A sports blog by and for Midwest Sports Fans
As usual, the Maui Invitational features the best top-to-bottom field of any preseason tournament, and there have been a number of exciting games leading up to Wednesday night’s final between #6 Duke and #14 Kansas, which can be seen at 10:00 EST on ESPN.
Thanks to the documentary that aired Sunday night on ESPN, one of the hottest topics in the sports world this week has been the Fab 5 – some 20 years after they were the most talked about and watched team in college basketball.
It should go without saying that the reaction to said documentary has been decidedly mixed.
Many people, including our own Jon Washburn, had positive things to say about it. Others, like Jason Whitlock, thought it was more fantasy than documentary. Grant Hill, who was spoken of in unflattering terms in the doc, went so far as to write an editorial in the New York Times expressing his disappointment.
How do I feel about it? Frankly, I think the truth lies where it usually lies: in the middle. Some of the comments by Jalen Rose and Jimmy King that set off the firestorm of controversy were curt and unflattering, no question; but the reaction from Hill and teammate Bobby Hurley, among others, failed to take into the account the true context of the comments that offended them.
Luckily, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski decided to confront Jalen Rose about his comments, which ultimately led to a burying of the hatchet. Don’t believe me? The photographic evidence is pretty clear below.
While browsing Reddit a few minutes ago, I came across this. For those of you who are uninitiated in the more random side of Reddit humor, this is an example of a common meme in which pictures containing funny or ridiculous photobombs are altered to be even more random, funny, and ridiculous.
And since the Internet has warped my mind, I had to add one more frame showing what the Crazy Eyes Cathy (my name for her) and assistant coach Nate James are looking at and what Coach K and his little copycat proteges (seriously guys?) Chris Collins and Wojo can’t bear to see.
Upon arriving home from a four day road trip late Sunday night, a friend in his 40s who follows college hoops religiously, emailed me with respect to the just-released brackets:
“I am sure you agree with me that this year has more inconsistency logic than I can ever remember in terms of seedings.”
Indeed I do.
To be fair, in sports, few have harder short-term jobs than the NCAA tournament committee. So when I pen the words below, realize I understand the difficult logistics of so-called “bracketology,” yet still think improvements can be made.
There are a myriad of areas to grouse about, but for me, the so-called bubble teams are unnecessary to cry over since 80% of those teams consistently don’t make it out of the first round, and well over 90% don’t make the Sweet 16 or deeper. This year, as commented upon by many, they are weaker than ever.
However, an area I do feel is botched year after year is how the committee treats conference tournaments.
March Madness is upon us, so as part of our continuing coverage here at MSF I thought it might be fun to do something a little different.
Lacking any motivation to do serious bubble or conference tournament analysis, I decided to spend a half hour with Google Images and find some of the funniest pictures of college basketball coaches that were available.
The result is what follows, a pictorial celebration of the MAD in March Madness, featuring the coaches of the current top 16 teams in America, as well as five others thrown in for good (see: hilarious) measure.
The NCAA Mens Basketball Tournament is quickly approaching as you no doubt are aware if you’ve spent any time here at MSF lately. This site gets completely overtaken by March Madness and college basketball talk during the third month of the year…and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
With that being the case, it seemed more than reasonable that we take a few moments to analyze the most important individuals for the upcoming month. No, I’m not talking about John Wall, Evan Turner, or any of the players; this is college basketball, where any talk of “most important individual” begins and ends with the coaches (who, by way of their massive egos and general self-aggrandizing propensities, wouldn’t have it any other way.)
Today’s discussion will center around one simple question: who is the best active coach in college basketball?
The way I see it, a case can really only be made for eight men to even be in the discussion. I’ll rank all eight, and then you can agree or disagree in the comment section.
