Chad Ford - a guy Darko Milicic owes millions and millions of dollars - has a list of the official list of NBA early entries up over at ESPN.  Big Derrick Caracter will be moving on, but fellow Louisville standouts  Terrence Williams and Earl Clark will have the Cardinals poised for another Elite Eight run, or better, in 2009.  Also sticking around is UConn big man Hasheem Thabeet.  While that's bad for teams in the Big East, I think it's great for Thabeet and the NBA, as he definitely needs another year of Calhoun polish before moving onto the big leagues.

Marquette's Jerel McNeal, Syracuse's Donte Green and West Virginia's official hoops dreamboat Joe Alexander have also declared, but not hired agents.  I have no idea whether they might be back or not, although I would think next year's draft would have to be weaker than this year's, but a lot of people said that about twelve months ago.

It's been well-documented that Bill Plaschke doesn't understand baseball, but now he's writing about basketball.  This is amazing.  This is beyond amazing.  It's his column from yesterday entitled "UCLA-Memphis is a coaching mismatch," which suggests Howland is a vastly superior coach to Calipari, using such comparisons such as this:

"He doesn't call timeouts, he doesn't even call plays, instead installing a system in which his players use different motions.

When you see him shouting on the sideline, it will be as a cheerleader, not a caretaker. He will be shouting for players to run hard, to shoot smarter, to get tougher."

Wow, just...wow.  Thank you, Bill.  I really, really enjoyed that.  I'll just ignore the fact somebody had to teach Memphis the system that allows them to score so many points - the same system Grant Wahl wrote a giant, epic, SI piece on - or that what you just stated describes a lot of basketball coaches who run motion offenses and don't have to call out a set play every time.  Thanks to the Times for this.  Simply amazing.

I consider myself a minor authority on Ben Howland, if only because I really like to be well-informed about things or people I despise.  While Howland didn’t really burst onto the national scene until his first of three Final Four runs with the Bruins in 2006, my friends and I had been following his teams well before then when he was at Pittsburgh.  Howland-coached teams are steadily consistent, especially when it comes to their NCAA tournament ousters: someone on the other team gets extremely hot, to the point no manner of defense can stop them, and Howland’s guards have an awful game.

The classic cliché is "Defense wins championships," and while it’s true very few teams have won titles without defending (the ’99 Rams are the only team popping into my head at this time), you also don’t win many titles without a good offense either, especially when you consider, great offense will always trump great defense.  There’s a reason that guys who hold Jordan, Kobe or LeBron to 29 points "but make them work for it" have their night considered a great success, because whether it’s on one play, in one quarter or in one game, a transcendent offensive performance will always prevail over even the best defensive effort.

I don’t want to bash Howland’s teams in 2006 and 2007, who lost to what was essentially a NBA team-in-training with the Florida Gators, but you can see the problems in guard play flaring up, although the transcendent offensive performance wasn’t necessary because Billy Donovan’s crew was both so balanced and so damn good.  But going back to Pitt’s Sweet Sixteen game against Kent State in 2002, you get the same problems:

2003: Dwyane Wade hits the most ridiculous shots you’ll ever see, including one where he’s falling down, scoring 22 points on 10-for-19 shooting.  The Julius Page-Brevin Knight backcourt goes 11-of-24, which is actually the best you’ll see from a Howland team in these losses.

2006: Arron Afflalo and Jordan Farmar go 11 for 31, Darren Collison goes 0-for-3 with three turnovers in 21 minutes off the bench.  Al Horford and Joakim Noah are 12 for 17 for 30 points and 16 boards.

2007: Darren Collison and Arron Afflalo go 8 for 28.  Florida is just awesome again, with Chris Richard and Corey Brewer combining for 35 points on 12 of 14 shooting while Noah and Horford get 28 boards.  (Seriously, people really don’t give these Florida teams enough credit because they blew so many people out and played in a couple boring Final Fours.  They were amazing.)

2008: Darren Collison is 1 for 9 with 5 turnovers, although backcourt mate Russell Westbrook did go 10 for 19 for 22 points.  The future NBA backcourt of Chris Douglas-Roberts and Derrick Rose light up the Alamo to the tune of 16 for 33 for 53 points.

(And if you want to, you can include or ignore 2004, which was Jamie Dixon’s first season coaching the Panthers, who still had Howland’s recruits playing in Howland’s system with his style of play.  This time Tony Allen went off, hitting 8 of 14 for 23 points, while Julius Page (2 for 11) and Carl Krauser (6 for 17) struggled in a 63-51 loss.)

What am I trying to say by showing that really good teams with really good, future NBA players give Howland’s teams – and pretty much every other team – a lot of trouble?  Basically, that while defense is great and essential, to micromanage and suffocate your offense like Howland does really makes your team incapable of winning a shootout.  Nearly all great teams are capable of succeeding at different paces, even if they’d prefer one over others,  but Howland’s teams are not, simply because his offense is too restricting to put up a lot of points, and if the opposing team is playing offense at such a level no defense – and Howland’s is great, for all its clutching and grabbing – can stop them, the game is over.  

At some point, Howland may recruit enough transcendent offensive talent that he can let them play his defense while doing whatever they want on offense (which Collison and Kevin Love did at times this season), but until then, he’ll have to hope that he manages to avoid great opposing offensive players, something that is somewhat difficult to do from the Sweet Sixteen on.  As depressed as it would make me, I would be utterly unsurprised to see the Bruins playing on the final Saturday of the collegiate basketball season again next year, but until Howland loosens the reins on offense and stops playing such ghastly, ugly basketball, they will not win the final two games.

~

But seriously, I really underrated Memphis.  It’s not that I disrespected them – I had them losing in the Elite Eight in what was essentially a road game to Texas – but as I’ve written here and told my friends at an annoying rate, "Why didn’t anybody tell me Derrick Rose was this good?".  After the Acie Law IV debacle of last season, (where I had Texas A&M projected to my final simply because of their point guard’s clutch play all season, then he missed a lay-up against Memphis), I wasn’t willing to trust my bracket to one crafty veteran who seemed unwilling to lose, but Chris Douglas-Roberts makes me wish I’d reconsidered.  Rose says he has "old man moves," but they seem to work just fine in the 2008 version of the game.  When you throw in a front line that can defend and rebound – literally, that might be all they can do, as Dozier and Dorsey combined for 18 rebounds, 6 points (all Dozier’s) and 5 blocks – a good coach and some perimeter players that can knock down shots and pressure the opposition, it just seems so simple.

Not saying that Kansas will be an easy win, but it’s very, very possible that UCLA lost to the NCAA champion three years running, and that Rocky Top’s skin-of-their-teeth win back in February will be the only mark against the Tigers.

~

Did North Carolina watch film of how Davidson gave the Jayhawks so much trouble?  Pressure their guards to make entry passes and alley-oops tough, then get back in transition.  If Kansas gets caught in a half-court game where they can’t just throw lobs up to their bevy of freak athletes, they start shooting a lot of threes, which they were doing when North Carolina cut the lead down and Rock Chalk just couldn’t seem to shake them until Brandon Rush started getting loose.  You’re telling me that Davidson was considerably more athletic than the Tar Heels, because they had significantly better transition defense last Sunday than North Carolina did last night.  The fact the Wildcats actually took care of the ball and didn’t have really stupid turnovers also helped out, but yeesh, heart from the Tar Heels in coming back, but ugly play in getting down that much.

As a neutral observer – I had North Carolina as my champion, but my bracket blew up with the Davidson and Texas losses anyway – I wish the Tar Heels had come back just so we could all call it the most probable 28-point comeback of all-time while the ESPN analysts freaked out until Monday.  What would your level of surprise had been if you’d missed the game and a friend had told you, "Yeah, Bill Self’s team blew a 28-point lead in the Final Four."  1?  2, maybe?  Or just a nod and an acknowledgement that "Yeah, that makes total sense."  

A fond farewell this season to Love and Tyler Hansbrough, who actually deserved most of the hype showered upon them by the media with their play this March.  Maybe someday ESPN will be able to find a hard-working black player to thrust this love upon, but for the media’s sake – and for the sake of the game, but mainly their sake- hopefully both guys come back next year.  Hansbrough’s got closer and closer the last two seasons, so I think he’ll want to make one last run at it, while Love might benefit from just a little more polish and another season for NBA scouts to dismiss because of his eventual poor workout.

(For a slight, nowhere near perfect Love comparison, how about Luke Walton?  Both are bigger guys played in the PAC-10 and are great passers, capable of both putting their back to the basket or hitting the outside shot.   NBA GM’s underrate them, while Bill Simmons adores both of them.  Obviously Love is a little bigger and more of a post player, but as I haven’t heard a good comparison of Love to a current pro, I’m just throwing that out there as a rough gauge.)

The Notre Dame men’s basketball team had, especially when considering preseason expectations and the loss of Russell Carter and Colin Falls, a successful season.  There were obviously some flaws – random bouts of turnovers versus the press, leaving three-point shooters wide open, stagnant periods of offense – but overall, I think most fans were really pleased with the effort this team gave throughout the season.  They were fun to watch, played as a team and gave Notre Dame fans hope for next year’s season.

However, the biggest problem facing the Irish in their quest for a high seed in this year’s bracket was not their limitations in depth or lack of a true slasher.  It had nothing to do with Louisville’s press, Hasheem Thabeet’s height or how overrated Roy Hibbert was.  No, friends, the Irish’s fate of getting a five seed (and had they done better in the Big East tournament, maybe a 4 or perhaps a 3) was sealed before the season even started, when they rolled out one of the most ludicrously awful non-conference schedule you’d ever see a team have.  Right now, Ken Pomeroy has it rated as 250th in the country, putting Kevin White’s adventures in scheduling right between Utah State and Canisius.

Before the season started, I said it was embarrassing, and when it came time for Selection Sunday, the team’s non-conference RPI and SOS numbers were glaringly bad, a legitimate excuse for the Irish to fall down to a five or six seed.  Kansas State, who the Irish defeated on a neutral floor, is ranked 17th, while Baylor and Georgia Tech, two losses in the Virgin Islands Paradise Jam, are both in the high 40’s as far as RPI goes.  But other than those two teams, the best team Notre Dame played in non-conference was Brown, 151st in the country.  There’s really no excuse for that, and while the home winning streak is nice, it should come with a disclaimer that "While some of these wins are against very good Big East teams, most of them are against the dregs of the hardwood earth."

In my opinion, other than inflating your win total and giving your team confidence they can win games against really bad teams, there’s no benefit to having a weak non-conference schedule.  If you think your team is going to be really bad, then it’s a great chance to have your young guys go through a trial by fire, playing against top competition and learning what they need to strive for.  If you think your team is going to make the tournament, then good non-conference opponents is a great way to bolster your resume.  If you can’t win any of those games, then you probably weren’t good enough to make the tournament anyway, and at the very least, your non-conference RPI and SOS look good enough you get the benefit of the doubt should you end up on the bubble (see: Arizona, 2008).  
If you think your team has a chance to be very good, it’s almost essential to schedule a good non-conference slate.  It’s imperative to get your computer numbers and list of quality wins up if you want to strive for one of the top seeds, because very seldom (Saint Joseph’s, 2004?) do teams get a number one seed with weak numbers.  Perhaps even more importantly, you’re exposing your team to a variety of styles and potential match-up problems, all which prepare them better for the rigors of March Madness.  The Big East is a great proving ground for eighteen games, but it can’t hurt to supplement that training with a half dozen decent non-conference opponents.

I’d like to think these last few years are an aberration, as Kevin White and company have already made a big step for next year by getting into the Maui Invitational, which will feature North Carolina, Texas, Indiana, Alabama, Oregon, St. Joes and host Chaminade.  Even if they play Chaminade in one of the games, the Irish will get two other games against top competition on national television, great exposure for the program and a great learning experience for Ty Nash and the rest of the young guys being worked into the rotation.  That’s a good first step, but White and the athletic department should also look into scheduling several other teams on an annual basis.

UCLA- Considering the decades-old legacy of the rivalry and the fact the Bruins look like they’re going to be a top program for a long while, there’s no reason the Irish and Bruins shouldn’t be facing off every year.  In fact…

Southern Cal- Why not take a Los Angeles road trip over sometime in the early season, hitting up both the Bruins and Trojans in one fell swoop?  The greatest football rivalry in the country would bleed some of that animosity over into hoops, even if both fanbases are far more interesting in the gridiron.  When UCLA and Southern Cal come here to play, perhaps they can also make a weekend out of it, scheduling a Big Ten team and making the trip worthwhile.

Big Ten teams- A few years ago, the Irish played both Indiana and Michigan, a trend that sadly stopped the last couple seasons.  While the team may eventually face Tom Crean’s Indiana Hoosiers in Maui (one NCAA win in five seasons!  As long as he can get Dwyane Wade to come to Bloomington, great hire, Hoosiers!), what’s the reason for not facing Michigan, Indiana and/or Purdue on a yearly basis?  Why not a few neutral floor games, against Illinois in the United Center, Michigan State in the Palace or Indiana or Purdue in Conseco?  

The team doesn’t have to play world beaters every game before Big East play starts, but it would be more entertaining for the fans and much better for the team for those late November and early December games in the Joyce Center to actually be against teams that have a chance to win.  Maybe the final record will contain a few more losses, but it will also have a bunch of shiny, quality, non-conference wins, perhaps the best thing to carry into Selection Sunday.  

If you want a great example of what heavy non-conference scheduling can do for a team, even if they can’t pull out the wins, look no further than the Davidson Wildcats.  Before entering conference play, Stephen Curry and Co. took on UCLA, North Carolina, Duke, North Carolina State, also dropping games to Western Michigan and Charlotte during that span.  While they couldn’t pull off wins against any of those teams, they were more than prepared to deal with having a giant target on their back during conference play, and when they came up against teams similar to the Tar Heels and Bruins of the world in the tournament, there wasn’t any sort of confusion from the Wildcats: They knew exactly what to expect.

Granted, Davidson had to schedule heavily in the non-conference because they couldn’t get any big wins once they got into Southern league play, a problem the Irish don’t have to worry about because of the luxury of playing in the Big East.

I think this season will probably – hopefully – mark the low point of Irish non-conference scheduling.  The Maui Invitational appearance is ten steps above the field of the Paradise Jam, and as long as White and Coach Brey reach out to quality teams in the area, as well as some old friends from out west, I think the 2008-2009 Irish team will be more than prepared for the scrutiny their resume will receive on Selection Sunday and the dancing that follows.

Can I Get Something On Ice? With back-to-back wins over number one seed New Hampshire and defending national championship Michigan State Friday and Saturday night, the Notre Dame hockey team earned their first trip to the Frozen Four, also becoming the first four seed to ever make the national semifinals.  Last year the Irish were the number one team in the country going into the tournament when they fell to the Spartans in the national quarterfinals, but this year they snuck into the tournament as a four seed and destroyed New Hampshire 7-3 before slipping by Michigan State 3-1.

The Irish's opponent in the Pepsi Center a week from Thursday?  Our old friends in maize and blue - and the number one overall seed in the tournament - the Michigan Wolverines.  The Irish played the Victors twice during the regular season, losing 3-2 in a very tightly contested game in Ann Arbor and then getting blasted 5-1 in a loss at the Palace of Auburn Hills.  Because this is hockey and there's probably some sort of trickle-down effect from the incompetence of the NHL management (that, or they need to get a bunch of Nugget and Avalanche games in), the Frozen Four - which will also consist of Boston College and North Dakota - will start in ten days on the World Wide Leader.

Strangers Didn't Come Down From Old Rocky Top, Reckon They Never Will I was trying to drown my sorrows after Davidson's loss (more on that in a bit) and Ric Flair's retirement (rough night for folks in the Carolinas), and found a chance for redemption as the Notre Dame Fighting Irish women's team led Pat Summitt and Candace Parker by two at the half in their Sweet Sixteen contest last night.  Sadly, Tennessee showed why they're one of the two premier programs in the land and ran past the Irish in the second half to the tune of 74-64.  Our gals battled back and got it into single digits a couple of times, but Parker was an absolute monster, putting up Michael Beasley numbers with 34 points and 13 rebounds.  Parker is leaving Tennessee after this year, start playing for both the WNBA and most likely for this guy.

Rock Chalk Jayhawk, With Chalk Being The Key Word On one hand, when you have all four number one seeds make the Final Four, you're probably going to get two or three really good games.  On the other hand, the fact that UCLA and Memphis put on one of the worst Elite Eight games I've ever seen two years ago and Davidson's absence from the proceedings make me a little wishful for some upsets.  Never mind the fact that the idiot in your pool who just picks the top seeds to advance every year is going to win it, or that I get to hear Clark Kellogg pronounce his genius any time CBS is on, but I just feel kind of empty going into the final weekend of the tournament.

Maybe it was the fact you could have watched the second game of the second weekend (West Virginia vs. Xavier) and the last (Davidson vs. Kansas) and not really miss a whole lot, as blowouts were in full effect.  While Stanford, Texas, Western Kentucky, Louisville and Wisconsin were all competitive before the final hammer fell in the last quarter of the game, there were also some severe beatdowns handed out across the board.  The one thing that could have saved everything from Davidson knocking off Bill Self one game short of the Final Four again - with Gus Johnson calling it! - but that fell one shot short, as Stephen Curry was oddly made the point guard at the end of the game, which didn't exactly work out well.

I think the most glaring thing coming from Sunday evening was how this game did not appear to be one between a ten seed and a one seed.  Sure, the Jayhawks looked slightly larger and slightly more athletic, but they never really could exploit that advantage for any extended period of time.  Heck, Sasha Kaun - their lone, somewhat awkward looking Caucasian contributor - was their best player in that game, while Andrew Lovegold pretty much did whatever he wanted on the inside.  I thought the wheels were starting to come off for the Jayhawks after Davidson went up 51-47 and Brandon Rush air-balled a jumper, the crowd was really starting to taste the upset, but Kansas showed some resolve and got themselves up off the mat.  They played some fantastic defense on Stephen Curry - who had the first sub-30 point scoring game of his brief NCAA career - but you still had to love the backcourt of Jason Richards and Curry, who pretty much did whatever they wanted over the course of four games.  Storming The Floor has a couple of great Curry highlights from the Wisconsin win up, the first being the sweet ball fake in transition that opened him up for a pure three and the second a great stutter step in transition set up by his previous three-balling success, followed by a sick lay-up.  A few other thoughts on the tournament, although we'll get more in-depth later in the week:

*    Derrick Rose is really, really good.  As good as Oden and Durant were last year, if your NBA team of choice has a top two pick this year, I would nearly be equally as excited if both Rose and Michael Beasley are available.  Rose moves at such a fast pace while always remaining in total control, while his ability to score in the lane is already polished for a college freshman.  If he works on his three-point shooting in the offseason, he could be an outstanding guard from day one in the pros.  I would fully support the drafting of him at the top, and further on down, Chris Douglas-Roberts has the type of "old man skills" that could make him a very valuable addition to a NBA rotation.

*    After four years of J.J. Redick hype, it's nice to have two white guys that announcers love to verbally fellate over the course of the game who are actually good, so big props to Kevin Love and Tyler Hansbrough for backing up the excessive amount of love they get from anyone associated with ESPN or CBS.  If they play in the championship game, it would make SportsCenter absolutely unbearable between
Saturday evening and tip-off Monday.

*    Somewhere, right now, Earl Clark just traveled.

*    If you're a wrestling fan, look here before The Powers That Be take it down.  If you're a baseball fan, this might be the last little bit of juice you need to get ready for Opening Day, or perhaps this.  

The Notre Dame women put on a truly entertaining show last night, slaying the giant of Courtney Paris and defeating Oklahoma in a 4 vs. 5 match-up to earn another date with Pat Summitt's Lady Vols.  Senior Charel Allen dropped in 35 during the overtime win, earning herself a nice little feature story on ESPN.

The turnaround is pretty remarkable when you consider the Irish lost their last two games of the season in uninspiring fashion to St. John's and to Pittsburgh in the Big East tournament.  The road, of course, got a lot rockier as the Irish now must try to take out defending championship Tennessee, who handled the Irish by 24 earlier in the season.  The Sweet Sixteen rematch is scheduled for 9:00 Sunday night, which I'm nearly positive will be well after the last two men's Final Four tickets are handed out.

Even though Notre Dame bowed out of the tournament in the second round (I like to think of it less as a loss, more of a mercy killing so they didn't have to face the buzzsaw known as North Carolina), this weekend was a fantastic one for college hoops after last March's snoozer.  Two quick points to make before we get into the breakdown:

1)    Add "...Of the Weekend" to every heading, with the weekend consisting of Thursday at noon through Sunday evening.
2)    There is a bias against teams that took care of business in beat-down fashion, as I think it goes without saying I didn't watch that much of their games.  Teams affected by this include, to varying degrees, North Carolina, Kansas, Louisville and Texas, and a few other teams who I may have only watched one of their games.  A.J. Abrams and Ty Lawson should probably be more prominently involved here, and I apologize.

My Favorite Game...

6) Marquette vs. 3) Stanford - You could argue another half dozen games in here and you wouldn't be wrong, but I loved this match-up for a number of reasons.  You had overtime, a PAC-10 vs. Big East throwdown, two tough shots in the final few seconds and one of the most glaring contrasts of styles you'll see in a tournament game.  This game had a ton of mini-runs as each team asserted their will for brief spurts, whether that be with a Marquette guard slashing into the area not occupied by a Lopez twin while they were on the bench, or Brook or Robin simply destroying Barro, Burke and Blackledge down on the block.  

As far as Stanford looking ahead, they're playing a team very similar to Marquette in Texas, only one that's a little better at every position.  As tough as beating the Golden Eagles was on a neutral floor in California with guard Mitch Johnson logging 16 assists to only one turnover, they now have to do it on a very partisan Houston floor against a team with more talented big men.  

Runners up: Duke vs. Belmont, Western Kentucky vs. Drake, Texas A&M vs. UCLA, Davidson vs. Gonzaga/Georgetown, Rocky Top vs. Butler, Villanova vs. Clemson

Coach Smiling the Widest...

Tom Izzo, Michigan State, on Sunday evening, as he enjoyed Easter with his family, his team safely in the Sweet Sixteen, noticing "Oh my God, Memphis really is that bad at free throws."  I think this will manifest itself as an eight point lead at the under four timeout for the Tigers, at which point it quickly evaporates as Memphis trades empty or half-empty trips to the free throw line for Drew Neitzel threes.  If you're in the last five minutes of the game, have less than four fouls and Joey Dorsey is touching the ball, by all means, hack away each and every time.

Blown Opportunity...

Belmont's Rick Byrd did nearly everything right in his team's quest to upset Duke, loading up on backdoor cuts and never getting nervous when the Blue Devils - who seemed on roughly the same talent level as the Bruins - would inch out to a lead.  But his final four possessions were all disasters, starting with two empty possessions up one where it was just a simple isolation meant to run time off that ended in forced shots, none of the three Bruins in the lane taking a charge on Gerald Henderson, the debacle of an inbounds play and the final crucial error: not using his final timeout to set up at halfcourt after the long inbounds.  Belmont could have had the ball right at the middle of the floor with somewhere around 1.5 seconds left, but instead they were taking a contested, off-balance three.  Still, the game did set up an awkward story for every Blue Devil fan to tell for the next decade or two.

"And then, Gerald Henderson sliced through the lane and made the lay-up, putting us up one!"

"And this was against?..."

"Belmont.  In '08."

"...were they really good that year, or something?"

"Well, no, it was a 15 vs. 2 match-up, but still, a sweet shot!

"Oh, so surviving that was like a springboard to a national title run?"

"Well, no, we lost in the next round....but it was still awesome!

Least Surprising No-Call...

With Duke gone, at least we still have one team 90% of non-partisan fans can agree to hate.  Enjoy!

(Peter and I are going to collaborate on a "Why every basketball fan should loathe Ben Howland" treatise at some point in time, but for now, just do it on trust.)

Most Incompetent Officiating...

Overall, I thought the officials did a pretty bang-up job over the four days, with a few glaring exceptions.  First, the technical-happy ref in the Stanford/Marquette game should never see the floor for the rest of the tournament.  Secondly, and this might not be entirely the officials fault as the clock kept messing up, but last six minutes of the Purdue/Xavier game literally took nearly an hour.  Worse yet, CBS refused to switch away from the most boring part of the game, a parade of free throws and forced threes that result in a comeback maybe one out of every ten times.  Speaking of CBS...

Least Ideal Position To Be In...

CBS on Sunday afternoon as Davidson/Georgetown and Butler/Tennessee rolled down at the same time.  Thanks to the glory of Mega March Madness I could just split screen them on the Ranchero big screen and enjoy, but not an enviable position.  Do you just keep mercilessly toggling, or do you go split-screen and cause massive squinting for every household that doesn't have a wide screen or HD?  As they say, that's why they get paid the big bucks.

Favorite Team To Watch...

Probably Xavier, who faced deficits in both of their games but were so undeniably confident in their system that they never rushed, never got out of position and never seemed worried that they would just defend like crazy, get some easy points in transition and get to the foul line.  I have them to the Elite Eight or Final Four in all of my brackets after very limited watching over the course of the season, but I'm thrilled to have invested my picks in such a well-coached, balanced team.  I will be terribly sad whoever loses their game to West Virginia, as both teams have earned a special place in my hoops-loving heart.

Least Surprising Final Game...

Roy Hibbert's six points and one rebound against a team that was playing guys six inches shorter on him the entire time.  I realize it's "the system," but if your system involves having a guy that much bigger than anyone on the opposition setting high screens instead of just posting up - regardless of foul trouble - your system sucks.  Hibbert supporters will tell you how he's come so far since a freshman project with no basketball ability, and I would say it's great that a guy who seems like a good person has positioned himself to make a nice living playing basketball.  Still, the progress doesn't mean I should have every pundit and announcer telling me how great Hibbert is when he's simply not that good, justifying or ignoring his awful outputs while praising the rare twenty-point game as if he's the second coming of Hakeem.  If a student had awful grades going into high school but rallied and made himself into a B average student by graduation, you'd certainly be proud, but you wouldn't put him into any advanced classes or start writing recommendations for Ivy League schools.  There's a difference between respecting the progress Hibbert has made and using that progress to justify constantly talking him up as a NBA lottery pick when he's just not an elite player.

Favorite Announcing Crew...

Was pretty pleased with everyone, including Len Elmore (who I have an irrational dislike of, perhaps because he reminds me of Admiral Ackbar) and the Jim Nantz/Billy Packer combination (only because I really limited how much I listened to them).  Poor Gus Johnson got handed five awful games and one decent Michigan State/Pittsburgh throwdown, as every CBS executive cursed them for not switching him and Tim Brando, who did an admirable job managing the chaos in Tampa.  I found Bob Wenzel annoying because I think he was trying to sound too much like Bill Raftery, but no one stuck out as awful, other than perhaps Jay Bilas permanently entrenching Kevin Love's balls in his mouth.

But my favorite?  Verne and Bill, who got a bunch of great games and handled them all eloquently like a couple of old pros.  My favorite line of the weekend might have come towards the end, when Verne aptly pointed out near the finish of the Butler/Rocky Top game that "...Mike Green has a big smile on his face."  They properly praised great play and chided missteps, but they captured every great moment with near perfection.

Worst Screw Job...

A lot of people said this at the time of the Selection Show, but seriously, how was Butler a seven seed?  You go 29-3 and return a team that hung with Florida in the Sweet Sixteen and you get slotted as a seven, playing two road games in Birmingham against South Alabama and Tennessee?  Oklahoma might have been the worst six seed ever, but by that same measure, Butler may very well have been one of the best sevens.

(Still, when you miss as many lay-ups as the Bulldogs did in the last few minutes of that game, you deserve to go home, as sad as it is.)

Your All-Tournament Team...

G Stephen Curry, Stephen Curry- Really nothing to say here that hasn't already been said, but if he manages to take out Wisconsin, it would be the best two defenses taken out in a row since Dwyane Wade ripped apart Pittsburgh and Kentucky in back-to-back games in 2003.  You'd have to a be a pretty worthless NBA coach to not find a place for a guy who can move without the ball, handle and shoot like Curry, but hopefully he sticks around college for at least another year, because it's really a joy to watch.

G Tyrone Brazelton, Western Kentucky- 48 points, 8 rebounds and 10 assists, including a perfect dish at the end of the Drake game to set up the buzzer-beating three by Ty Rogers.  Bob Knight made the excellent point (I'm enjoying the insight of him and Doug Gottlieb most so far this tournament) that for Brazelton, who had 33 points, including going 6-of-10 from behind the arc, to not force that shot but instead deliver a great pass to Rogers was a lesson in selfless basketball.  The defense is going to get substantially stiffer (and more clingy, thuggy and cheaty) against UCLA, but the Hilltoppers have a chance if Brazelton has another solid performance.

G Jerel McNeal, Marquette- Fifty points in two games, including the tour-de-force against Stanford that involved not one but two go-ahead shots (one in regulation and one in overtime) that were eventually negated by a Lopez twin and scoring nine of the Golden Eagles' ten overtime points.  Bonus points for how awful Marquette was without him in the tournament last year.

F Gyno Pomare, San Diego- While the loss of A.J. Price certainly helped the Torero guards out, Big Gyno still had to deal with Thabeet, Adrien and Robinson essentially by himself.  42 points on 17-for-22 shooting over the course of the tournament, including a 10-for-12 outing against Connecticut that kept dragging Thabeet away from the basket in a useless attempt of contesting his money jumper.

C Brook Lopez, Stanford- Cornell obviously had no answer for him and Tom Crean also couldn't figure out the center, who went for thirty points, including the ridiculous fall-away leaner at the end of overtime that was either the most beautiful shot you've ever seen or the ugliest, luckiest toss-up in the history of basketball.  Bill Simmons, for as bad as his tournament picks are, made the great point that people are uncomfortable considering Brook and Robin as top-tier prospects because they sound like two super-hot prep school girls.  If Michelle Trachtenberg's bitchy new character on Gossip Girl was named Brook Lopez, would anyone not go "Ooo, that's a good name for a nasty high school girl?", followed by "But why isn't she Hispanic?".  

Honorable Mentions/I would have made the first-team bigger but I didn't want to be like the Big East...

G Scottie Reynolds, Villanova- Probably should be on the above team with 46 points, 12 rebounds, 7 assists and a 8-for-12 stroke from three that knocked off probably the two toughest teams anybody had in their path to the Sweet Sixteen save for maybe Davidson.

F Joe Alexander, West Virginia- For the numbers, the general bad-assness (talking shit to DeMarcus Nelson gets you a lot of credit in my book) and for making me think on Saturday afternoon against Duke, "The rest of the team could get into foul trouble, but they can still score as long as Joe's on the floor."  

F Kevin Love, UCLA- As much as the Bruins cheated at the end, Love was rather unstoppable down the stretch against A&M, banging in tough jumpers and blocking, sometimes cleanly, any Aggie that wandered into the lane.

When you go into a game against an opponent who is extremely different from you in some way - whether that be style of play, size, whatever - you have to be prepared to compensate for that in some way.  Washington State was the seventh slowest team in all the nation, and Notre Dame was apparently more than happy to just play the game at their pace.  Whether or not the coaching staff thought the Cougars would magically decide they wanted to start running after a season of not even approaching a brisk walk, I'm not sure, but there certainly wasn't any effort to impose the Fighting Irish's will onto Tony Bennett's charges.

Washington State played a great game.  They were beyond fundamentally sound on defense, staying in front of the Irish and rotating beautifully when double-teaming Luke Harangody down in the post without resorting to Ben Howland-esque clutching, grabbing and banging.  Still, the one brief period where Notre Dame started to push the pace - pressing, quick outlets, probing with a primary and secondary break - Washington State seemed uncomfortable, and the Irish snapped off a 7-0 run to slice the deficit in half.  Against a team with leaders like Low and Weaver to come through on offense and a defense that makes every shot overwhelmingly difficult, all while playing at a snail's pace, you can't expect to come back against a fourteen-point halftime deficit.

Playing in a four vs. five game, your odds of winning are 50-50, and when you go into that game attempting to play the opposition's game - especially when it's in such a stark contrast to your own - you're already putting yourself in quite a hole.  The Irish perhaps didn't believe in their usual style of play, and that lack of faith cost them dearly.  Washington State wouldn't have been caught dead in an all-out end-to-end game, but the Irish certainly could have tried to make them even slightly uncomfortable.  As John Wooden says, you can be quick but not hurrying, and that's the mantra Notre Dame should have taken into the game.  Every defensive rebound should have been fired down the floor and the transition defense of the Cougars tested, even if Jackson or McAlarney immediately pulled it back out and set up the half-court offense if nothing was there.

We'll discuss the season as a whole in the coming weeks, and while it certainly was a success compared to preseason projections with a lot of high notes and a bunch of fun, meaningful games, one can't help but feel a slightly bitter taste in their mouth.  The second round game wasn't going to be an easy one, but I'd like to know what it would have looked like if the Irish had come out running instead of playing crawl ball.  

Still, everyone but Kurz is back next season and the two games in Denver can certainly be chalked up as a major learning experience.  A few more bullets from Saturday evening's debacle:

*    You have to love the effort from Luke Harangody, hauling in 36 boards in Notre Dame's two tournament games.  Against Washington State, he was pressing like everyone else on offense, but he had the added bonus of getting double-teamed every time he caught the ball down in the post.  You'd like to see better than 3-for-17 shooting, but he did not go out with a whimper, grabbing seven offensive boards in an attempt to keep the Irish in the game.

*    That inconsistent, not-so-hot bench play that bothered the Irish most of the season?  Two - count `em, two - points registered by the reserves, courtesy of two Jonathan Peoples free throws.  They also pitched in a whopping two rebounds, had two turnovers and went 0-for-6 from the field.  It's not like anyone played great, but talk about the postseason manifesting the problems of the regular season to an absurdly high degree.

*    Can we just blame Seth Davis for this loss since he talked the Irish up so much in the pregame?

*    The Irish defense was pretty solid for the second straight game, although I think Washington State just missed a lot of open shots that let Notre Dame hang around a little longer than they would have against a more prolific offensive squad.  That being said, any time they needed a bucket, Weaver or Low was there to knock down a tough jumper or find a wide open big man for an easy score.  Here's hoping K-Mac and Tory are doing that next year.

*    While it's never, ever a good thing to lose when you do it by twenty points, it ends your season, keeps you one game short of the Sweet Sixteen and puts your whole fanbase into a mini-depression, holy f*ck is North Carolina mowing people down.  If you want to see how a team speeds Washington State up and makes them uncomfortable, I'm thinking you might get a peak of that on Thursday night.  Hopefully Hansbrough sticks around for his senior year and we can see him take on Harangody.

As I said, full season retrospective in the coming weeks, but the March Madness opening weekend review will be up soon as well.  It will feature, among many other things:

The least surprising no-call of the weekend!

The least surprising second round "upset" of the weekend!

The least surprising "6 point, 1 rebound" performance of the weekend!

And of course, tributes to Stephen Curry, the Lopez twins, Memphis' foul shooting, Butler and Drake leaving us far too early, Doug Gottlieb, Bobby Knight, Gus Johnson, DirecTV Mega March Madness and so much more.  

Luke Winn's SI.com blog has a piece up on Washington State's defense, which is apparently some sort of system that really just looks like regular man-to-man defense with a little more sagging off to help out on penetration and double-teams.  I really don't think that this system deserves any sort of special post, or it's just possible my friends and I who looked at it and gained nothing don't understand complicated man-to-man defensive techniques.

Tip off is promptly at 6:40, right in the middle of what should be a fantastic day of basketball.  

Go Irish, Beat Cougars.

Irish fans can all take a deep breath and relax now that they're into the second round, and today's games are hopefully are a little more entertaining than yesterday's, which to their credit, at least had one interesting game per session.  A few March Madness tidbits to get you happy.  First, a story on Gus Johnson:

A wonderful piece from Card Chronicle:

And finally, let's class the CBS music up a bit: