's also give it up for the golf team. I think if there's any group of athletes we'd expect to struggle academically after their hardscrabble upbringing on the mean and ruthless links of the Robby-J,it's the golfers. How many kids like them do we lose every day to the temptations of the beverage cart?)

No, the APR isn't perfect but it's still a decent rough guide to how well a given program is keeping its kids in school and keeping their grades above the waterline. Auburn football is keeping its kids in school. It's keeping their grades above the waterline. I'm not suggesting we throw a party over it, but a nice round of applause is probably in order--particularly when, loopholes and all, a couple of what might be considered Auburn's peer institutions (Kansas and Washington St., the latter from a conference you may remember as the one that enjoys shoving its alleged academic superiority in the rest of the country's face) haven't been able to manage even that.

(As a quick aside: I'm with the Senator/Brian/SMQ when it comes to the APR and its potential weed-whacking of the bottom rung of DI. DI college football, hours-wise, is a full-time job. Like almost anyone with ties to Birmingham I like seeing UAB do well, but if they can't give their football players the help they need to both do their "job" and earn their degree, they need to get out of the business.)

As for Auburn hoops, since APR grades out a four-year period and the most recent year reported is still just '05-'06, that unsightly 905 is still mostly the result of Cliff Ellis's recruits fleeing the program like the proverbial light-sensitive cockroaches Ellis got dumped. I wouldn't blame Jeff Lebo for that. Well, mostly.

Because of course, there are some things you probably can blame Lebo for. Jay Coulter raised an issue worth discussing recently: clearly, the "success" "enjoyed" by Auburn "baseball" and men's "basketball" the last several years would have Jay Jacobs' head on a pike somewhere if repeated on the football field. So should Jacobs really show the same kind of lenience towards Lebo and Slater he never would towards Tubby? Why is the kind of floundering we've seen the past several seasons on the hardwood and the diamond tacitly accepted when it's unforgivable on the football field?

And wellllllll ... in Lebo's case, I think it's fair to make a brief, meek case for "extenuating circumstances." When you're dealing with a sport in which only five of your guys take the court at a time and only nine or ten at the most are going to play at all, losing several of them to flukish injuries (as Lebo did in '07-'08) is going to be a tough row to hoe for any still-wobbly program. I'm OK with Lebo getting a mulligan on last season given that the program had shown progress--however snail-paced--his previous three seasons.

That said: that's his last one. The counter to the injury-pity argument is that Lebo's had four years to build the kind of program that could withstand those injuries without sinking to the bottom of a division so putrid in '07-'08 I could smell it from Ann Arbor. Like Jay, I'm not willing to give Lebo the benefit of the "just wait until the new building opens!" kind of doubt; Mississippi St. was the second-best team in the SEC this season and I refuse to believe it's any easier to build a team in Starkville than it is on the Plains, gym quality be damned. Five years is enough. If Lebo doesn't get it done in '08-'09--"it" meaning a finish in the top half of the division and at the very least consideration as an NCAA Tournament team--it's time to move on.

As for Slater, well, there goes that debate. Methinks that Jacobs' willingness to give Slater the gentle -yet-firm push out the door means Lebo's leash has run pretty short as well.

UPDATE: OK, so I wrote that last bit Sunday night and have been battling internet issues to get it posted ever since, so that's why it doesn't take into account that the alleged jewel of Lebo's 2007 recruiting class just walked out on him after one sea-- ... actually, you can't even call Sylla's time with Auburn hoops a "season" can you? Yeah, I'm still willing to give Lebo his last-ditch effort, but it's awful hard to find reasons at this point it'll work out.

Oh yeah, football, right, right. So, there was this A-Day thing you might have heard about. Part of me feels irresponsible that, as an Auburn Blogger, I haven't said anything 'til now about the only thing resembling Auburn football between January and August, despite the wedding and the basketball and the whatnot. Part of me also feels like, damn, it's not like without the aid of television (or, obviously, being there) I was going to improve on what friend-o'-the-blog Acid Reign put together over at Track 'Em Tigers, so maybe no harm, no foul this time. (There will be coverage next year, I swear by my copy of this year's Phil Steele.)

Besides, how many definitive statements can be made on the basis of spring ball? (Line of the spring from TWER: "Franklin’s candor has moved beyond refreshing to almost exhilarating and his straightforward style is especially on when answering questions concerning the quarterback situation, which reporters seem eager to put to bed. Franklin just keeps feeding it candy.")

What I would want to know is: did Franklin and Rhoads have the look of guys who know what they're doing? Do we have enough guys who can actually catch a pass to run the offense Franklin wants? Not that I would ever expect him to be, but Burns doesn't look so hopelessly lost in the passing game we're going to see the same third-grade "Burns = Run, Todd = Pass" offense again this fall, does he? (Not that that offense wasn't hella effective against Clemson, but long-term ... ) And did anyone turn their various cruciate ligaments into spaghetti?

With the answers on Acid Reign's good authority being Yes, Looks That Way, No, and No, I'm ready to go. When even OTS at RBR acknowledges Auburn had a good spring, it's probably safe to call it a good spring. (Also worth clicking: OTS's breakdown of the SEC's noncon schedules. I hope LSU's appropriately ashamed--just because we want them to beat Big 10 teams doesn't mean we want them to schedule like them.)

No. Sorry. (Please read that in the style Alex Trebek would when responding to a wrong question on Jeopardy!. It's more gentlemanly that way.) I would consider myself a reasonably staunch playoff advocate--2004 just confirmed what I'd long suspected, that 11 or 12 games will never reliably whittle down 100-some-odd teams to exactly two qualified national title game participants--but I can acknowledge that there are some compelling arguments against a playoff and that Kyle King has put forth many of these before. Rather than compile shortcuts to said arguments myself, Kyle has already done that recently in this response to Garnet and Black Attack's pro-playoff platform. (That response has since continued and spawned a generous and healthy comment thread I would recommend.) I can buy Kyle's argument here that the BCS has yet to produce an out-and-out fraudulent champion, even though my gut says this comes awfully close to tautology*; part of the reason these champions are legit is because they received the opportunity to end their season against other top-of-the-polls opponents as opposed to, I don't know, Virginia Tech. Still, OK, I can deal.

But this:

"[T]he Southern California squad that pulverized previously unbeaten Oklahoma in a game that wasn’t even as close as the 55-19 score indicated wouldn’t have lost to Auburn, even though the Tigers likely would have given U.S.C. a better game."

is ... absolutely right! After all, even if Auburn was good, it's not like Pete Carroll and his gold doubloon-crapping Trojans would ever be the sort of team that might suffer an upset. Not even on the road ...



... and definitely not with a national title shot on the line ...



... and if you're some bottom-rung program like Stanford, you'd best not even show up ...



... so yeah, even though the SEC is now 4-0 in BCS title games with an average margin of victory of 654 points, I still think it's safe to assume the greatest SEC team of the BCS era wouldn't have really had a chance against those guys.

Look, kidding aside, even I can agree that if the 2004 Tigers had gotten their date with the Trojans, a USC win was the likely outcome. But I would think last season and its endless carousel of Appalachian St.'s and Kentucky's and Pittsburgh's would have put to bed forever the idea that a "likely" win was even distantly related to an actual win. Discussing who would have won a USC-Auburn title tilt might be fun, but it has the same practical value as discussing what would have happened if, like, Dude, you went back in time and gave Robert E. Lee the secret of how to make an army of clone soldiers out of corn husks and tobacco.

But that doesn't keep Kyle from, essentially, arguing that it's OK to use our perpetually woebegone assumptions about who-wins-what-matchup to measure and retroactively justify the injustice inflicted by the BCS. Yes, the BCS was wrong about Auburn, Kyle argues, but not that wrong. Kyle and all anti-playoff advocates have my sympathies for their efforts in preserving our sport's tradition, regular-season punch, etc., but there's a point at which the injustice outweighs the tradition and all that other stuff. And that point is when your team has gone 13-0 and virtually no one outside of its own fanbase truly gives a crap that it won't get its fair shot, because, oh, it wouldn't have won anyway.

At that point, trust me, the BCS is very much that wrong.

NCAA Posterity: Same coin, two sides

As I said: I know no one cares at this point, if they cared ever. But when the Internet archaeologists from the year 4031 find the JCCW, I don't want them to think I didn't have anything to say on this year's NCAAs. Next post is 100% Auburn content, guaranteed.



Era of the Supermids

For the first 14 years of the modern NCAA Tournament (i.e. 1985-1998), Cinderella was pretty good in the first round, relatively speaking: 3's fell with regularity, 12's took home at least one victory every single year save '88, etc. They could have been better in the second round, maybe, but 13 double-digit-seeded mid-majors made the Sweet 16 in that period of time--almost one a year.

But Round 3 was a wasteland. Precisely one of those 13 teams pulled the upset and found their way into the Elite 8--the justifiably legendary Bo Kimble-led Loyola-Marymount team that (now here is something that should be remembered more often) blitzed defending champion Michigan 145-115 in the second round before surviving Wimp Sanderson's slowdown tactics in the Sweet 16. (A victory that says something as well. As an aside, that team might have been Wimp's best: Robert Horry, Latrell Sprewell, an SEC tournament championship, and a dreadful shafting as the seventh seed out West. They crushed the 2-seed, Arizona, by 22.) Still, 1-for-13-- a winning percentage of 7.6%.

Then in 1999, things changed. Gonzaga took down Florida on Casey Calvary's tip-in to become just the second Cinderella to survive the Sweet 16. (Navy also made the Round of 8 in 1986, but did so as a 7 seed, had only to beat 14-seed Cleveland St. in the third round, and had David Freaking Robinson manning the middle. They weren't Cinderella.) Since then, we've had three more: Trevor Huffman and Antonio Gates' Kent. St. team survived Ok. St., Alabama, and then Pitt in 2002; George Mason (duh) toppled Michigan St. and UNC before winning the all-mid clash against Wichita St. in 2006; and just a few short weeks ago now, Stephen Curry strapped Davidson to his back and marched them past Georgetown and Wisconsin, improving Cindy's record in Sweet 16 matchups since 1999 to 4-14, or 29 percent.

In other words, we have entered the era of the Supermid. For 14 years, Cinderella couldn't manage to win even one Sweet 16 game in 10; for the last 10, they've won nearly one in three. From one Cindy in the Elite 8 in those first 14 years, we've had two in the last three.

Why? Hell if I know. All four of these teams essentially won in different ways--the Zags with the 3-point gunning of Richie Frahm and Matt Santangelo, Kent with their MAC-honed ruggedness, Mason with their half-court precision, Davidson with Curry's all-encompassing brilliance. Faced with this same question I suspect John Q. Columnist would jerk his knee, scream Parity! and blither about more talent being available in The Game Today, but the unprecedented levels of chalk in the bracket the past two years suggests the opposite. High-seed power conference teams are better than they've ever been at seeing off third-round challenges from their power-conference brethren (or highly-seeded mids like SIU '07 or various late-era Gonzaga squads); but for whatever reason, they've gotten much worse at doing the same to Cinderellas.

It should also be noted that none of these Supermids made their runs via a "collapsed bracket" fluke. All four did so by beating three straight higher seeds, at least two of which hailed from power conferences. They were--are--legit.

And I think it's highly possible Davidson was, for lack of a better word, the legitest of the four. Consider that they first beat a Gonzaga team (still) laden with NBA prospects playing likely just about as well as they could play. The Wildcats then overturned a 17-point second-half deficit against the Big East's regular season champion, a team whose defense and slow tempo should have made them impregnable--and did so in no more than 12 or 13 minutes. And then they faced the Big 10's double-champion, a Wisconsin team that 100-percent deserved a second seed and had the efficiency margin of a 1-seed.

The result was a bona fide woodshed beating even George Mason never matched, a delirious runaway train of a middle finger extended to any one who said in the weeks approaching Selection Sunday the Wildcats might not deserve a bid. I'm not usually one for savoring a blowout, but in this case I had to make an exception; it wasn't just that Davidson won, it's that they flat flattened the Badgers.

They scored at will. They rebounded over guys a half-foot taller. They made them look slow and silly and hopelessly--um--Big 10. They toyed with Wisconsin--for what was Curry's iconic pump fake-flyby-and-swish three that Davidson fans are going to see in their dreams 50 years from now if not Team A playing cat to Team B's point-and-laugh mouse?

Me, I loved that second half every bit as much as I did Mason's shock-the-world moment against UConn two years previous. Because by that time, it was already painfully obvious that chalk was ruling the bracket again; that at least three if not all four 1-seeds were going to the Final Four; that the chaos we've depended on the NCAAs to provide is at its all-time lowest ebb; that it may never come back.

But all is not lost. We will still have Jason Richards channeling Steve Nash, still have Andrew Lovedale and Boris Meno out-rebounding NBA studs, still have Curry firing away with the kind of stroke J.J. Redick only dreams of.

Even in this period of money and Goliath and predictability, Davidson reminded us, we will still have Supermids and we will, in fact, even have them more often. Someone will still carry the flag. Always.



The Doomsday Scenario

That was the name Ken Pomeroy coined for the potential ascension of all four 1-seeds to the Final Four, which as most sea urchins, pine trees, and anaroebic bacteria living on asteroids circling Jupiter could have told you, had never happened before this year.

I like the term for a few reasons. First, I appreciate that Pomeroy agrees with me that this lethal a level of chalk is, Verily, A Portent That The End Times Hath Descended Upon Us All, like statues weeping blood or horses breaking out of their stalls or ESPN devoting SportsCenter exclusively to the coverage of actual sports. After so many years spent believing that "All four 1-seeds in the Final Four will never happen" with the fervor of your neighborhood cult's most recent convert (true story, I actually spent a summer passing out pamphlets at the airport a few years back that said "All four 1-seeds in the Final Four will never happen") seeing it come to pass doesn't seem so far removed from Apocalypse.

Second, the minute UCLA and Memphis survived their second-round assassination attempts from Texas A&M and Mississippi St., it seemed like you could pretty much set up a countdown clock 'til the (dooms)day arrived--with UCLA's region gutted, UNC just steamrolling people, no one remotely matching up with Memphis, and Kansas facing back-to-back double-digit seeds, there wasn't a whole lot of "tension" or "doubt" or "drama" in those Regionals, was there? (As an aside, I hope Texas, Xavier, and Louisville were appropriately shamed that the only Elite 8 opponent who put up a halfway serious fight was the 10th-seeded interloper from the SoCon.)

But most importantly, it works as the Doomsday Scenario because in a sense, I do think--provided there's no change in the laughably misguided NBA age limit or scholarship rules--this is the end of the 64-team NCAA Tournament giving us the same level of delirium and chaos as it's historically given us. 2007 was chalkier than antacid aftertaste, but it was just one year. Now it's two. Bleah. The presence of Supermids, hope springing eternal, sheer bloody-minded love of the sport, etc. mean I'll still be watching just as closely next year and the one after and the one after. I'm just not expecting things to be much different than they were these last two years.

I'm not sure why this bothers me so much. After all, again, in the overwhelming majority of cases it's not mids these 1 seeds are trampling in their Sweet 16/Elite 8 rush to the semis--it's their power-conference siblings. And though 2007 was less than thrilling, there was a reasonable amount of chaos in this year's first two rounds. Two 13 seeds won. Two 12's won. Two Cinderellas crashed the Sweet 16. And we were one Belmont shot, one Butler stop, one call in Texas A&M's favor from even more high-seed turnover. I feel like I should maybe quit all this complainin' and whinin' and embrace the Davidsons and Sienas and San Diegos we've got. Why should I care so much if 3-seed Louisville beats 1-seed North Carolina when I'd be rooting just as hard the other direction if the seeds were reversed? If UNC was battling, say, Southern Illinois, there's a perfectly good good-and-evil-based reason. Otherwise, it seems like it's just silly little numbers attached to the teams when you print the bracket out, right?

Maybe it should be, but it's not. Some of that, I can admit, is pure and undiluted snobbery; I've looked down my nose at the Digger Phelpses and Andy Katzes and That One Guy In Your Pool's of the world for years for their gutlessness and sheep-like tendencies in picking all four 1-seeds to make the Final Four, and I despise the idea of them finally being able to say they were right and the folks out on the limbs were wrong. Damn them damn them damn them.

But a large chunk of it is a straight-up need for unpredictability no matter its agent, mid-major or not. I get enough predictability everywhere else; I know what I'm having for lunch when I get up in the morning, I know I'm going to have X and Y done for work by the end of the week but not before then, I know I'm going to have to feed the cat when I get home from the office. I know those things will happen. Not to put too fine a point on it ("Way too late," you say, and I hear you), but one of the great big giant reasons I watch any sport is because there, I don't know what's going to happen.

So when it gets to the point that I know those teams with the 1 or maybe the 2 attached to their name are off to the Final Four before the first NCAA ball even tips, something's very, very lacking.

Back shortly

I'd like to think there's a few things that long-time readers of the JCCW (all seven of them) can count on this blog to provide, things you might say the JCCW """brand""" (because one set of sarcasm-indicating quotation marks isn't enough in this particular case) is "known" and "recognized" for after its two-plus years of existence. Like, say, witty-and-honest-but-far-from-libelous assessments of Auburn's performances. Wild mood swings as regards to the figure of Tommy Tuberville. Horrible puns. Laughably wrong NCAA Tournament bracket guesses.

And, of course, mysterious, unexplained weeks-long absences like the one the JCCW has just offered up since late March.

Look, I can be honest about this: some of those absences in the past have basically been the product of what most light bulbs would refer to as "burnout," in which an unfortunate confluence of Real Life and several weeks of serious blogging that would simply result in lighter posting on a more responsible blog has, here, resulted in the kind of silence in which you could give birth to a Scientologist's baby.

This time, though:



That's a view of the harbor outside Santo Tomas de Castilla, Guatemala, from the deck of a wondrous giant boat laden with steak and overpriced alcohol. I spent a week on said boat with this blog's favorite recurring guest star, the Mrs. JCCW, in mutual celebration of a procedure vaguely alluded to previously in which her "Soon-to-Be" was removed.

So: as you might imagine, said procedure, said celebration, and the time Real Life demanded first in preparation for the weeks spent, uh, proceeding and celebrating and then in making up for those weeks upon returning have bumped blogging pretty much to the bottom of the to-do list.

Forgive me for treading so relatively close to LiveJournal territory here, but the point is that just this once, it's not laziness or a sudden unyielding addiction to "Lost" on DVD. (Though I did go through that this spring. Been clean now for six weeks.)

And to prove it, the JCCW will be back in the swing of things starting ... now. The next few days we'll have a post with a few post-NCAA Tournament thoughts that no one in the world would care about but that I want for posterity, then it's full-on Auburn mode for the summer.

And while it doesn't look like I'm going to have the full-scale relaunch I'd kinda hoped for a few months back, the site's definitely going to get spruced up bit-by-bit and will likely look very different by the time ... well, by the next time I disappear for a month.

Stay tuned. It'll be worth it.

Round the First

I wouldn't say I was giving up, exactly. But by the end of Thursday night, I was wondering, somewhat seriously, if the NCAA Tournament I knew and loved was gone.

The NCAA tournament I grew up with and loved was a place where the Coppin St.'s and Valparaiso's of the world rising up to dethrone the money-conference bullies wasn't just a frequent occurence, it could be outright expected. In the 16-year stretch between 1986 and 2001, 30 different protected seeds lost in the first round, an average of 1.875 a year--in other words, it was just about as likely three 2, 3, or 4 seeds was lose as just one. 12's were shut out just twice in those 16 years, and one of those years was 2000, in which 10 of 16 second-round games went to the underdog. Outside of a weird two-year stretch in '95-'96, at least one Cinderella (a double-digit seeded mid-major) had carried the torch into the Sweet 16 18 of the other 20 years entering 2007's tournament.

But the three years between 2002 and 2004 were off the usual mid-major pace (just two protected seeds suffered first-round upsets, both of them 4's, and 2004 was just the second time since '86 at least one 11-or-lower didn't make the Sweet 16). 2005 and 2006 (the latter particularly, obviously) were pretty sweet, but goodness did we mid-major fans pay for it last year: for just the second time no one seeded lower than 11th won a game, and unlike in the other instance (2000) the chalk mostly went right ahead and held from there. Butler and SIU were there, but there was no Cinderella to speak of. The lowest-seeded team in the Elite Eight was a 3. Ugh.

Then came Thursday, and, well, double ugh. The only legit "upset" of the day pulled off not by a mid-major but by a Big 12 team toting the No. 1 pick in the draft and a sleazebag coach who likes calling his players 13-year-olds. Mid-majors weren't just losing, they were getting ground into dust: George Mason by 18, Winthrop by 31, Cornell by 24. Kent St. scored 10 points in a half. Mississippi Valley scored 29 for the game.

The exception to that rule was, of course, Belmont. The Bruins, to ironically borrow a pet phrase from their opponent's biggest media supporter, were sensational. But with us all having gone so long without the catharsis of upset, I didn't want another agonizing close call--I wanted a victory, dammit, and all they needed was one more basket. Just one. They had four chances: possession 1 with the lead, possession 2 with the lead, possession 3 behind by a point, and the inbounds with four seconds left. None of those four chances even came close; in fact, the shot that looked like it had the best odds of falling through was the heave from halfcourt. They lost by a point, and like K-Dub (once again writing he sort of thing I'd write, but a hundred times better) I spent the rest of the night in something resembling mourning. It seemed a reasonable question to ask at that stage--was this the end of upsets and mid-majors and these ifrst two rounds being reliably, you know, fun?

Then came yesterday, and it all suddenly felt like such useless melodrama. This is still the NCAA Tournament. Of course Davidson and Gonzaga were going to play the best game of the tournament. Of course a team like American--that on paper should have easily gone the way of O-Rob and GMU--was going to scratch and claw UT every step of the way. Of course San Diego was going to become the only WCC school of the three to advance, mostly on the broad shoulders of the wonderfully-named Gyno Pomare. Of course Siena would win--though I'd have never expected them to crush Vandy's throats like that. And of course--though it was hard to out-and-out celebrate Western Kentucky's victory, given that it came at the expense of a team as absurdly fun and absurdly likable as Drake--the day finished with a guaranteed ticket for Cinderella to be re-admitted to the Sweet 16.

All, in short, is right with the world--and there's still plenty of time for that "seismic" thing I thought might be coming in the last post (Butler in the Final Four? WKU over UCLA? Siena vs. Davidson in the Elite Eight?) to still arrive.

Other scattered tourney thoughts before Duke loses to West Virginia in a few moments:

--If Butler shoots even close to the way they did yesterday, is there any way Tennessee wins their second-round game? The Vols got absolutely abused on the boards by American, they don't shoot as well as the Bulldogs, they're not going to be able to turn Butler over, Butler's pace might throw them off a bit ... I think as long as Green and Graves keep their heads and Lofton doesn't go Stephen Curry on us, the Bulldogs should be more than fine.

--I guess all that talk about how UCLA got the Slip-N'-Slide path to the Final Four turned out to be pretty much dead on target. They're getting either a 12 or 13 seed in the Sweet 16 and both the 2 and 3 seeds in their bracket (Duke, Xavier) looked like the sort of teams that don't survive their second-round matchup against better opposition. I hate when media analysis actually turns out to be accurate. (As do Vandy fans, of course.)

--Let me take a moment to say I can sympathize with the frustration Vandy fans must be going through at the moment. Back in 1999, the universal consensus was that Chris Porter's miracle Auburn team was the weakest of the four top seeds, that their series of runaway blowouts in the regular season against a weak schedule meant that they'd choke in any tight game against a decent team, and that if Oklahoma St. didn't get them in the second round, Ohio St. definitely would in the regional semis. I told everyone I knew that was crap, that Ellis would have them seething at the slaps in the face, that Doc Robinson would hold everything together.

So what happened? Well, the best Tiger team since Chris Morris left the Plains survived OK St. but fell apart, just as predicted, when Ohio St. took the lead late in the Sweet 16. I felt betrayed, bewildered--how could all these stupid national media types have known my team better than me? So I don't blame the 'Dore supporters for feeling supremely let down at the moment. (That said? I doubt I'd be quite confident about Auburn's chances if the same season happened today and the numbers suggested they were vulnerable ... and all the "Why don't people believe in us?" talk out of Nashville in response to the doubters missed that there was a very good reason to doubt the 'Dores: the numbers suggested they were basically a luckier version of Kentucky.)

--I've overheard a lot of stupid, stupid things said very, very loudly in sports bars in my time, but this pair of guys sitting at a booth across from yours truly at A2's Arena (the phrase "Restaurant of Champions" cracks me up) yesterday took the cake. San Diego-UConn is on, and as some Torero gets stuffed inside, Guy A yells "Roy Hibbert with the rejection!" Which is totally understandable ... I mean, who can ever tell all these Big East 7-footers apart, right? UConn, Georgetown, what's the diff?

Guy B corrected him, at least, but Guy B also later excitedly says, as UConn brings up the ball down three with less than 25 seconds to play, "Are they going to hold for the last shot?" Yes, because a frequent tactic of teams down by three with the shot clock off is to create a best-case scenario wherein a low-percentage shot could possibly, maybe, if everything goes according to plan, send them to overtime. Cripes.

I was griping about this later to the Soon-to-be-Mrs. JCCW, who accused me of snobbery, and she's sorta right: yes, I do tend to look down my nose at people like Guy A and Guy B when it comes to Hypothetical Basketball Knowledge, and on just that point I shouldn't. But that's not really my issue: if you don't know what you're talking about, don't talk so freaking loud. Trust me, I'm not about to inform the whole bar of my thoughts if we're watching a Red Wings or Tigers game. It's incidents like this that make me feel like endorsing Kyle's No-Brackets policy": at some point, this whole "For these couple of weeks, Everyone pretend to be a basketball expert!" has simply gotten out of hand.

[/bitchy]

A few final points of interest ...

First, a questionable-quality but nonetheless enjoyable reminder of why I'm not worried about Butler traveling to the 'Ham:



Now, a few items to touch on as the clock ticks closer to noon tomorrow:

The Rotfang Conspiracy? I don't think anyone who's read this blog 'round this time of year would be surprised that I seriously sympathize with the point-of-view expressed in this excellent article from Joe Sheehan (and many places elsewhere) that the Committee should have done more to prevent mid-on-mid crime. The idea that a team like South Alabama might have been able to topple giants and slay dragons if they hadn't have crashed into an equally qualified giant-toppler and dragon-slayer like Butler at the very first hurdle is ... well, "more frustrating than the woman trying to pass off a shady-looking check who has to get three managers to look things over while you stand in line for 17 minutes with a toothbrush and a pack of Skittles" might be one way of saying it. Saying "We deserve better. The game deserves better. The teams that are forced to choose between playing home games or good games absolutely deserve better. The committee failed to serve the game this year," as Sheehan did, is a second and equally valid way.

But try as I might, I can't summon any outrage at the Committee for it. I've tried. But look at, say, Drake. There's only one non-mid 12 in the bracket (if you count Temple as a mid ... I don't, really, but for the sake of the "They're protecting BCS schools!" argument, we'll pretend they are) and that's Villanova. The Wildcats can't be in a pod with any other Big East teams and UConn's 4, Pitt's a 4, and Notre Dame's a 5. There's only one place for them to go, and that's across from Clemson. So Drake winds up with WKU.

Likewise, three mids wound up on the 10-seed line and two on the 7-line--given those seedings it was impossible not to have at least one mid-on-mid matchup and if you account for South Alabama and Davidson both being granted the courtesy of staying close to home, it's hard to see how the Committee can be faulted for not going out of their way to break those particular parties up.

This is what Sheehan's arguing: that since a mid's opportunity to prove itself an equal to a money conference team (on a neutral court and with the nation watching, of course) is the most precious gift it can receive, the Committee should make the extra effort--specifically, adjusting seedings in the 5-12 range--to hand that gift out as often as possible. There's something to this, but the importance of seed line is such that I can't endorse it. 6's are substantially more likely to make the Sweet 16 than 7's, which are substantially more likely to make the Sweet 16 than 8's. 10's make the second round a whole bunch more than 11's. And so on. I think the idea to seed Oklahoma ahead of Butler will go down in the history books as one of mankind's worst (or something like that), but if you honestly arrive at that conclusion, it's simply not fair to Oklahoma to drop to a 10 just because Butler "deserves" the right to take on, say, Kansas St.

As for the argument that it was Butler who got dropped to unfairly make way for Oklahoma, in the effort to eliminate as many mids as quickly and painlessly as possible: I can believe a lot of horrible things about the NCAA Selection Committee, but I'm not ready to believe that quite yet.

Oh boy. Yes, I am on the Siena bandwagon. Yes, I am considering jumping off now that there's no more room to stretch my legs, I can totally smell this heavyset dude right behind me, and the whole thing's just feeling a bit stuffy now, you know? When I got on this bandwagon, no one warned me about the flopsweat.

Actually, that's not true. I had a feeling this was trouble when Seth Davis put the wagon on its wheels right there on the Selection Show itself. So I can't blame Save the Shield's Phillip for pointing out (albeit in an odd location) that there are some serious parallels between this wagon and the Western Michigan one we all rode straight into a gaping canyon against Vandy in 2003. It's more than a little eerie.

But facts is facts: #1 lead-pipe cinch first-round upset candidates struggled for a while in the '90s, but they're doing much better in recent years. For Exhibit A, you don't need to look any further back than the Winthrop win over Notre Dame that sparked a million smug "Yeah, I called that one" remarks last season. In 2006, basically the entire country agreed that if Winthrop didn't get 2-seed Tennessee in Round 1, Wichita St. would in Round 2. Sure enough, the Vols only survived the Eagles on a bona fide miracle and were torn to pieces by the Shockers. Even in 2003, there was an upset pick every bit as popular as Western Michigan over Vandy: 12-seed Manhattan over Florida. Popularity did a good job of locating that one, too.

The point is that just because a bandwagon is overcrowded doesn't mean it's not taking you where you want to go. Does Phillip's Pomeroy research give me pause? Does the fact that Vandy's been called out in every conceivable way over the past few days make me worry? Do I agree that Siena (as I said myself) doesn't leap off the page or screen as a likely bracket-wrecker? Yes, yes, yes. But for starters it's too late to abandon ship now, and more importantly it seems perfectly reasonable to expect this game to be close--and equally reasonable to expect the country's seventh-luckiest team to this point to have a close game go against them.

No drama? Isn't it aggravating when your head and heart violently disagree? Mine came to blows Monday looking over this year's crop of 14, 15, and 16 seeds. My heart's nursing a hell of a shiner and my head's got a band-aid on his cheek and clutches at his ribs when he walks. They look like they've been held prisoner by one faction or another on Lost. It's not pretty.

Their argument goes like this: Head says this is the weakest set of low seeds he can remember, the lamest excuse for a bunch of "shock the world" pretenders he's ever seen. Heart says that's why they're to be feared: for the first time ever, no one is giving any team seeded lower than 13th even the tiniest sliver of hope for an upset. Meaning that times have never been better to catch a giant out-and-out napping.

Head says that's manure. Look: Boise is far and away the most dangerous 14 and they're playing a Rick Pitino-coached team with a better efficiency margin than Carolina. Cal St. Fullerton likes to run and is playing a Wisconsin team that swallows run-and-gun teams whole. Cornell could put one dude on another dude's shoulders and still not stack up with the Lopezes. Georgia's out of miracles and doesn't even count. As for the 15's, UMBC's the only one with a prayer and that's assuming Roy Hibbert doesn't have 27 offensive rebounds by halftime. Sure, Portland St. should have been a 15 and they've got some nice players, but... Kansas. Come on.

Heart says that's the point: Kansas isn't even bothering to think of reasons they might lose to Portland St., but they're there. The Jayhawks have been bombed out of the past two tourneys and whaddya know, the Vikes shoot 40 percent from three and have the country's 11th-best eFG. Self sucks at preparing Kansas for first-round games: ask Bucknell and Bradley. In this any more of a mismatch than UConn and Albany? Remember: they were up 10 with the ball.

OK, maybe that's not going to happen, Heart says, but there's no guarantee American (they did beat Maryland, you know) catch fire at the same time Tennessee starts clanking like mad? Belmont could go nuts, too, and they've got experience galore--sure they've been blown apart the last two seasons, but if you'll recall Winthrop got whipped their first few times. Texas is overrated and even if Austin Peay doesn't look like much, remember that even-sorrier looking Eastern Kentucky making Carolina work last year? I know none of these individually are likely, but if you start adding up Pomeroy's log5 odds, it's like a 10 percent chance per region on average, so it's 40 percent across the tournament, and when you add that to last year's tournament, when the odds were even better weren't any ... you might even say that by now it's likely.

You're deluding yourself, Head says. According to those odds and that thinking, a 16 should have won years and years ago. Dumb-ass.

Heart responds that 1's have been taken to overtime twice and been in two other one-possession games. Odds are the next one that close will go to the 16 seed. I'm telling you, Heart says, things are just too damn quiet for nothing to happen. It's not the way sports works. We're about to see something seismic.

Head says if that's what you need to believe to get yourself excited for Thursday and Friday, be my guest. But there's not going to be that kind of drama.

Me? I know head's right. But I'm going to watch every second anyway.

The Million Dollar Bracket, year 3

Cash money, baby.

The stakes have been raised, folks.

The JCCW has always taken the damn-the-torpedoes approach when it comes to filling out a bracket, partially because it's not like it would ever make any difference--the next pool of any size (including, sadly, the two-person pool made up of "people who live in the apartment I live in") I win will be the first--and partially because, hey, screw that chicken feed hundred bucks you're picking up at the office; I'm looking for the bracket that's going to set me up for life, man. The Million Dollar Bracket. Pick it perfect, all 63 games, and the last few years either CBS or SI would allegedly hand you a million bucks. Those two have apparently backed off, but hey, here's Yahoo, offering an unprecedented 5 million dollars for a spotless bracket. Seriously: why would you go the brainless "All four No. 1's in the Final Four and one No. 12 upset!" route when you could win five million dollars? Live a little, people! Pick that seven-seed whose uniforms you like to make the Elite Eight! Match up a 12 and 13 in the second round because you paid $12.13 after tip for your lunch yesterday! Remember: five million dollars!

Anyways, well aware that a perfect bracket will happen the day before the Earth is sucked into the sun, that's the JCCW philosophy. So here's the third annual attempt at it:

Final Four

Have to start here. First rule is not to be swayed by those fancy-schmancy records, glittering efficiency numbers, that nice shiny "1" beside their names: you don't pick more than two No. 1 seeds to make the final weekend. All four (you know this already) have never made it; three surviving has only happened three times; and all three of those happened in a narrow seven-year frame between 1993 and 1999. Yes, the crop of 1-seeds does look especially imposing this year, but a) after the two 1's and two 2's super-chalky FF last year, we're due for a little more surprise this year b)the "This is the year all four 1 seeds finally make it!" talk reminds me more than a little strongly of 1998, when Kansas, Arizona, Duke, and UNC were all supposedly untouchable--and Kansas was toast by the end of the second round, Arizona got crushed by Utah, and Jeff Sheppard's Kentucky ousted Duke. So: I'm picking two 1-seeds, and that's it.

Which ones? Looking at efficiency margins and Lunardi's Adjusted Scoring Margin ($), it's hard to pick against Kansas and UCLA. Kansas's numbers in both are flat ridiculous and, frankly, you know Self's going to get there one of these years. As for the Bruins, given the strength of the Pac-10, that +.17 margin is probably an even bigger deal than Kansas's +.24 ... and, uh, it's not like anyone else in their region (Xavier, maybe?) exactly looks like the type to haul down a well-coached target like UCLA.

As for the other two teams ... well, Louisville has been the secret best team in the Big East all season, and a three-point loss to Georgetown and overtime loss to Pitt-on-a-mission doesn't change that. Having Pitino at the helm doesn't hurt, either. Finding a good candidate in Memphis's region isn't quite so easy. Texas's efficiency numbers don't scream "underrated Final Four semi-sleeper!" (and quite frankly worry me) but their ASM isn't bad and they seemed to have their biggest problems on the road ... which, as has been pointed out ad nauseum, isn't so big of an issue since they're playing the regionals in Houston. That they saved their best performances for the toughest teams on the schedule (W's over Tennessee, Utah) doesn't hurt, either.

Two 1's, a 2, a 3. Nice and balanced. (Which is why it'll end up a 1, two 6's, and an 11.)

First-round upsets

Generally, there's going to be two or three teams on the 12 and 11 lines to survive the first two days--three seems more likely, after that overabundance of chalk on all levels last year. The guess here is that at least one of those two will come from a 12--2007 was just the third year since the bracket expansion that the 5 seeds swept.

Clemson's underrated as a 5, so I don't see it there; Western Kentucky's not in position to attack Drake's weakness in the post; and hot as they might be, Temple never beat anyone of consequence outside the A-10 and likely won't start against a Michigan St. team that looked good against Wisconsin in the Big 10 semis. So that leaves George Mason to take on a Notre Dame team that lost as a 6 last year and came within the worst missed last-second layup in the history of missed last-second layups of falling to Bruce Pearl's 12th-seeded UW-Milwaukee team in 2004. Mason's last tournament trip, you may have heard, was something of a success. Their post forward is the same, the shooting guard is the same, the head coach is the same. They (mostly) fit Pete Tiernan's remarkable "stats to look for" profile. They're ready.

On the 11 line, Oklahoma was outscored in Big 12 play and sucked on the road (loss to Colorado, anyone?). Good-bye. Tiernan likes Baylor and I hate Purdue and the weak-sauce Big 10--I think that's your third.

Given that at least one team seeded 13th or lower has sprung a first-round upset every year but four and that one of those four was last year, I think we have to pick one of those, too. Tiernan likes Winthrop or Oral Roberts, but for yours truly the easiest way to spot one of these is simply a team that won its conference, won its tournament, has a major pelt on the wall, and is facing an overrated team that's struggled on the road--and whaddya know, here's Siena vs. Vandy, whose efficency rating was the definition of mediocre even in the definitively mediocre SEC. I'm taking the Saints.

Cinderella

The JCCW's permanent and inflexible definition of a Cinderella: a double-digit mid-major who advances to the Sweet 16. Until last year that had been at least one for 10 straight years (and there's still only been four Cinderella-less years in 23), so it should make a triumphant return in 2008. Your nominees are: The aforementioned George Mason Patriots and Siena Saints; the St. Mary's Gaels, who I expect to dispatch outscored-in-the-ACC Miami; and Davidson, whose scoring margin in the SoCon was frightening and who faces a Gonzaga team that looked hella discombobulated in the WCC finals.

And your winner is ... George Mason! Put simply, I think Clemson, Texas, and Georgetown--terrific teams all--are just a bit too out of reach for Siena and the two 10-seeds. Washington St., however, is overseeded, sorta underachieved this year, and got picked off in last year's second round, too. Welcome back, Patriots.

Second-round upsets

On average, 6.3 "protected" seeds lose out before the Sweet 16. Remember this when you see those "expert" brackets later this week in which just two or three bite the dust.

So how many this year? Again, after a year in which just one two-seed and one three-seed lost on the first weekend--record lows for this decade--there should be more chaos. I'm looking for seven.

Let's start at the top. I'm picking Miss. St to beat Memphis. I know, it's insane. But:

1. It's now been four long years since a 1-seed lost in the second round (the three-season drought ties the longest on record). We're due. Good teams, even the best ones, don't go 16-0 (four years' worth of second-round matchups) against other good teams.

2. Miss. St. has been getting pimped by the Unaffiliated Wonk all season and Tiernan gives them the only 8-over-1 semi-approval he gives in this tourney.

3. This is a good matchup for Miss. St. Memphis isn't a good outside shooting team at all and needs to come inside for their scoring, but guess what? The Bulldogs are the best team in the nation in 2-point FG defense. Memphis's nation-best defense means MSU won't score much either, but regardless, this game is going to be a slog, and the longer it goes the more the pressure mounts on Memphis. The drought ends.

So who else? We've already mentioned Washington St.'s (2) and Vandy's demise (3), but there's also:

4. Tennessee. To quote Wonk again, "If you're watching Bruce Pearl's team in the tournament and the other team is making threes and taking care of the ball, the Volunteers just might be in trouble." Butler makes threes and is the eighth-best team in the country at not turning the ball over. Sorry, Vols. Every year some team gets a planet-sized shafting from the Committee; this year, it's you.

5. Duke. West Virginia has a hell of an ASM and looked every bit the part of stereotypical "7-over-2" team in the Big East tourney while Duke looks to be undergoing their near-annual (by now) slow fade.

6. UConn. Drake remains the Mid-Majority computer's favorite team, and that's worth something, particularly after the 2007 Drake (Butler) survived two rounds, including a second against a run-of-the-mill power-conference team much like the strangely anonymous Huskies.

7. Marquette. Like WVU, the ASM numbers love them some Eagles (look, slumming NBA stats guru John Hollinger likes them in his Final Four!) and Stanford isn't anything special.

Filling it out

What's left? For starters, the 8-9 detritus: Arkansas over Indiana, Kent St. over UNLV, Texas A&M over BYU.

In the East, UNC ends GMU's run before falling to the 'Ville. Kansas escapes a Clemson team that scares me before finally getting over the Elit Eight hump against Georgetown, who beats Wisconsin in the round of 16. (FYI: the Badgers have been too good even in the well-water Big 10 to lose to the likes of USC.) In the South, Pitt beats Michigan St. in the Round of 32 and Miss. St. in the Sweet 16 before falling to Texas (winner over Marquette). Out West, West Virginia downs Xavier in the regional semis before falling to Drake-beater UCLA.

The Champions

Don't have much problem picking two teams as dominant as Kansas and UCLA have been to meet in the final, but who wins? In a case like this I think it's best just to pick the team that played the tougher schedule, played in the tougher conference, has been in that Final Four environment before--in short, is just more prepared. That team is UCLA.

Now, hopefully all of that will wind up being a little less embarrassing than the last two attempts. There'll be one more post before the tourney; do check back.