MARCH MADNESS 2014 - NCAA Tourney Thread

• Terry_Tate

  

  Ironman92;1601846 wrote:How's Vegas got this matchup?

  UK by 2.5 or 3
• reclegend22

  

  On the bright side, one more title and Cal's head will likely float him right back to the NBA.
• Azubuike24

  

  reclegend22;1601850 wrote:On the bright side, one more title and Cal's head will likely float him right back to the NBA.

  Cal's son Brad will be a Senior next year and wants to play at UK. He's a lower level DI player who has a few offers, but will walk-on at UK. Cal has said he wants to coach his son but after that, he's likely done. He said this when he got hired and basically put the "10 years" idea out there from the get go. It would be 10 years after his son graduates. This is the main reason I've always felt the NBA talk is overblown. The media creates it because they want something to talk about, but truth be told, there are a TON of other college coaches more coveted on that level than Cal. Guys like Tom Izzo and Billy Donovan, who may not go, are better fits and more likely to go the NBA route, IMO.
• reclegend22

  

  Azubuike24;1601853 wrote:Cal's son Brad will be a Senior next year and wants to play at UK. He's a lower level DI player who has a few offers, but will walk-on at UK. Cal has said he wants to coach his son but after that, he's likely done. He said this when he got hired and basically put the "10 years" idea out there from the get go. It would be 10 years after his son graduates. This is the main reason I've always felt the NBA talk is overblown. The media creates it because they want something to talk about, but truth be told, there are a TON of other college coaches more coveted on that level than Cal. Guys like Tom Izzo and Billy Donovan, who may not go, are better fits and more likely to go the NBA route, IMO.

  Didn't know that about his son. That makes sense that he'd want to coach him.
  
  But I don't agree that guys like Izzo or Donovan are better suited for coaching at the next level. While Cal's stint in the NBA with the Nets wasn't a roaring success, it wasn't a complete crash and burn, either, unlike some guys (Lon Kruger, for example, or Rick Pitino with Boston). He did lead New Jersey into playoffs in his second year before being let go just 20 games into his third season. But Cal was also young then, in his late thirties or early forties and still very much developing his craft.
  
  As we have learned from his second go-round in college basketball, first at Memphis and then Kentucky, Cal is one of the absolute best managers of elite talent in the game and he has a great facility for getting that talent to check egos at the door, buy into the team concept and play for championships, while at the same time still fostering an atmosphere and philosophy that promotes individual goals and achievements (i.e. personal advancement). It takes a special person with a gift for communicating with people to manage a team with that many future NBA players every year and achieve the results Cal has. Because of those reasons, I think there would be a lot of interest in Cal if he decided he wanted to return to the League for another shot. He's got the CEO role down, which is exactly what it takes to win at that level. It's about much more than Xs and Os, as you know.
• SportsAndLady

  

  A lot of people give Cal and UK shit for being a tad shady, but I can't wait for UCONN to get busted for DeAndre Daniels' recruitment. What a crock of shit that was.
  
  About to commit to Texas. Then Kansas. Then Florida. Between Texas and Kansas. Chooses UCONN. lol
  
  Best part about it is rumors are he had never been to Connecticut and had never met Calhoun.
• reclegend22

  

  If Jim Calhoun were coaching on Monday night, I'd hope for John Calipari to win. The lesser of two evils, without question. Despite the vacated Final Fours, the cloud of suspicion associated with Calipari doesn't even remotely approach the one that follows Calhoun. When it comes to sleaze, Jim Calhoun is in a league of his own.
• Azubuike24

  

  SportsAndLady;1601881 wrote:A lot of people give Cal and UK shit for being a tad shady, but I can't wait for UCONN to get busted for DeAndre Daniels' recruitment. What a crock of shit that was.
  
  About to commit to Texas. Then Kansas. Then Florida. Between Texas and Kansas. Chooses UCONN. lol
  
  Best part about it is rumors are he had never been to Connecticut and had never met Calhoun.

  http://courantblogs.com/uconn-men/deandre-daniels-was-almost-a-wildcat-it-was-really-tough-to-turn-john-calipari-down/
• Manhattan Buckeye

  I don't see Calipari going anywhere, with Pitino, Mike Montgomery, Lon Kruger, PJ, etc. having bad experiences, it isn't easy to go from college to the NBA level. The only draw would be money, and UK pays him plenty of that.
• reclegend22

  

  Manhattan Buckeye;1601916 wrote:I don't see Calipari going anywhere, with Pitino, Mike Montgomery, Lon Kruger, PJ, etc. having bad experiences, it isn't easy to go from college to the NBA level. The only draw would be money, and UK pays him plenty of that.

  Calipari led the Nets to the playoffs in his second season with 43 wins with Keith Van Horn and Kerry Kittles as his two best players. He was then released a month into into his third season. Neither Pitino nor Montgomery nor Kruger came close to playoff level success during their tenures in the League (Pitino did early with New York but not with Boston).
  
  I hate Calipari, but the man can coach and wasn't nearly as bad on the NBA level as some insinuate. The fact is, he helped build the Nets a bridge from oblivion to playoff relevance -- even taking the Michael Jordan-led Bulls to the wire in the first two games of the '98 playoffs -- without any real star power or the team that he wanted. He was set-up to fail in New Jersey. In the right situation, Calipari would probably do quite well in the NBA.
• thavoice

  I see that 1780 people correctly picked the finals in teh 11 million plus on the on contest. I wonder what % of them were uconn fans!
  
  This will be either a close game and a toss up at the end....or UK wins in a route. Either way..I see UK winning.
• gut

  thavoice;1601971 wrote:I see that 1780 people correctly picked the finals in teh 11 million plus on the on contest. I wonder what % of them were uconn fans!

  That still seems almost shockingly high...although I suppose if you have a bunch of alumni picking UConn, it's not unreasonable that a few might pick KY. But to pick both those teams is just stupid.
• thavoice

  I kinda thought so too until I did the math and it came to .002% or around there. 2.1% had UK in the finals, and only .5% had UCOnn. Eve that .5% was nearly 50k people!

  gut;1602039 wrote:That still seems almost shockingly high...although I suppose if you have a bunch of alumni picking UConn, it's not unreasonable that a few might pick KY. But to pick both those teams is just stupid.

• gut

  thavoice;1602058 wrote:I kinda thought so too until I did the math and it came to .002% or around there. 2.1% had UK in the finals, and only .5% had UCOnn. Eve that .5% was nearly 50k people!

  Yeah, I didn't bother with the math....just goes to show the power of large numbers! And 0.5% of 2.1% is like 0.01%, so the actual results are lower than expected
• Ironman92

  

  thavoice;1601971 wrote:I see that 1780 people correctly picked the finals in teh 11 million plus on the on contest. I wonder what % of them were uconn fans!
  
  This will be either a close game and a toss up at the end....or UK wins in a route. Either way..I see UK winning.

  The girl at my school is a UConn fan but then picked UK....she has UConnn winning and will win $90 in my school pool but her bracket could've won a pool of a couple thousand or so entries.
• gut

  Ironman92;1602111 wrote:The girl at my school is a UConn fan but then picked UK....she has UConnn winning and will win $90 in my school pool but her bracket could've won a pool of a couple thousand or so entries.

  Either one of these teams winning in my pool would win it almost every year, even if that was the only 6 games you got right (round points X seed, and each round is worth progressively more points)
• GOONx19

  

  A girl in my class was sitting in 62nd in Yahoo's bracket challenge going into Saturday. Had all 4, but picked Kentucky Florida. Would've been in like 34th right now, and top 20 get $100,000 each.
• GOONx19

  

  Also, the dude currently in 4th place forgot to pick a winner. Had 11/16, 7/8, 4/4, 2/2, but never chose his winner. Poor dude.
• gut

  GOONx19;1602139 wrote:Also, the dude currently in 4th place forgot to pick a winner. Had 11/16, 7/8, 4/4, 2/2, but never chose his winner. Poor dude.

  That's crazy good. Usually people ridiculous enough to pick this finals aren't very solid on other picks....although after R1 it was mostly chalk outside of UConn and KY, so I suppose with millions of people you see lots of combinations.
• sportswizuhrd

  Laley23;1601806 wrote:The regions are fine for the 1/2 seeds. But the whole pod system aside from that is stupid. And I agree with 1-68. No way should a 7 seed UCONN be playing a home game in the NCAAs, unless it happens by chance. Rearrange a few slots if teams have played in the same conference and all that, but eliminate the concept of keeping ALL the teams in their home region and focus only on the top 8 seeds for that.

  They probably had the idea of Villanova as a 2 seed playing UNC at MSG in the RS and then in then one of them in the RF rather than UConn/Iowa St.
  
  
  
  
  GO UCONN!
• reclegend22

  

  With a win tonight, UConn will tie Duke for the most national championships in the NCAA Tournament expansion era (1985 through present). While the Huskies haven't always been the most consistent program -- they've been to four NITs since 2000 -- they also don't get the nearly the national respect they deserve as one of the winningest NCAA tournament teams of the modern era. Ten Elite Eights, five Final Fours and three (possibly four) national titles in the last 25 years.
  
  For one of the smallest public universities in the country located in the Middle of Nowhere, Connecticut, that's pretty impressive. I think much of the program's under-appreciation stems from the notoriety of the women's team, and thus sort of overshadowing how good the men are, as well as that inconsistency of missing the tournament every two or three years. But UConn is on the verge of something pretty special tonight.
• GOONx19

  

  Cats cats cats.
• wildcats20

  

  @rexchapman: Was messin' 'round on Sat nite re: Cal. But word is - win or lose 2nite - it's a #DoneDeal ...Cal 2 La-La-Land 2 coach Mamba's Lakers. #NoBS
• Ironman92

  

  I just smell a lights out UK game.
• reclegend22

  

  UConn's got this. Experience prevails.
• Ironman92

  

  Bail out call for 1st foul of the game