To discuss non Hokie aspects.
I think the loss by Florida put Todd Golden on the hot seat in year 2. The level of talent vs the lackluster play all season capped off by a complete No Show today losing to UCF 67-49 really punctuated a complete lack of effort this season.
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Which #1 seed gets bumped first? My money is on Purdue or Bama
I hope not, I have Purdue winning the entire thing.
All the 1's are capable of cakewalking to the E8 or getting drummed out in the R32 it's going to be exciting for sure
Same here.
Whelp
Oh FFS.....I dont know what I'm madder about- that my bracket is destroyed, or that LOLUVA is no longer the only 1 seed to lose to a 16 seed.
The fact that LOLuva is no longer the only #1 seed to lose to a 16 seed.
Correct
Misery loves company
UMBC maintains bigger margin of victory at least?
I have Houston bounced by Iowa in Round of 32. Just think Iowa will bog down the pace and not sure Houston will handle the defensive pressure. Houston is so hit or miss and it will be more glaring as they get stiffer competition.
Same... Although it wouldn't be a big surprise (to me) to see Northern Kentucky pull off an upset.
Houston. Their schedule was laughable and they faltered the second Memphis punched them in the mouth.
There is so much parody this year. It was truly a lot of blind picking.
Not sure if this was intentional use of 'parody' vs, 'parity', but lol either way... /s
Sadly no, I'm just an idiot tbh. I refuse to edit. Will proudly wear my hat.
It was a parody of parity.
What's funny, though, is that they BOTH work.
We were having the debate in the office pool about methods used.
Favorites discussed.
Last year, Jersey color won the pool...
TKPer Brad does a coinflip bracket every year
As do I!
Picking the team that is closer to a point on the map
Nothing like a meteorite game to get us started with March Madness.
Maryland hasn't scored a point in over 8 minutes now... not a good recipe for any kind of success.
Wow, WVU looked unstoppable at the beginning of the game but gg by Maryland
edit: or rather, Maryland looked very stoppable
LOL... UVA... wouldn't be a proper 1st round if you couldn't find a way to lose like this :-)
Late 3 by Furman to put them up 1 with 2.2 to go!!
Suck it hoos!
lol uva
FURMAN!!!!
The brackets may be busted, but the schadenfreude is forever!
Did people pick them to go far?!
I had them getting bounced by 'bama in the sweet 16. Not a major hit to my bracket.
same
I had this upset, but I pick them to lose in the first round every year. Except for last year lol
Fitting end to Clark's career. Had a timeout in their pocket.
Is he finally gone? I thought they said he was a junior. Seems like he has been there a decade.
I turned that shit on just to watch that final segment
fucking glorious. Sucks to be Hoo
Always fun to watch UVa poo their bed, but Holy crap, is the ACC bad at this point.
And we couldn't even make it in the top half of the league this year. Not great.
Down goes Arizona!
Would love to see Duke get upset later
Now that my bracket is shot I just want to see pure chaos.
Big shout out to Arizona and Princeton - early champs this year for the teams that ruined my bracket. Usually I have to wait until Friday evening to have my office pool hopes dashed. You guys overachieved and nixed those hopes early this year. Congrats!
My bracket is now a steaming pile of donkey shit.
Well...no. I had Arizona losing in the sweet 16 round. I have Purdue winning it all.
Then again, except for Arizona, i have all of the teams that lost on me today losing in the next round anyway, so who knows......
Yeah I had UVA and AZ losing in later rounds as well. I have Kansas winning it all though.
Every game in the pick em right today except for Princeton and Missouri. Of course, first year I have not entered a cash pool since Danny Manning won the tournament MVP award.
Houston in a dog fight both teams really struggling to score in the second half.
Buzz and Radford going home early barring a miracle. Down 48-28.
This is why I never bet on March Madness.
Hard to not pull for Fairleigh Dickinson, but I really really want UVA to be the only 1 to lose to a 16.
Wear my UMBC hat whenever UVA plays in the NCAAT
UVA was a 4 seed
I think he's referring to the 2018 UMBC game
I wouldn't be surprised to see more 16's win in the future. We're in a time where kids have grown up spending most of their lives watching Steph Curry sink 3s and trying to craft their game after his.
Just like UMBC did, some 16-seeds will get red hot from 3 and take over a game.
I think it's easy to root for UVA to remain forever shamed
To be fair. They were the #1 overall seed when they were the recipient of the biggest upset in MM history. Purdue was 3rd or 4th #1.
#16 Fairleigh Dickinson putting up a really good fight against #1 Purdue right now
Purdue honestly looks like a bad team carried by their giant center
Miami building brick walls in this first half against Drake
I've seen more athletic basketball players in inter-murals than Edey.
what an abysmal 3 point shot there
LOLUVA, you got company. Welcome LOLPURDUE
LONELY NO MORE
Don't let FDU's win distract you from the fact that UVa has lost to a 13 seed or higher in 3 of the last 4 NCAA Tournaments
Ignore that other one
Well... i predicted that we would have 2 #1's go out in the first weekend... there's the first.
Checks Kansas score...
https://www.thekeyplay.com/content/2023/march/10/mens-march-madness-conf...
Looks up at the Houston score at the half...
Congrats to Seth Greenberg, FDU alum and Hall of Famer!
Miami put the clamps on Drake over the last 4 minutes and advances.
NC state played to their average again; Joyner couldn't make a shot and they shot like 20% from three again lol
It's really a good thing that LOLUVA and Purdue can't play in the tournament. I think a black hole would form, first swallow the floor, then the whole tournament.
Bold move by Buzz to complain about being underseeded after losing to a lower seed.
LOL I guess his point was that if they get a higher seed they would have played someone easier and could have beaten them?
Probably.
Just like Buzz, right in a certain way, unaware in a different way.
self awareness was never his strong suit
Very true. But was/is he only aware of himself?
Duke goes down. ACC down to Pitt and Miami now. Really just the reflection of how poor the ACC was this season.
All of college basketball is down this year. No heavyweights, few seniors on the best teams, sloppy turnovers and ill-advised 3 point shots has been the name of the game.
I saw a tweet from stew mandell that (I think) has since been deleted, but it said:
I think that between the one-and-done rule, the emergence of professional basketball in Europe, the growth of the G-League, there's just more places for the good players to play other than college, and the college game is suffering as a result.
Is it suffering though? I find it way more interesting when there are legitimate chances for more teams. I dont need to watch the same 5 teams win every year
This
Exactly. If I wanted to see that I'd watch college football.
If the same 5 teams every year means teams like Butler, Gonzaga, and Memphis then I'm still here for it
The Power 5 is still dominant but college basketball has always had the door open for mid-majors to make Final Four runs. Now, there's no dominance anywhere so the "upsets" seem much less thrilling.
It's a fair point. Maybe the tournament has more intrigue, but the regular season has been more boring than ever before (IMO). I thought this was more of a 'me' thing, but everyone I talk to (regardless of life phase) seems to agree.
EDIT: RealDeihl said it perfectly
I disagree that it's suffering, at least from the perspective of someone that just wants to watch entertaining games.
On Friday, I was at a well known dive bar that is always packed here in Scottsdale, and even more so for St Patty's. The ENTIRE place was glued to the TVs cheering for FDU as they knocked off Purdue. It was one of the best basketball watching experiences I've had in years.
The refs in this Houston Auburn game have taken all the fun out of it. It's just a whistle fest now with very, very little contact if any in most cases.
The refs in this tournament have been absolutely atrocious. They all need to go to offseason boot camp for a few months
I don't understand how every single college basketball ref can be this blatantly bad all the time. There's never any improvement, if anything they've regressed sport wide.
Because sports league refs (ncaa, nfl, etc) are usually part-time contractors and not full time employees. This, coupled with the past 3 years of shit, made many realize that the extra time/effort/travel associated with reffing isn't worth the peanuts the leagues provide. And that's on top of out of control parents/fans.
If/when it becomes a big enough issue, maybe leagues will pay better or offer better benefits until then we get a shittier product unfortunately ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But as a referee myself, I take pride in what I do. I don't get every call correct, no one does. But I'm always looking to improve and take constructive criticism from other officials and higher ups.
Doing soccer at just the high school level, there are opportunities to go to classes and seminars and improve. I cannot imagine NCAA referees don't have access to SOMETHING.
They have access....but have to pay to do it and as mentioned above there has been an extremely high turnover the last few years so now you have less experienced refs coupled with poor performing refs so the newer ones are being "developed" by the ones that were left after the pandemic. In addition to the talent level being greatly reduced there have been a slew of rule changes the last decade that still are causing issues.
Solutions:
1) Standardize the training required
2) Pay the officials to attend including travel costs/lodging etc.
3) Make them permanent positions so it's their primary focus
4) Use a metrics based system to evaluate performance
5) Use results of performance evaluation to drive additional training/termination.
6) Standardize rules/format of mens/women's games to expand available pool of officials available.
Probably more that could be done but this would be a good start to normalizing the results.
1. The tests are standardized. The problem I can confirm exists is, someone has access to the answers and they're sharing them.
2. Cost of travel is a bs excuse shared by people who just don't want to do something. As independent contractors, they're writing off all their expenses.
3. Probably not going to happen as most officials will supplement with other leagues. So, if someone is permanent at a high level league, they'll supplement with the lower leagues. Unless you can guarantee enough payment to keep them in one place, they're going after more income.
4. Metrics are fine, but ultimately a subjective person evaluates against metrics. Ultimately, you'll still see bad things slip through the cracks.
5. Fine idea. But the current structure for the associations says that if you're good with the boss, you'll get to hang arOund.
Signed: a former referee.
Can confirm a lot of this. My MIL's family friend has refereed two Super Bowls, but was a B10 ref before that. He had a lucrative career (I think in banking if I recall correctly, but not positive). He started reffing for fun, retired in late 40s from his day job, but kept reffing.
Anyways, he was explaining the amount of oversight in college vs NFL, and how it's just night and day. He basically said that as a college ref, it's all about how much time and effort you want to invest in growth, and the rules are a lot more flexible ('more of suggestions' was how he put it), whereas in the NFL, there are strict guidelines, continuing ed courses, etc.
pitts shot selection is so bad
Watching Kentucky's center (Tshiebewe) get the ball under the basket, do a few pumps, and then slam it home makes me wonder why Basille couldn't do that everytime he gets the ball under the basket instead of attempting an up and under lay up for a miss.
Tshiebewe is an explosive leaper. Basile not so much.
in a video game Tshiebewe would get a 95+ rating for jumping while Basile would get something like an 80. Agility and footwork also play a role.
Good news is that footwork can be improved, as can the confidence needed to make quick decisive moves.
ACC down to Miami and they may not survive Indiana
Man has the ACC ever not gotten a single team through the first weekend?
they had the worst seeds ever this year with uva the only one seeded as a favorite to survive the weekend
Miami came out much stronger tonight and blew the doors off Indiana
ACC Women are doing pretty well though... Us, Miami, UNCheat, with Duke and Louisville still to play later.
Im curious how the acc will stand up to tye physicality of the other top seeded teams I have been watching
Louisville is the outlier to me, the acc title game and their last tourney game they're physical/chippy all day
WBB update: looking like a date against Tennessee in the sweet 16, as they are crushing Toledo.
Ohio State beat UNC at the buzzer, and will face uconn/baylor in the bottom half of our quadrant