An Unnecessarily Exhaustive Guide To The 2010/11 NCAA Tournament, Part 3: Southeastern Region
March 17th, 2011
There is no better event in the American sports calendar than the NCAA Tournament. None. Zilch. Zero. And it’s not even especially close. All the games running concurrently, and the one game knockout format, make for captivating evenings of hours and hours of entertainment. This is particularly true of the first round, where action jumps from game to game, and Greg Gumbel struggles to keep up with all the information he’s getting in his ear. It’s like the FA Cup, except it’s better. Much, much better. And I like the FA Cup. Since this post is long enough already, the intro ends here, and there follows a preview (often in the form of a recap) of all 68 of the teams taking part in this, the 2011 NCAA Tournament. In this post: the 17 teams in the Southeast region. Use the following links to skip to relevant parts. Arkansas-Little Rock – Belmont – Butler – BYU – Florida – Gonzaga – Kansas State – Michigan State – Old Dominion – Pittsburgh – St. John’s – UCLA – UC Santa Barbara – UNC Asheville – Utah State – Wisconsin – Wofford Twinned with Little Rock. Arkansas Little-Rock The Trojans rely on an 11 man rotation and 4 guards at a time, to harass the opposition and ugly up the game. They pretty much play with five out, moving the ball, looking for threes, or long twos off screens, with little inside game to go to. And since they rank 9th in the nation in three point percentage, it certainly has its merits. They are led by conference player of the year Solomon Bozeman, the Sun Belt Conference’s own entry level version of Kemba Walker. But there is no real threat here. Photobomb. Belmont Belmont have been subtly touted as a possible […]
An Unnecessarily Exhaustive Guide To The 2010/11 NCAA Tournament, Part 2: Eastern Region
March 16th, 2011
There is no better event in the American sports calendar than the NCAA Tournament. None. Zilch. Zero. And it’s not even especially close. All the games running concurrently, and the one game knockout format, make for captivating evenings of hours and hours of entertainment. This is particularly true of the first round, where action jumps from game to game, and Greg Gumbel struggles to keep up with all the information he’s getting in his ear. It’s like the FA Cup, except it’s better. Much, much better. And I like the FA Cup. Since this post is long enough already, the intro ends here, and there follows a preview (often in the form of a recap) of all 68 of the teams taking part in this, the 2011 NCAA Tournament. In this post: the 18 teams in the Eastern region. Use the following links to skip to relevant parts. Alabama State – Clemson – George Mason – Georgia – Indiana State – Kentucky – Long Island – Marquette – North Carolina – Ohio State – Princeton – Syracuse – Texas-San Antonio – UAB – Villanova – Washington – West Virginia – Xavier No name in the tournament this season competes with this one. Alabama State Alabama State won the SWAC with the conference’s best defence, using a very long rotation (that shortened towards the end of the season) built around aggressive, undersized forwards, such as preseason DPOY pick Chris Duncan. They led the conference in field goal percentage defence (40.3%) and blocks, while also dominating the glass on most nights. Unfortunately, they can struggle greatly on offence, ranking 317th in the nation in points per game (61.3) and with their leading three point shooter, 6’4 junior Ivory White, hitting a team high 36 threes but on 117 attempts (31%). The team […]
An Unnecessarily Exhaustive Guide To The 2010/11 NCAA Tournament, Part 1: Southwestern Region
March 15th, 2011
There is no better event in the American sports calendar than the NCAA Tournament. None. Zilch. Zero. And it’s not even especially close. All the games running concurrently, and the one game knockout format, make for captivating evenings of hours and hours of entertainment. This is particularly true of the first round, where action jumps from game to game, and Greg Gumbel struggles to keep up with all the information he’s getting in his ear. It’s like the FA Cup, except it’s better. Much, much better. And I like the FA Cup. Since this post is long enough already, the intro ends here, and there follows a preview (often in the form of a recap) of all 68 of the teams taking part in this, the 2011 NCAA Tournament. In this post: the 17 teams in the Southwest region. Use the following links to skip to relevant parts. Akron – Boston University – Florida State – Georgetown – Illinois – Louisville – Kansas – Morehead State – Notre Dame – Purdue – Richmond – St Peter’s – Texas A&M – UNLV – USC – Vanderbilt – VCU Brett McKnight pulling a silly face. Akron They might be relative minnows, but Akron boast some size. 7’0 centre Zeke Marshall is rail thin and fouls on pretty much every possession, but he’s sufficiently mobile to block 2.5 shots per game, and can finish around the basket. The Zips’ best player, Nikola Cvetinovic, is a 6’8 forward leading them in scoring and rebounding, but also an aggressive and fundamental defender on the interior. Reserve forward Brett McKnight is build like a tank, and backup centre Mike Bardo is, if nothing else, big. To go with that, Akron offer a good amount of shooting, particularly from specialists Brian McLanahan and Steve McNees, and the […]
Florida vs South Carolina, Feb 3rd 2009
February 9th, 2009
Random thoughts from random game. – I like it when guards constantly push the ball, but Devan Downey took this to extremes. He played like a mentalist, with one of the weirder 33-point outings that I’ve ever seen. Downey went 6-15 from two-point range, 7-9 from three, and 0-2 from the free throw line, making a series of tough threes when the game was out of reach that served only to make it overlap into the Syracuse game that was on afterwards. (Thanks for that, Devan.) He is one of the quickest players with the ball that I’ve ever seen, and clearly was a talented shot-maker. But he looked to pass about as much as Donte Greene, which is less excusable when you’re the lead guard who dominates the ball. And at 5’9 with a penchant for ball-watching, Downey didn’t have much value on the defensive end, either. He was explosive fun, much like a good curry night is, but he has some big old flaws. – Alex Tyus is going to have a nice career ahead of him, somewhere. Decently sized, athletic and with some nice touch from both hands. I didn’t see him challenge a shot all night, which was worrying, but the offensive talent is there. – Dominique Archie was impressive, too. He tended to drift towards the middle on defence, and toward the perimeter on offence, which was a bit odd. But he’s a good athlete, a slasher, a decent finisher, rebounder and help defender. – Zam Fredrick’s professional future, as a 6’0 shoot-first-second-and-third scoring guard without a terrific shot making ability, looks speculative. – I soon learnt that Nick Calathes is not much like Pat Calathes. At all. He’s far better, for a start. However, I worry about Nick’s future. It’s a lot easier to […]
Loosely-Informed Thoughts on Ohio State and Purdue Right Now
February 5th, 2009
I have watched a game and a half of Ohio State’s season in this past week, and I feel as though that makes me an expert on everything about them. – The half a game comes from the second half of the Buckeye’s game versus Indiana on Saturday. When we (and by “we”, I mean “the entire nation of England”) joined the game, Indiana was losing by one, 59-58. God knows how, because they proceeded to show nothing at all. They had no big men, no defence, no inside game, no slashing, no spacing, and their guards just took it in turns to hoist up threes. This from the worst three-point shooting team in the conference, apparently. Still, guard Matt Roth’s performance will linger with me for a while; unlike everybody else, Roth could actually hit a three, and proved this by hitting nine of them, each from further away than the last. It was an impressive shooting performance, to say the least, and it kept Indiana in a game in which they were otherwise wildly overmatched. If ever I encounter Matt Roth again in my life, this will be the first thing that I think of. (I looked up Matt Roth on ESPN after this, to see if he was any good. He wasn’t, but I did find something fun; Roth is 40/96 on the season from three-point range, 11/13 from the free throw line….and 3/10 from two-point range. Nice. Daequan Cook is jealous.) There was literally nothing else to report from Indiana’s point of view, who are as undermanned as you’d heard they are. – Ohio State’s seven-man rotation featured a starting line-up of Jeremie Simmons at point guard, William Buford at two guard, Jon Diebler as the other two guard, Evan Turner as both forwards and Dallas […]
