Congrats to the big guy.  He worked his butt off and earned it.

After four (well, three and two-thirds) productive years at Notre Dame, it's time to see if Luke Harangody is getting drafted to an NBA roster or will have to work his way into the league as an unsigned free agent.  (Not that getting drafted in the second round is in any means a pass to the roster.  If you're unfamiliar with how the process works, only the contracts of first round picks are guaranteed.)  We'll be following the events on Twitter and here, so stop on by if you're partaking in one of the most consistently enjoyable sports offseason traditions.

I'd like to tell you I've spent the intervening hours between Notre Dame's loss to Old Dominion and the writing of this ruminating on that game, but that would be a lie.  I've certainly thought about it a bit, but I've just mainly watched a lot of basketball in that time.  And while I watched, it only served to remind me that the Irish's loss wasn't particularly tragic and that for his flaws, Mike Brey is a good basketball coach.

On the first thought, it is certainly sad and disappointing that Notre Dame lost, but a month ago we didn't even think Tory Jackson and Luke Harangody would sniff the NCAA tournament in their senior season, so just being there was a bonus.  Then consider the fact that Old Dominion was ranked higher by some metrics (RPI, KenPom), had already defeated Georgetown and had a legitimate front line of a 6' 10" guy and his two 6' 8" friends.  On top of that, while Notre Dame's defeat was close and heart-breaking, how would you rank it next to say, Maryland's loss?  Or Texas A&M's?  Or Vanderbilt's?  Or Florida's?  Or Murray State's?  Or Robert Morris's?  Or Marquette's?  And would you say that Notre Dame fans are more disappointed than, I don't know, Kansas's?  Or Georgetown's?  No, of course not, so while I would have very much preferred to win against the Monarchs, I imagine I'm in a much easier position than the denizens of Phog Allen.

On discussing Mike Brey's competencies as a coach, I think it's important to start by noting that all sports fans are a little crazy.  You watch your team play every game, seeing every flaw that reoccurs over the course of a season or a coach's tenure.  A big problem occurs when you only watch your team play, occasionally tuning into another game to compare notes.  All coaches have flaws, and none of them are perfect.  Roy Williams won the national title last year, and his team - loaded with talent - lost 16 games this year and didn't make the NCAA tournament.  Bill Self, who won the national title two years ago, somehow didn't think to have his uber-athletic team press Northern Iowa until the last few minutes of their second round loss.  Billy Donovan, who won the two titles before them, hasn't won a single NCAA game since and just made it back to the Big Dance this year.

People complain that Notre Dame's end of game offense is just one guy dribbling and then trying to penetrate way too late in the shot clock.  Watch much hoops this weekend?  Because if you did, you probably noticed nearly every team does that.  Mike Brey's teams usually play a very smart brand of basketball.  They generally make good decisions and pass well.  Can you imagine if supported a team coached by Paul Hewitt, Dino Gaudio or someone of a similar caliber?  Georgia Tech's game against Ohio State was just a group of guys attempting to get on SportsCenter, with winning the game a nice bonus should it occur.  They took horrific shots, tried for tip slams at every opportunity and on fast breaks would eschew stopping ball for an attempt to swat it from behind for a highlight reel block.  If you ever think to yourself "Mike Brey is an awful coach," find a DVD of the Texas/Wake Forest game and appreciate how Notre Dame plays.  Are they as well-oiled as a Butler or Northern Iowa?  No, but they're in nearly every game - even those against teams with a lot more talent - because they play smart and play as a unit.

That being said, just because Notre Dame's loss wasn't the end of the world doesn't mean I'm happy about it.  There are certainly some things that could have gone differently that would have given the Irish a shot at Baylor and the Sweet Sixteen.  A few bullet points, then a look ahead to next season:

• I thought this was maybe the key sequence in the game: At the midway point of the first half, Tory Jackson hit a three to give the Irish a nine point lead. On the following possession, Monarch forward Kent Bazemore made a layup while being fouled by Tyrone Nash. He misses the free throw, and on the ensuing scrum, senior Jonathan Peoples "saves" the ball underneath his own hoop and blindly flings over his head. Even before "Don't give up baseline," one of the first lessons you learn playing basketball is to never save the ball under your own hoop. Worst case is it's out of bounds to your opponent and you can set the defense. To compound this unforgivable hard court sin, Luke Harangody reached in for an "Excuse me" and-one on a Frank Hassell make. 15-6 to 15-11 in a matter of seconds because of two silly plays. As I said above, Notre Dame generally plays smart, and that's how they compete and win. When two seniors are violating some fundamental hoops rules, their chances of winning - especially against a team playing smart- go down dramatically.
• Props to Ben Hansbrough and Carleton Scott for putting in 31 points and doing everything they could to keep the Irish in the game until the very end. Tory Jackson didn't have a great shooting afternoon - although he was stuck taking some low-percentage shots at the end of shot clocks - but the Hansbrough/Scott tag team went 13 of 26 from the field and 5 of 13 from 3.
• I understand why the burn offense was effective after Harangody's injury, but all the Irish players were passing up good shots in an attempt for some mythical perfect look. I love the mantra "Perfect is the enemy of good," and when you see good shooters passing up open shots just to run some more time off the clock, it's painful.
• Luke Harangody and Ty Nash combined for 41 minutes, but just 10 boards and 5 points on 2-for-11 shooting. Gody was bothered by Old Dominion's length the entire game and let that frustration affect his defense, which wasn't great in the second half. We have a couple months to talk about this, but I've gone from thinking Harangody could be an effective rotation player in the NBA to having severe doubts.
• Tim Abromaitis finished the season on a very cold streak, and I think I have a theory beyond shooting funk. In Jack McCallum's tremendously enjoyable Seven Seconds or Less, he discusses Mike D'Antoni's belief that the best shots come early in the shot clock, before the defense has settled in and locked the claws into shooters. The numbers back this up, so it makes sense that the opposite would be true. Abromaitis would be having more trouble trying to hit jumpers at the end of a possession, when he's hurried and the defender knows his options are limited. Credit to Abro for doing everything else during this rough stretch, from playing hard defense and rebounding to moving without the ball and hitting some nice pull-up jumpers in the lane. I imagine that when the offense speeds back up, Abro's percentages will head north again.

~

We're going to spend some time in the coming weeks saying good bye to the seniors, but let's take a moment to glance towards the future.  What will this team look like next season?  Jackson, Harangody and Peoples are gone, but Scott Martin will finally be able to suit up and freshman guard Eric Atkins is likely to get some playing time.  Joey Brooks will see an expanded role in the backcourt to relieve some of the ball-handling duties from Insane B, while Jack Cooley and Mike Broghammer have another offseason to polish up the very positive contributions they made in limited time over the last month. 

I think a starting line-up of Hansbrough, Martin, Abromaitis, Scott and Nash would be fine on offense, even without a traditional backcourt, because of everyone's ability to competently handle the ball.  Defense would be a little trickier, because unless Martin is quicker than I understand him to be, there'd be no one to defend quicker two's.  This could be solved by playing a lot more zone, which would emphasize the overall length of that starting five.  Brooks and/or Atkins provide a breather for Hansbrough - both letting him get some rest on the bench and taking over as primary ball-handler for spurts while on the floor with him - while Cooley and Broghammer complement a deep front line.  There's no reason that the old, quick and flowing offense can't be matched with the tougher defense as long as everyone gets a chance to rest.   The problem this season was that it was both unfair and essentially impossible to ask for six and a half guys to play an up-tempo game on offense while expending maximum effort on defense for forty minutes.  When Harangody went down, so did the pace of the game, and all the Irish players had more energy to throw at opposing offenses.

There will be some rocky moments to start next season, which tends to happen when you lose a four year starter at point guard, but the cumulative talent and depth will be as good as it's been during the Brey era.  There's shooting, athleticism, big bodies and a new-found commitment to defense, and whether it's reasonable or not, my hopes are high.  Anyone care to join me in Orlando for Thanksgiving?

I'm still mulling over how I want to approach yesterday's first round loss to Old Dominion.  I'm disappointed, but not surprised.  We'll talk about it in-depth once the dust settles, but for now, keep on enjoying the tournament.

If you're stuck in the office or class or something equally terrible, the fine folks at CBS have provided us with a nice little widget to watch all of the games live right here on Rakes.  To launch the application, click right here

Go Irish, Beat Monarchs.

If you're stuck in the office or class or something equally terrible, the fine folks at CBS have provided us with a nice little widget to watch all of the games live right here on Rakes.  To launch the application, click right here

Over the years, I've grown less and less interested in my own bracket.   My only goal is to nail one sleeper among the usual 1's and 2's that make the Final Four.  Sometimes, this goes really well, as I had Davidson in the national semis in 2008 and was oh-so-close to everlasting glory.  More often, my sleepers fall in the first round, cut down at the buzzer by Drew Nicholas, such as the poor Seahawks of UNC-Wilmington in 2003.  The trick is to only pick out one sleeper, because if you just have every Elite Eight a match-up between 6's and 7's, then happen to get one right, where's the glory in that?  This year I like BYU, but I could absolutely see them getting out-athleted by Florida in the first round.  But we'll see, that's the beauty of the next three weeks. 

There are actually a few things to hate about the NCAA tournament, although it is pretty close to perfect.  The main reason is the committee's propensity of pairing up exciting mid-majors next to each other.  This has happened a lot over the years, and there's no excuse for it.  Western Kentucky/Drake.  Gonzaga/Davidson.  Kyle Korver/Chris Kaman.  As with everything the NCAA does, it is to protect the big guy, and it's no different from pairing up Boise State and TCU in the Fiesta Bowl.  Ignorance is almost always bliss, but the less you think about shady underhandedness of college athletics, the better.  But honestly, once "One Shining Moment" starts playing, I forget how much I loathe Dan Guerrero and move on with my life.  (This might not happen this year with Jennifer Hudson singing it.  Might as well mess with a good thing!)

Not that it matters in the slightest, but I have Kansas beating Kentucky in my championship game.  It's boring, and it's probably wrong, but I accept that.  We all like to be adventuresome in our picks, but in the end, it's almost always one of the top five or six teams in the country that wins this thing.  Your bracket will make you feel good when you fill it out, but by the time the Elite Eight rolls around, you're losing to some nerd in your office that couldn't tell you Duke's leading scorer, let alone who knocked off the Blue Devils each year since they won it all in 2001.  (Indiana, Kansas, Connecticut, Michigan State, LSU, VCU, West Virginia, Villanona.  And that's from memory, sadly.)

So I say fill out your bracket, tuck it away, and root for chaos.  It's always more fun that way.  Pull it out before the Final Four and see if you're in the running to win some cash.  If so, great, now you know who to root for.  If not, continue supporting chaos.  On the morning of one of the greatest days in sports, here are sixteen random tournament-related thoughts.

1)      Is this West Virginia team discernibly different from the one that lost in the first round to Dayton last year?  They're certainly better, but that much better?  Their guard play is still divided between a sophomore that just doesn't quite get it yet and a one-armed gamer who has, well, one-arm.  And don't give me the "Da'Sean Butler Won't Let Them Lose" argument.  The last player with a season as clutch as Butler was Acie Law IV in 2007, and he ended up missing a lay-up against Memphis that knocked the Aggies out.  I could see Missouri giving them a lot of trouble in the second round with the press.  Or they could wax Kentucky in the Elite Eight.  I just don't think they're the lock of locks everyone thinks they are.

2)      Sticking with Kentucky, they have a very difficult draw to the Final Four.  There isn't one team that is clearly dangerous until they'd hypothetically get to the Mountaineers, but there are all sorts of fun, varied tests for a young team.  In the second round they're going to get a very talented but poorly coached Wake Forest or Texas team that could put together a good weekend of hoops.  Then they get Wisconsin, Temple or Cornell, all incredibly smart, slow teams that could hinder Big Blue's immense athletic advantages.  And then in the Elite Eight they could get a bunch of ridiculous, blood-thirsty 6' 9" Mountaineers that will attempt to neutralize the Wildcats' prowess by pounding them into submission.  Tricky, but the Coach Cal + Lottery Pick Point Guard formula has worked out very well the last few years.

3)      I said I like BYU as a sleeper, but I'm very nervous about them even surviving to face Kansas State.  (Who I don't believe in, but honestly, haven't watched played that much beyond the Kansas losses and Texas win.)  They've lost something like a dozen straight first round games, yet they have a guy named Jimmer.  When push comes to shove in the NCAAs, just always pick the team that can shoot, unless they have a huge, huge size disadvantage.  But even then, teams with only one big man have done a lot of damage before falling in dramatic fashion (St. Joes in 2004, Davidson in 2008). 

4)      UTEP/Butler is one of those bullshit small school vs. small school things the tournament does just to screw with people.  UTEP's front line is monstrous and Randy Culpepper can score, but Butler has been here before and won't get rattled, even with the Miners' huge front line.  The winner will either face Vanderbilt - a team I liked all year due to having guard play and a post presence, but who sputtered down the stretch - or Murray State, everyone's favorite Cinderella.  Looking at the Racers' numbers, it's hard not to be impressed, especially when you consider Siena blitzed the Commodores in this same seeding match-up two years ago.

5)      I'm not sure I'm sold on Syracuse, especially if Arinze Onuaku is banged up.  Yes, they dominated the Big East regular season, but Boeheim's track record in the tournament post-Carmelo isn't stellar.  Onuaku is so important to a team where everyone knows its roles so well, he's got to be healthy for the second weekend.  The one factor that would relieve my doubt is if Wes Johnson's health has benefited from the limited action over these last two weeks.  If he can be Carmelo or even Carmelo-lite, then that solves a lot of the Orange's ills.

Continue reading this post »

Sorry for the delay, folks, but I was traveling the last couple days and only now have been able to sit down and digest the Fighting Irish's first round opponent.  This seems to be a pretty difficult draw, as Old Dominion is a big, deep, veteran team that's comfortable playing slow.  They've already played a lot of bigger conference teams this year (Missouri, Dayton, Richmond, Mississippi State, Georgetown, Northern Iowa), including a victory over the Hoyas on campus.  They're coming out of the Colonial Athletic Association, a league that's seen some tournament success the last few years with George Mason and Virginia Commonwealth.  The odds of the Monarchs being intimidated by playing a Big East school are somewhere south of zero.

Things revolve around 6' 10" senior Gerald Lee, the only ODU player to average double digits on the season.  Lee is one of the main reasons Old Dominion is highly ranked in 2-point field goal percentage (49.4%, good for 107th) and offensive rebounding rate (42.4%, first in the country).  I'm particularly impressed by Lee's numbers in the game against Mississippi State, because even with Theo Ratliff 2.0 Jarvis Varnado patrolling the paint and collecting five blocks, Lee went 9-for-15 for twenty points.  Complementing Lee on the inside is 6' 8" Frank Hassell, the team's leading rebounder and shot blocker, as well as the second-leading scorer.  Coming off the bench in support of the front line is a very intriguing player in Keyon Carter, another 6' 8" body that can rebound and shoot three at a 35% clip, good enough to lead the team.

And that, friends, is where we find Old Dominion's apparent weakness: they cannot shoot the three.  To their credit, they recognize this and don't shoot that many.  When the treys fall -as they did against Georgetown when the Monarchs hit 7-of-16 - they seem very, very difficult to stop.*  Their guard rotation consists of 6' 1" Darius James, 6' 5" Ben Finney and 6' 5" Kent Bazemore, so some good size in the backcourt as well, making this team's offensive rebounding rate make more and more sense.  This would also lead me to believe Notre Dame could institute the same sort of sagging man they used on Connecticut and Pittsburgh players not named Ashton Gibbs, but perhaps Mike Brey has something else up his sleeve.

* When we discuss the Georgetown game, I think it's important to note that Bad Chris Wright showed up, shooting 2-of-8 and going 0-for-3 from three.  When BCW is in the game, any loss is possible for the Hoyas.

Here is the weird thing about the Monarchs: despite an absurd proficiency for scoring 2-pointers and some very good big men in the post, they barely ever get to the free throw line.  They're not particularly good at shooting as a team when they get there - although Lee, their leading shooter there, is 76% - but I'm excited to crack open 360 and see what kind of offense they run that they're scoring a ridiculous amount of 2-pointers without getting fouled that much.  Crafty Monarchs.

If you're interested in taking your own look at Old Dominion, they have four games on ESPN360, including all of their CAA tournament contests and the win at Georgetown.  I think I'm going to start with their semifinal win over VCU (in overtime) and then move onto to the Hoya victory.  The Irish have been playing great basketball, but this Monarch team seems like a tough, slow, big team that is going to be a very, very difficult out.

~

Some other random stuff:

• In case you were not aware, the game will start at 12:25 Thursday afternoon from New Orleans, with Dick Enberg and Jay Bilas on the call.
• Old Dominion is based in Norfolk, Virginia, and has an enrollment of over 24,000 students.  They're a little short on famous alumni I could dig up, so for our purposes this week, focus your hatred on Detroit Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander and Cash Cab host Ben Bailey.  Et tu, Ben?
• Notre Dame is a two-point favorite over the Monarchs, and if you're really feeling confident about their chances, you can get them at 20-1 to advance to the Final Four. 
  

As we count down to the release of brackets on Selection Sunday, the most important thing to remember is this: Match-ups are more important than seeding.

With Notre Dame's new reduced pace, they have the ability to drive teams that play fast insane and completely take them out of their game.  Conversely, teams that are used to playing slow will gladly trade 33-second possessions with the Irish.  Here's a few of each, using KenPom's pace numbers:

POTENTIAL TOURNAMENT TEAMS THAT PLAY FAST:

10. Washington

11. BYU

12. Villanova

14. Texas

28. Kansas State

36. Xavier

39. Syracuse

40. Missouri

48. Georgia Tech

49. Wake Forest

POTENTIAL TOURNAMENT TEAMS THAT PLAY SLOW:

341. Wisconsin

333. Temple

332. Pittsburgh

331. Utah State

305. Marquette

301. West Virginia