NCAA tournament
The ball has been tipped. The NCAA tournament started last night with Florida Gulf Coast fairly crushing Farleigh Dickinson (Angie was way, Way, WAY more impressive) and Wichita State pushing it was way past oversized and under-motivated Vandy.
We had an interesting conversation around these parts yesterday about the interest in the tournament, and maybe Jomo had a fair point about the indifference being regional. (It will be interesting to see how many people are in your various office pools. In fact, that’s your homework this week: Find out how many people were in whatever pool you’re in compared to last year. Deal? Deal.)
Vandy’s loss capped an inexplicable year for a team that started the season ranked in the top 20. (To be fair, the Shockers were also a preseason top-20 team who found themselves in the play-in game because of an injury-filled regular season. Look out Arizona. Seriously.)
Vandy’s implosion and underachievement should be placed firmly on the plate of coach Kevin Stallings. We have a very simple defining line between coach coaching and bad coaching: Is the game product better or worse than the team’s parts?
It’s a simple question, and by that definition, Stallings quite simply stole his pay check this year. This Vandy team was far more talented than the final result.
In truth, Stallings’ performance would look far worse if he was not in the same conference as LSU coach Johnny Jones. (Using the above good coaching question about “is the game product better or worse than the team’s parts” Johnny Jones was historically bad this year. He was like the bizarro coaching version Oscar Robertson’s season in which he averaged a triple-double. Jones was the 1927 Yankees of bad coaching.)
Stallings has been at Vandy for a long time, and has made the Commodores a consistent NCAA tournament team. Getting in the dance this year – even in the play-in game – likely saved his job for at least one more year.
That said, if we were running the Commodores athletic department, we’d be watching UTC very closely this weekend and into next season. In fact, if UTC beats Indiana, Matt McCall’s name will zoom up short lists. And if we were Vandy, we’d be very eager to talk to him (his extensive SEC background working with Billy Donovan at Florida is a huge plus for any SEC opening in our view).
It’s the Catch-22 facing UTC athletics and other smaller-to-mid-sized programs. You try to find the next big thing, and when you do, the next big-time program scopes them up. UTC’s collection of coaches right now is off the charts for a program its size – and that’s an extreme testament to AD David Blackburn specifically and the program in general – but keeping McCall longterm is a pipe dream.
If UTC beats Indiana on Thursday, McCall could be a guy that gets a hard look from some of the power programs looking to make a change.
Here’s saying that if McCall got these Mocs a 12 seed, he’d have had parlayed the talent at Vandy and LSU into a potential Elite Eight run. Think of it this way: Archie Miller at Dayton is always the hottest name on the board, and McCall went to Miller’s place and won. Yes, one game does not make a resume, but if Miller is the brightest star of the moment, here’s believing that McCall will be near the top of that list sooner rather than later.
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Ooltewah update
The rape case from the Ooltewah High School boys basketball team’s trip last December has had tsunami-sized ripple effects.
In a lot of ways it was the emotional lightning rod that triggered the downfall of the school superintendent. It has awoken a lot of our community who assumed that the school system was rolling right along, hitting the occasional speed bump.
It also changed the lives of roughly a dozen families directly involved in this.
The main perpetrator of the crime, however, will face his day in court in the juvenile system, according to the Sevier County judge who ruled on this matter Tuesday.
Man, that’s a difficult decision to make because there’s a lot of weight on each side of that argument. First, there’s the fine line of age. The accused attacker was 17 when the crimes were committed and has since turned 18.
There were multiple victims, and at least three of them testified Tuesday, and the victim that was hurt to the point of needing surgery was the last among them. That shows these acts were premeditated and serial in nature.
On the other side, the attacker has cooperated fully with authorities and shown remorse, according to a youth pastor in Sevierville who has worked with him.
Understandably, some of the family of the victims were upset by this ruling and believe the accused got a very lenient decision. (And the difference between serving time for this in the juvenile system rather than the adult criminal system is huge.)
We have all shared views and vitriol about a lot of this, and how it affects the school system as a whole. This is most real and raw court scenes so far of how bad this nightmare truly is.
(Side notes: Reading the story, and TFP education ace Kendi Anderson is going to win a lot of awards for her coverage of this, wait and see, some of the quotes from the adults are simply mind-blowing in their stupidity.
First, Detective Rodney Burns is a buffoon. Plain and simple. After listening to him in court, we’re pretty sure he’d have a hard time putting together clues to find his butt with either hand.
Secondly, the defendant’s attorney, Jeff Stern, may have said arguably the single most stupid thing in the history of the Tennessee legal system. According to the TFP story, Stern said the hazing was “just meant to be a welcoming of sorts.” Say what? These kids locked their bedroom doors during the trip because they were scared of the attackers, who instituted something called “freshmen racks” after joining the basketball team after football season. “A welcoming of sorts” huh? Well, Mr. Stern please be sure to never invite us over if that’s your idea of a welcoming of any sort.)
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Primaries
Again, we got a little lengthy.
Sorry.
We’ll try to wrap this up pretty quickly.
The primaries in five states Tuesday played out about how we expected.
Kasich won his home state of Ohio and The Donald won the other four.
Clinton won all five on the Democrats side. She’s all-but-in now, even with some of the West Coast states on the horizon. In fact, her narrative has already turned to attacking Trump, a smart move considering she doesn’t really have to worry about Bernie Sanders anymore.
As for the GOP, the Trump train continues to pick up speed, and he crushed Rubio in Rubio’s home state of Florida, causing the Sunshine State senator to suspend his campaign.
Man, the demise of Marco Rubio is going to be an interesting political science study for years to come. He was poised to be the guy and he completely unraveled.
And with that, we are left with Trump, Kasich and Ted Cruz, and there’s no real way to envision either of the latter two stopping Trump at this point.
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This and that
– Gang, remember the two NCAA tournament offerings we have. There’s the March to the Madness: First-Out, Last-In Challenge in which you try to pick the first No. 1 seed to fall and the last double-digit seed left in the dance. There’s also a bracket challenge with Press Row and ESPN 105.1. Go to espn.com and log into the bracket center. The group is ESPN Chattanooga and the password is press row. Good luck.
– NCAA tournament update: President Obama has Kansas over UNC in his bracket. That is all.
– Arnold Palmer is skipping the opening tee shot at this year’s Masters. It may not seem like a big deal, but watching Arnie, Jack and Gary Player hit ceremonial drives into the Thursday morning light from that first tee box at Augusta National is a true sports memory.
– We think this is an amazing and novel idea from Jay Bilas. (And here’s a view from a player on a mid-major women’s team echoing those sentiments.) It’s a suggestion to have the best 68 teams in the country ranked before the start of all conference tournaments. As teams outside of that 68 win conference tournaments, then you start deleting from the bottom. This would put a whole lot more value back into the regular season, a problem that has plagued the sport for a good while now. It also would reward a team like UTC for three months of excellence rather than potentially punish them for a bad day in March. Love this idea.
– This is an interesting theory from NFL analyst Chris Collinsworth, who believes the L.A. Rams are going to make a hard push to trade for the Titans’ No. 1 overall pick and draft Carson Wentz. As a side note on that, the Gruden QB Camp show with Jon Gruden and NFL quarterback prospects (and arguably the best non-30-for-30 programming in ESPN) had Wentz on earlier this week. Gruden’s verdict: Wentz is the “most NFL-ready quarterback we’ve seen in years.” Wow. (Which means it’s only fitting that someone slides in and snatches him before Cleveland picks at No. 2. Man it has to stink to be a Cleveland fan.)
– Rick Pitino was on Mike & Mike on Tuesday and sounded like an arrogant jackwagon. His answers – he blames all of this on the grad assistants he says were in charge of recruiting trips – were at best disingenuous and at worst flat-out BS. Does anyone really believe that uber-successful coaches such as Pitino or Saban or Coach K or you name it really have nothing to do with the recruiting process and the weekend trips? Really. And can anyone even remotely believe those guys are not dialed into the details of their programs that they would be unaware of strippers and hookers in the athletic dorm? (And the fact that Pitino even took a shot at Kentucky in one of his answers is so smarmy its beyond laughable to downright sickening.) I’ve lost more respect for Pitino in the handling of this scandal than I did for the scandal itself.
– Also of note, former ESPN employee and renowned ESPN hater Bill Simmons was less than impressed with the Mike & Mike questioning Tuesday.Simmons took to Twitter and, dude is funny, with some pointed sarcasm about the interview with Pitino.
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Today’s question
OK, we have not really gotten into the Goose Goosage gasbag diatribes.
Dude has blown a ton of hot air about the young kids not respecting the game and flipping bats and pretty much yelling at all of today’s sports stars to turn down their music and get off his lawn.
He also has conveniently forgotten that he was a pretty good size rebel and hardly ‘respected’ the game when he reportedly was falling asleep in the bullpen and trying to pick up chicks in the middle innings.
He even unloaded a “we don’t want a bunch of Cam Newtons” in our game. Yes, he was talking about the dabbing and the celebrations, and rightly or wrongly some will put a racist spin on that quote. (Here’s the latest on Goose.)
In truth, baseball needs more personality and flair. Bryce Harper, one of the game’s best young players, said as much recently.
So here’s our question: Do you agree with Goose and why or why not.