March Madness Thread
In the early game, Marquette defeats Colorado 81-77
It surprises me how many teams down 4 points with time about to expire play to lose.
Down 4 with 7 seconds left, Colorado inbounds the ball in the backcourt, lolligags down the court, and jacks a 3 with time expiring.
Conversely, I've seen Brad Stevens do it in a way that gave his team a chance to win. Yes, there is a chance of a full or near full length court pass being intercepted. But it's less than the sure chance of running out the clock. Short of a boneheaded foul on the defense, you have to score twice.
One way to minimize the time off the clock would have been to inbound a pass over half court and THEN take the time out. But given that the timeout was misused, the other is to take the lesser risk of the full court pass. You have to score with time remaining on the clock, and it's best to try to save as much as possible.
Happy to see the ohio ladies team lose, even if it was to dook
I can be ok with Duke winning anything because the husband of a friend is a doc at the children’s hospital there and he does important work so there’s my justification.
I'd like to see the BIG pick Duke if they are going to 24 teams. Much like Northwestern academically and a private school.
And Tiny Tim lives up to his name, Mr. March.
Season never seems to make it to April.
"wAIt TiLl BASkeTBalL sEaSON!"
Marquette got the better whistle, and at very consequential moments. Even SVG pointed out bad calls, and commentators are never that unequivocal.
Still a good game, and yeah, CU blew it late rather than MU really winning it.
It’s always funny to watch mainly nba guys be exposed to college officiating.
Colorado had two fouls with two minutes to go. Hard to point to zebra tug job for Marquette.
Agreed. They let them play for the most part. there was hand battles all over and it was tolerated both directions. It was a great game to watch. The officials were not inserting themselves relentlessly.
At the very least, even with a sure inbound and bringing it up the court, it was the lollygagging that was really absurd. Colorado had zero urgency. Ridiculous.
Another interesting situation was the Colorado rebound that bounced a couple of times in the front court and then was in the air above the backcourt having crossed the half-court plane.
The Colorado player leaped from the front court and batted it to another Colorado player who was straddling the half-court line.
There was no need for the leaping Colorado player to do that, but by doing so, I wonder if he established front court possession, which would then trigger an over-and-back when caught by the Colorado player straddling the half court line.
I think the answer is no (the officials got it right), as it takes three things for front court possession:
- both feet must be (have touched) in the front court, and
- the ball must be across the half court plane
Obviously the ball usually enters the front court by crossing the plane toward the offensive basket. But in this case, I think the ball crossing the plane into the backcourt before being possessed saved Colorado from an over-and-back.
It was a loose ball because nobody had possession on the tipped miss. The ball was in the backcourt by the time he got to it.
Hey, can we portal in that buffalo with wings?
He boxes out really well and we were horrible at that under Juwan.
And the Sparty fans were all, "fundamentals, duh?"
Purdue is playing with house money.
If Edey doesn't touch the ball in the low post on every half court possession for the first 10 minutes, PU deserves to lose again.
It was Marquette who almost blew the game. They had a solid lead for virtually the entire game, but a few bad shots and a couple defensive lapses on some 3 pointers let the Buffaloes back in it. The game shouldn't have come down to the final minute. Marquette hit a couple of big shots late. They definitely 'won' it.
I don't know. CU had lots of good looks in the first half that just didn't drop. Second half they played better D (except on Kolek who seems like the prototypical Duke guard that's so hateable) and shots started dropping. They just couldn't get enough going to push into a decent lead.
Regardless, I'm glad M didn't wait around to try to hire Smart. MU's entire offense is drive and kick.
Yeah, the Buffs never did stop Kolek from going left. He was good down the stretch.
Smart would have been a great hire too... if he would have been available. He's in a good spot, and building good teams while basically being at home. I doubt he ever leaves Marquette, especially if he wins big.
Uhhhh… and a pretty decent pick and roll game between Kolek and Oso. First time watching them this year?
You need two scores with less than ten seconds to get them. Not impossible -- I've seen it happen, but only once in the last ten years or so. You need your opponent to screw up badly at least once and probably twice by fouling, turning the ball over, or giving up an easy bucket.
There is no good strategy here. You basically need a bonehead play and a miracle. The "lolligagging" was probably a guard looking for a quick bucket that wasn't there.
Apparently the referees are permitting Purdue and Utah State to play football this afternoon.
Utah st. is certainly deserving of the fouls called on them, but it sure feels like Purdue is being allowed to bully them around/foul and it isn't being called
Amazing to think Purdue has the most B1G MBB titles, a winning record against every B1G school, a 3x all-American who's the namesake of the POY award...
and 0 NCAA titles.
0 ncaa championships is a bit of a surprise but to me only 2 Final Four appearances is the bigger shock, and none since 1980. Winning the tourney isn't easy, but Purdue doesn't even get to the FF.
Utah St was playing well. They let a couple of Edey plays cause them to panic. They started rushing shots, taking bad ones, and now this game has gotten away from them. I think I just heard Rod Moore call 'game'.
I'll never underestimate Purdue's ability to choke, but Moore may be right.
LOL you're right, I'm talking about Purdue.
SVG crushing the auto-bench. I like the way he put it. What if there's no break? When is it okay for him to come back?
Fletcher Loyer could have played Jimmy Chitwood.
SVG with a great point…coaches will bench a player with 2 fouls with 1 minute left before halftime but will magically bring him back with 20 minutes left in the 2nd half as if there is a huge difference.
It's a great point if you're using analytics. However, just like analytics in football, the fatal flaw is that analytics can't account for momentum of a game and psychology of players/teams. If you use more than half of your allotment before half of the game is over, you feel as if you're at a deficit. Then, you become either tentative or more reckless.
See Campbell - NFC Championship Game
But if you leave your good players in and keep the score closer, how much does that build momentum and confidence for the second half?
I'm all for context rather than strict, slavish devotion to a standard. That's why auto-bench is dumb.
If you pick up two fouls in the first five minutes, it makes sense to sit and take a break and settle down. But you don't need to sit for 15 minutes to do that.
As this site's proprietor used to point out in the Beilein era, when you auto-bench a guy for 10 minutes in the first half because he has two fouls, and then he ends the game with two fouls and only plays a total of 27 minutes as a result, you fouled yourself out.
It drove me nuts in the championship game when Burke had to sit for almost the entire first half because he picked up two quick fouls. The only reason I don't lament it too much is because Spike ended up having his crazy explosion.
Tbf, refs do sometimes decide to change the way they officiate at halftime.
Ill say this forever. Only coaches can bench players with less than 5 fouls. The refs can only bench you at 5. If you need to bench then do it on the 4th then you sit (if you must) that player until crunchtime. That is it. My entire auto-bench policy. Come up with a different policy that keeps players on the court for more minutes?
Purdue prefers this trip to Indy much more than their visit in December, 2022.
Hmm. The announcers just talked about how Danny Sprinkle took over a team with zero returning points and had to start from scratch. And SVG pointed out how he brought his staff and two players from Montana State so it wasn't really starting from scratch.
Sound like anyone you know?
Utah State better pull a rabbit out of their hat or this is gonna get really ugly.
I walk back into the family room after some dinner prep in the kitchen and I see that Utah State has abandoned the match, as it were....
Hard to trust any Purdue team in March but my gut tells me that this may be the one that finally makes a final four. I actually think Purdue, UConn and Houston are all going to make the final four if I had to guess at the moment. Purdue, Uconn, Houston and Zona would be my picks at the moment.
Same FF here. Uconn still looks like the best of the bunch and I think Houston's 1-4s may be their advantage over PU.
maddie nolan is in the sweet 16. 5-seed colorado beats 4-seed kansas state in manhattan.
Purdue’s lead is pushing 40?
EDIT: 89-50 with 7 to go. Throw the damn towel.
Looks like Purdue came to play today.
Can you actually come in worse than second in a game between two teams? Asking for Utah State.
Honestly for all the talk about no dominant teams this year both Purdue and Uconn are a clear step above everyone else to me if they play their respective games. Houston and Arizona to a lesser extent. UNC is pretty eh to me though.
Other than Tiny Tommie, a couple other B1G coaches , plus Calipari, Pitino and Bill Self, I find very few basketball coaches as dislikable as Kim Mulkey at LSU.
I don't care how successful her coaching record is, I would never want her anywhere near the Michigan program in any capacity.
LSU, man. trash coach, trash players, trash fans. in *every sport.*
Go Dukes