dcole023
Hey, been a while. You going to have the tournament contest? You know I like to win stuff.
To get ready for the tournament, are there five teams out there to keep an eye on?
Thanks, and you still talk too much.
DC -
Great as always to hear from you, and yes, we know you like to win stuff.
Our contest season will get its start with 2017's first big event, March Madness. We will again host the "First-Out, Last-In" Challenge that rewards players for picking the first No. 1 seed to lose and the double-digit seed that makes the longest stay.
Good times.
In preparation of that premise, let's review five teams to watch over the next nine days before the bracket is revealed as potential 1 seeds and five teams that could make some noise as double-digit seeds.
Top dogs
1. UNC. Tough week for the Heels, with a dreadful performance against the defensive-minded Virginia Cavaliers, who held UNC to 43 points earlier this week, and a date with Duke Saturday. Still, this is a deep and offensively adept group. Check them out.
2. Kansas. The most complete team in the country in our view. Great play at the point with Frank Mason and Josh Jackson is a match-up nightmare. Keep an eye on the lack of interior depth and see if that gives you concern.
3. Gonzaga. Still in line for a potential No. 1 seed even with the stumble against BYU. When watching the Zags, ask yourself how they match-up with more athletic players at various positions and try to spotlight their weakest points. (This will help when the bracket is release.)
4. UCLA. We pegged UCLA as a Final Four team in the preseason. (Check it out here, but please forget that we also had Duke as a Final Four team, too. And Xavier. http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/sports/columns/story/2016/nov/11/5--10-friday-mailbag-election-college-football-playoff-college-hoops-and-ut-football/397272/) The biggest concern for this fast-paced bunch that can score in every way possible is whether their star point guard's dad can keep his mouth shut. Ah, youth sports, ain't they beautiful.
5. Villanova. The defending champs are experienced, but watch their perimeter play with a keen eye. Yes, the top end of talent is special, but is there enough of it?
Underdogs (some potential double-digit seeds to keep an eye)
1. The SoCon champ. There are several teams - ETSU, UNCG, heck even UTC if the Mocs can get their stuff together - that can emerge from Asheville with enough talent to survive the opening weekend of the Big Dance.
2. Princeton. Ah yes, the wicked smart kids from the wicked hard Ivy League. We all remember the old-school near-miss that was then-16-seeded Princeton almost making history by beating then-1-seeded Georgetown. The Tigers are the frontrunners for the Ivy Leage bid, and with the right match-up could present a problem.
3. Xavier. Shut it Spy, yes we had them as a preseason hot shot. Well, the X-men have been an in-season roughshod, going 18-13 so far. Still, there's a lot to like about the roster, but lots of questions about the cohesiveness. (Sound familiar UTC fabns?)
4. USC. The Trojans have the potential to play with anyone, but are amazingly schizophrenic. USC beat UCLA by seven at home and lost by 30-plus at the Bruins. Still, a season playing in the difficult Pac-12 could give the Trojans a nice chance to make a double-digit seed run.
5. MTSU. Yes, the Raiders crashed almost everyone's bracket last year with a big upset of Michigan State, but at 26-4, this bunch has handled the expectations and taken care of BID-ness. (That may be the single best use of BID-ness ever.)
Great question and keep an eye out from the bracket challenge starting Monday, March 13.
Tennessee's Jaime Nared (31) shoots ahead of Boise State's Kayla Reinhart (42) in a game in Knoxville. The Lady Vols are hot going into the SEC tournament.From Sally
I have never written to your Friday column but after hearing you talk on the radio I want to hear your thoughts on when will Tennessee fire Holly Warlick? She is wrecking everything Coach Summitt built. Is there any chance she could get fired this year and who would be the best replacement?
Sally -
There is a ton of unrest among longtime Lady Vols basketball fans, and that is understandable.
After Thursday's embarrassing first-round loss to perennial SEC bottom-feeder Alabama, the Lady Vols are puzzling.
There is enough talent there to win at South Carolina and at Mississippi State when each of those were ranked in the top five. There's enough disinterest to lose three consecutive games to Alabama, which had never beaten Tennessee before this current streak. There's an incoming recruiting class with enough talent to turn the tables as quickly as they walk on campus. There's enough uneasy, though, to wonder if Warlick and her staff has the ability to discipline and direct that talent in a direction befitting the Lady Vols' tradition.
We do know this: Warlick has to be on the hottest seat in women's basketball next year, period.
What is happening right now is unacceptable for a brand that was the face of the sport, and yes, that brand was fashioned by Pat Summitt, who was the original face of the modern-era of women's college hoops. (And in some ways the face of the modern-era of women's college sports.)
Sadly, that face is gone.
But if Warlick doesn't right the ship, that legacy will only be remembered in history books rather than scorebooks. Ask UCLA after Wooden what happens when you let proteges watch as the tapestry of dominance unravels. It's something you can never undo.
The damage may be done, already, who knows. But we have to believe that Warlick has one more season at most to stop the bleeding. As for who could be next, well, we may be an educated man, we can't speak intelligently about the packing habits of Private Santiago or the hit names on the women's basketball coaching carousel.
Out of curiosity, we checked the Miss. State website for the bio of Vic Schaefer, who has resurrected the Bulldogs, we saw this amazing detail from HailState.com: Over the last three seasons, MSU has drawn over 209,000 fans, more than the previous 10 seasons combined, and claimed 15 of the program's all-time Top 20 attendance numbers. State set the record last season when 10,626 attended the Jan. 24 contest against No. 2 South Carolina. That total notched the largest women's basketball crowd ever in the state of Mississippi, and it ranked fourth all-time in Humphrey Coliseum history.
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) talks with head coach Chip Kelly during the second half of an NFL football game against the Seattle Seahawks in Santa Clara, Calif., Sunday, Jan. 1, 2017. (AP Photo/Tony Avelar) From Skip -
Hey man, love the show and thanks for the work distraction that is the 5-at-10.
Would you sign Colin Kaepernick now that he's not going to protest any more, and should that be something potential NFL GMs look at? Also, if you had to grade the Kaepernick flag protest, what would you give it?
Thanks and keep up the good work.
Skip -
NFL GMs have to look at everything about every person they may draft or sign.
All intel is valuable. Personal. Private. Professional. All of it.
That's true about the videographer and it can't be measured in importance for a guy you potentially are giving tens of millions of dollars to be the face of of your franchise.
We would not be willing to spend $14-plus million annually on Colin Kaepernick because we don't believe he's going to be a top-teir NFL starter ever again. The protest thing is not part of that belief as much as accuracy and questions about durability and consistency. Look at his resume beyond the controversy:
Winning percentage: He's 28-30 and was 1-10 last year as a starter. He was 17-6 as a starter in 2012-13 when the 49ers had arguably the best roster in the NFL. He's 3-16 the last two years when the 49ers have had arguably the worst roster in the NFL.
Yes, some of that has to do with the leadership miscues made in San Fran, and those are not Kaepernick's fault. It also has plenty to do with pieces around him, and that take away tells us that he's not a quarterback that lifts average talent as much as one that helps superior talent.
Maybe that could work if Denver or Houston - teams with talented rosters but quarterback black holes - were interested, but neither can afford the type of price Kaepernick is going to expect on the free agent market.
He's also under 60 percent completion percent for his career despite a less than thrilling 7.3 yards per attempt. The disaster by the Bay that has become the 49ers is certainly not all on Kaepernick. By no means. But of the veteran QBs out there who seem to be available, we'd kick the tires or trading for a Cousins or a Garappolo or even free agents such as Mike Glennon , Brian Hoyer and Tony Romo (when he gets released).
As for his protest, grade-wise.
For impact, it gets a strong A+. Man, we're pretty sure there has not been a sports protest with this much impact by an individual since Ali or even the 1968 Olympics.
For effectiveness, we'll give Kaepernick a B. Not sure it made as much difference as it did splash, but Kaep certainly gets credit for his donations of time and money in addition to gestures to the cause.
For planning, we'll go D. We loved the fact that Kaepernick did not announce it not eh front-end and let it happen through questions. But he undercut his argument with silly gestures like wearing a pro-Castro T-shirt to an interview and olice-pig socks to practice. (Hey, wear what you want, but when you decide to be the face of a protest, everything matters. And wearing the image of a dictator who has committed may be the most renown civil-rights criminal of the last half century in the Western hemisphere or taking petty, insulting pot shots at the police while you are looking to call attention to civil rights and police injustices is just dumb.) Now, the fact that he made the very nonsensical decision not to vote makes it even more puzzling. And hollow.
As for the outcome of this, well, we certainly talked at length about the issue, so for that, the protest helped shape discourse, which should be goal of every protest.
And as we move forward, count us among the camp wondering about the leaks that the protests are done as he looks for a new team. He says he's doing it because he believes he got the word out. OK.
But if that's the case, why not end the protest the same you started it, by quietly standing on the sideline next season for whomever you play with?
Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland plays on the 11th hole, in round one of the Mexico Championship at Chapultepec Golf Club in Mexico City, Thursday, March 2, 2017. All but one of the world's top 50 golfers are contesting the World Golf Championship PGA event, which this year relocated to Mexico City from the Trump National Doral Resort in Florida. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) From Scott
Loved the golf rules piece this week, and agree with you that there are a lot of interesting ideas in there.
My buddies and I like to throw out sports rules we'd like to see. Some are serious like eliminating the kickoff and some are silly like a five-point spot on the basketball court that if you shoot from there it would be worth five points.
If there were three rules you could change in sports, where would you start?
Thanks for the 5-at-10, we read it every day.
Scott -
Great question, and one that we ran out of time with.
We're going to come back with some rules we think would help each individual sport the most, but right now we're going to start with the three rules we think should be looked at right away:
1. College football down even without contact. That's not a tackle it's a slip.
2. We'd laser-orient the strike zone in MLB. Why this hasn't happened is a sad testament to baseball's backward ways. Is there another monster business out there that is blindly ignoring technological advances than baseball?
3. Enforce traveling in the NBA. This is not a change in rule as much as approach but needs to happen.
More to come.
Former NBA player Allen Iverson, left, shows his jersey as he poses with entertainer Ice Cube after they announced the launch of the BIG3, a new 3-on-3 professional basketball league, in New York, Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2017. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews) From Stewwie
Jay, for the bag, what are your thoughts on Ice Cube's new 3-on-3 league? Will you watch if it's televised? Secondly, let's pretend we have an all-timers tourney in this league. What 3 players would you pick for these teams and who would win this tourney? (Players are in their prime for the tourney and can't be on more than one team in this tourney. Any player is eligible if he played at least one game for that team in the NBA.) Bracket: Lakers vs. Spurs, Heat vs. Rockets, Celtics vs. Bulls, Sixers vs. Knicks.
Stewwie -
Love this question on so many fronts.
We are intrigued by the idea. We also are intrigued by the spring football in West Virginia idea.
As for the basketball premise, we watched a fair amount of that summer tournament in which pick-up teams played for $1 million. It was entertaining. So yes, we'll give Cube's idea a roll and see where it turns up.
As for the tournament, what a great premise. Our picks may surprise folks but you have to think about match-ups, positions and who has better 3-on-3 skills rather than team skills, hence the thought of Robinson over Duncan for the Spurs per se.
Lakers (Magic, Kobe, Kareem) vs. Spurs (David Robinson, George Gervin and Kawhi Leonard). The Spurs make this closer than expected because Gervin can finger roll, but the top-seeded Lakers have two of the five most unstoppable matchups in the draw with Kobe on the wing and Jabbar on the block. Lakers advance.
Heat (LeBron, Shaq, Wade) vs. Rockets (Harden, Olajuwon). Heat are sneaky awesome, since Shaq didn't make the Lakers 5 and the Cavs are not in it. Heat advance.
Celtics (Bird, McHale, Tony Archibald) vs. Bulls (Jordan and whomever else). Yes, MJ is great and but at the height of the powers of Bird and McHale, would he be enough. This is the best first-round game by far, especially since it features likely the two guys in history we'd want with the ball in their hands with game on the line in Bird and MJ. We think McHale would be the difference as the best Chicago big man ever is who, Artis Gilmore? Celtics advance.
Sixers (Dr. J, Moses Malone, Allen Iverson) vs. Knicks (Bernard King, Clyde Frazier, Patrick Ewing). Great match-ups across the board here, and we'd want Chuck Barkley doing play-by-play and lamenting that he didn't make it. Iverson is going to be a tough match-up for anyone in this draw to guard. We'll go with the 76ers here.
Semis - Lakers vs. Heat. We'd love to see who prevails in the Magic vs. LeBron (who actually is Magic 2.0) but the difference for us here is that Kareen is more polished on the offensive side and Kobe at the apex of his powers is way better than Wade ever was. Lakers advance.
Celtics vs. 76ers. In some ways the presence of Tiny is best served in this match-up against A.I. We'll go with Bird and Co. again, because simply put in a 3-on-3 setting, Bird is going to be near impossible to stop.
Which leaves us with the 1980s dream match-up with Lakers-Celtics, and simply put, can you image the Showtime Lakers with an assassin like Kobe on the wing.
Lakers win it all.
Great question.