WHO WILL WIN THE BASKET-BALL MATCHES?
By John Doyle, Sports Writer to Be
Fighting a cold and unable to sleep, there's no better time than right now to update the old blog.
--Caps off to anyone (and you know who you are) who picked Xavier to make the Elite Eight. The fascinating thing about Xavier's success is how good it makes St. Joseph's look. St. Joe's enters the Elite Eight undefeated save for one loss--to a team that also made the Elite Eight. Perhaps I should change my bracket . . .
--But I still have Oklahoma State as my eventual champion. Duke is still alive in my Final Four (Gonzaga and Maryland are my others). I believe the Cowboys are the toughest team in the tournament, and should prevail in tomorrow's regional championship. But oh, wouldn't a St. Joe's-Xavier final be great? It ain't gonna happen, but it is nice to dream that maybe, just maybe, the conglomerate universities could be shut out for just one year.
--The days of Magic and Bird battling it out on the University of Utah's gymnasium, or Jim Valvano looking for someone to hug on the floor of the famous Pit on the campus of the University of New Mexico are long gone. The NCAA tournament has moved, for the most part, for the most part, from the intimate, on-campus gyms, to the spacious and antiseptic arenas and domes. Still, the NCAA insists on clinging to the ideal that these major sporting events are still held on "campus" sites, no matter how tacky it appears. Does the NCAA really think it's fooling anyone by slapping "Arizona State University" on the floor of America West Arena, where the colors of the lanes and sidelines are obviously those of the NBA's Phoenix Suns? Or how about the floor at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta with a tiny "GT" painted near the sidelines, as if we're supposed to think that this floor--with the orange sherbet lanes--is the home floor of the Yellowjackets?
It reached a particularly absurd level last year when the first- and-second rounds were held in Boston's Fleet Center. The games were played on the Fleet's legendary parquet floor, which is the home of the Boston Celtics. The Celtics' logo was replaced with an NCAA logo, but everything else about the floor was recognizable, save for a completely out-of-place Boston College logo placed just north of the lane. Since when does BC wear green? BC was the official "host" of the tournament, but tacking the BC logo on the Celtics' parquet was not fooling anyone. I am not suggesting the tournament should have been held at BC's Silvio O. Conte Forum, but how much trouble would it have been to load up the BC floor from the Conte and truck it over to the Fleet?
--Over to pucks: Looking forward to regional action at the Verizon tomorrow afternoon (I notice the V re-painted the ice to remove all advertising and references to the Manchester Monarchs--why can't the basketball tournament organizers do the same to their wooden floor?) BC plays Niagara in game one followed by Michigan and UNH. I would love to see UNH advance, but I do not think their team this year has the depth that last year's team (which lost to Minnesota in the National Final) had.
My prediction of Maine failing to get out of the Northeast region almost came true this afternoon, and things were looking pretty good when Harvard had a three-goal lead in the third in Albany. But those damn Black Bears.
Maine wins it 5-4 and are looking a lot better tonight than the team that struggled to beat BU and UMass at the Fleet Center a week ago.
--Tony Kornheiser left his ESPN radio show today. Not that I ever got to listen to it--I work during the day and there is no ESPN Radio affiliate near where I live--but it was a great show and would be missed. His show was great because he limited his interviews to fellow sportswriters and broadcasters--no athletes. Of course I want to hear what athletes have to say, but it was refreshing that there was one small coner of the media--Kornheiser's show--that not only refused to interview self-serving athletes and their egos, they were actually proud of that fact.
It is ironic that Kornheiser is a celebrity judge on the ESPN reality show "Dream Job." If anyone had a "dream job," it was Kornheiser--host of his own daily radio and television show in addition to writing a column for the Washington Post. In addition to that, he rarely interviews atheltes for any of his media nor does he attend many sporting events in person.
--I was on the road this week at a college fair in Connecticut. Just like when the Red Sox were in the playoffs during the fall college fair season, this one emptied out pretty quick as soon as tip-off of the UConn-Vanderbilt game approached. Sweet.
On the way back to New Hampshire this afternoon, I got a rare chance to listen to the Jim Rome show. He announced the next stop on his famed World Tour will be Albuquerque, May 15th at the Journal Pavilion. I of course will not be able to attend but it was great to hear Romey talk about Albuquerque and my old station, 610 The Sports Animal.
--Looking for a funny, non-offensive website to browse? If you have a few minutes,
click here. Trust me, it's not offensive.
John Doyle is nursing a cold. Look for "Save John" to be painted on the Hampton Beach water tower sometime this weekend.
The Michigan Wolverines Come to Manch-Vegas
Time to take a deep breath as March Madness rolls along . . .
By John Doyle, Sports Writer to Be
--Bracket is shot to hell. And not just because Kentucky, Gonzaga and Stanford are out. I just pick too many damn first-round upsets, and this year there were only four. Then I played it relatively safe in the second round, and that is where it all went downhill. My eventual national champion, Oklahoma State, is still alive, but that is about all I have going for me right now. I currently stand in last place in the
ECSN pool and I shudder to think where I stand in the Sportswriter to Be pool.
Last week I told Mike "Mut Man" Mutnansky that I fill out brackets in my sleep. Fact is, I do not do it well.
--Had a great time in Boston Friday night for the Hockey East semifinals. Would have been nice to see UNH win their third straight HE tournament title, but the night belonged to the Black Bears and the Minutemen.
Maine wins it all the next night, 2-1 in Triple OT.
The NCAA hockey bracket is out. UNH is playing Michigan at the Verizon Wireless arena in Manchester, and it will be one-and-done for the 'Cats. While I will not be filling out a full bracket for this one, I will go with a Frozen Four of North Dakota, Minnesota,
Boston College and a dark horse, Wisconsin. I cannot go with Maine out of the East, given that despite winning the HE over the weekend, they only managed to put the puck in the net thrice in almost nine periods against Boston University and UMass, two non-tournament teams. That does not play in the Big Dance, baby. Minnesota over Boston College in an all-maroon-and-gold final, with the Gophers winning it all for the third straight year, which is exactly as I predicted before the season began. Perhaps that will save me from my ignominious performance in the Men's hoop bracket.
--
Merrimack makes it two in a row in New Hampshire hoops, with a 78-70 win over Salem in the final last Saturday at the Whittemore Center. I was scolded (mildly) on the air Saturday morning by Mut Man and "The Baseball Benny" for claiming that Merrimack "sneaked" into the championship game, but let us look at it this way. When you have two teams in the state, one of which is undefeated and the other is undefeated save for one loss against the undefeated team, which came in front of a sold-out crowd in a college gym, then I would say that if any team other than those two makes it to the championship game, they sneaked in. Same goes for Salem.
All in all, it was a tight, crisp game. Both teams ran the floor well and hit their shots. In the second half, Salem started to slip away, perhaps as a result of the "championship fatigue" I claimed might set in. The Devils won the state hockey championship in the very same building earlier that week, then won two exciting, grueling games in the quarter- and semifinals of the basketball tournament. While what happens on the hockey rink should have no bearing on what happens on the basketball court, there is no question that the energy generated by the hockey team's win (an overtime thriller against Manchester Memorial) carried over into the daily lives of Salem High School's students, and, consequently, their basketball team. Perhaps four big wins in seven days would have been just too much for Salem to handle.
Salem's demise was solidified when, with three minutes left and down by ten, they started heaving desparation threes as if there were only a minute remaining on the clock. Then, with two minutes left and Merrimack up twelve, the Merrimack student section filed down behind the net where they would, in an orderly fashion, storm the court. I thought that was a little premature on the part of the Tomahawk fans, and it would have been great to see Salem come back at that point and make the Merrimack fans re-take their seats.
Although I have long been an advocate of holding the state championship basketball game in the Lundholm Gymnasium instead of the cavernous Whittemore Center, I will say that
the atmosphere at the Whitt was surprisingly appropriate for the championship game. A larger-than-expected crowd showed up, and although the end zones were still empty, the crowd was behind the hockey boards, the old, lame UNH logo was on the floor and the place was adorned with hockey banners, everyone had a good time and made a lot of noise.
John Doyle thinks Michigan's hockey helmets look stupid
