we don't have a 2008 college basketball thread

teams i like this year in no order

tenn
unc
ucla
louisville
clemson
uconn
stanford
villanova
indiana
texas

would anyone be interested in doing an ilx bracket thing this year?

that k-state team is so weird. beasley and walker are both insane nba prospects, and both are basically added to last year's team (since walker missed most of last season) and yet...the team isn't any better than it was last season. They did lose their top scorers, but beasley and walker more than make up for it, points-wise. I mean, they combined for 75 points againt Baylor they STILL lost. Also, Frank Martin looks completely nuts.

Tyler Hansbrough is one of those players that will probably be just OK in the pros, but the dude is completely dominant in the college game. I never really want to see NC win, but I like this guy as the Duke fans HATE HIM with a passion similar to how I despise the Blue Devils.

I don't think the Hoosiers will win it all, but I would at least like to be the team to send Duke home or beat the Tarheels, as they did spoil a couple of Dean Smith's best clubs.

Tennessee is very deep. They don't have the best five or anything, but they don't lose much at all going to the bench. I think the Vols will have to be shooting a hot three to knock of the teams that have all of the inside the paint power like UCLA or NC.

I suppose I'll be rooting for UCLA in the tournament this year. Kevin Love is a local kid. He attended high school about a mile from my house. Because my heart belongs to the PAC-10, I'll be rooting for Stanford, too.

When it comes to sports teams, I'm as provincial as they come. The closer a team is to my home, the better the chance I'll root for it.

Oh yeah, as long as Duke survives I'll have another dog in this fight, since they nabbed Kyle Singler, another Oregon standout. But it won't feel quite right to be on Duke's side. It just won't.

Yeah, it's been a bad stretch, but I think KSU is better than you guys are letting on here. Did you watch the KU game last month? KU isn't the best team ever but Beasley was a beast; and again a few weeks back against Mizzou. I think they'll get their act together and make a run at the Sweet 16---but I guess we'll see tonight how good they really are.

i hope that ku smashes k-state tonight, but ku looked beyond awful against okie state. k-state seems really inconsistent, though they'll probably be really up for the game.

i wanted tyrese rice to at least get 50 today ;(

i agree w/ earlnash on basically all of his points up there

man, all that conference switching a few years back with conference usa, the big east and the acc was like the worst idea ever. especially since it left memphis as a national power in a sub-mid major conference.

also having to hear commentators gush about how "deep" the big east is

also so boring!! like i'm always so ;( when i turn on espn and it's like pitt v. marquette or syracuse v. gtown or marquette v. gtown etc etc

louisville and uconn are the only two teams i like to watch from the big east, mostly because of the dude sosa from louisville. and uconn's got ballers

yeah, jim calhoun always gets the badass recruits, even if they don't always gel perfectly

kelvin sampson needs to get some tips from him before getting his next job

i have watched maybe one college game all year. i did watch some illinois high school tourney games and there's a 6'10" sophomore at north lawndale high school in chicago that could have been playing d2 ball right now. and there's a kid from peoria manual that was a lights-out shooter but i think he might be too small, i doubt if he was 5'10".

great games.

This thread should be hotting up in a week or so. Fun times.

indiana kinda fucked

i was surprised to see how low they were seeded, considering they were ranked. maybe a compromise punishment for recruiting violations is setting them up to get crunched by unc in the second round?

Indiana has not been playing that great since Sampson left, with the odd loss to Minnesota they are 3-3 under Dakich. The Hoosiers have just been turning the ball over too many times, shooting too many ill-advised threes, not pushing the ball inside to DJ White as much as they should and their perimeter defense has been a bit meh as Michigan St. and Penn St. shot them out of the building on the three point line.

I don't think it is that bad a seeding as they are down to lower part of the top 25. You got to beat whoever you have to play and Arkansas is no slouch in the first round. Although the Razorbacks don't play that 40 minutes of hell kind of defense that they did back in the early 90s. Now that was a club that teams REALLY did not want to have to play.

The sad thing is that this Indiana team could have been fantastic considering that Ewing Jr. took off to Georgetown and Robert Vader went to UAB after Mike Davis left. If you put those two in the front line with White and Eric Gordon and that would have been a major powerhouse.

Big East basketball is by far the most fugly to watch and it has been that way for years. It is hard to tell how good any of the clubs are but U-Conn, who has been remarkably consistent but not afraid of playing ugly, as they win all of their games like 61 to 58. Georgetown has great talent, but they keep the games so low scoring, I think lesser teams can hang around and beat them in the end.

I still have a hard time thinking of Louisville as a "big east" team. There is just something not right about Louisville being in the Big East and Boston College being in the ACC. That just does not compute.

Saint Louis came up the other day in a basketball conversation. Neither of us knew what conference they were in, and were shocked and appalled to find out they were in the Atlantic 10 of all places.

i just filled out the most ass ridiculous bracket

A fine old tradition among ass ridiculous college bball fans.

if anyone's got an online bracket that could use a few more participants post it here ...

my Gophers went out in the first round of the NIT last night, which was a little disappointing, but I guess that shows how much Tubby has turned things around -- after 9 wins last year we were 20 wins + NIT this year, with pretty much identical lineup...

Indiana has not been playing that great since Sampson left, with the odd loss to Minnesota they are 3-3 under Dakich.

also, it wasn't that odd, the gophers should have beaten them earlier in the season, they played them tough and choked it away.

Georgia is up 10 on Xavier!

Well, not anymore.

my bracket would have been kind of fucked had they lost

yeah me too!

my mind was wandering during my spanish test

however, baylor is gonna lose, so I'm gonna drop my first game

on espn vitale just proposed that there should be a coalition created-- he named bobby knight and jerry west-- to decide who can go into the nba out of high school and who has to go to college

i know it's dick vitale but still

the coalition would also decide who has to be a DOOKIE BAYBEE

seriously cbs i kiss u for not letting vitale on your network

Duke is looking very bad in their first game. Very bad. #16 seeded Portland State Vikings fall to #1 seeded Kansas. My provincialism must now seek out various Pac-10 objects to attach itself to.

wowowowowowoow pls let belmont pull this out

some dude named Gyno is sonning uconn

CMON TOREROSSSS

IF UCONN LOSES & I HAVE TO HEAR SHIT FROM COWORKERS ABT 'OH BUT THE WOMEN ARE AWZSOM CHAMPS TO BE RIGHT' ON MONDAY I WILL JUMP OUT THE FUCKIN WINDOWWWS

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v723/mattslope/9tjskp.gif

That was fantastic.

Bobby Knight is rocking a weird green sweater with a yellow collared shirt.

I watched some of the UConn v San Diego game before I had to leave to go back to work, so I don't know the outcome. All I know right this minute is that SD was working the pick and roll so easily against UConn, it looked like the Huskies had never seen it before.

Every year when I see UConn play in the tournament the coach comes across as a recruiter of top-notch talent (with rock bottom SATs) who can't or won't teach his recruits how to play basketball.

yahh, uconn played terrible defense partially cuz they went with their less athletic bigs who never came out or came out so slow over pics/screens

the last shot the SD kid hit to win in OT was TOUGH and contested tho so what the fuck ever right. im sure calhoun dropped some good quotes in teh postgame and its almost baseball season

only dudes i feel for are price cuz of the injury after such a comeback season & adrien who is freakin rugged, showed really good & poised post moves & even hit a 3 in the first half

Every year when I see UConn play in the tournament the coach comes across as a recruiter of top-notch talent (with rock bottom SATs) who can't or won't teach his recruits how to play basketball.

Emeka Okafor is looking at his 3-year degree and laughing at you. And I'm sure there are plenty of guys that aren't total dummies in Storrs, either. (Or no more or less than other big men's programs.)

Also: this list of UConn pros says Calhoun might know a little bit about teaching basketball. Also: those two NCAA titles and the umpteen Big East titles aren't the result of just throwing young over-amped turks @ the other team. Also: if you saw how awful the team was last year, then you would give him a LOT of credit for how this year turned out.

In summation: not even close, F-, try again.

Your facts are true enough. I think you overestimate the degree to which they support your conclusions.

stanford-marquette game was classic

I predict the UCLA cheerleaders will be more ooglable than the Memphis cheerleaders.

Between the UCLA cheerleaders and Mata-Real, I'm not sure I came out ahead.

o_O

http://blog.wrench.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/whoopass.jpe

http://www.iinet.com/~englishriver/LewisClarkColumbiaRiver/Images06/trojan_implosion_aerial_collapse_FOX_TV12_2006.jpg

Tarheels really stinking it up

:))))))))))

brutal

They should really put Packer out to pasture. Even Nantz was clowning him at the end about calling the game with 27 minutes left to play and then reversing like five minutes later.

And while he's in that pasture, he must eat only grass.

um wow

ku basically won that ot by that one steal right away and executing 2 half court sets PERFECTLY

also lol calipari

good job, lourisites. Davidson was only 2 pts away, then?

DEVASTATIVE.

;_; tigers....

http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/7986/olderjayhawkjh2.gifhttp://img245.imageshack.us/img245/7986/olderjayhawkjh2.gifhttp://img245.imageshack.us/img245/7986/olderjayhawkjh2.gif

wow, up by what? nine points with two minutes to go? brutal. just brutal.

I was watching the game at my bro's house and he had also invited some friends over. When Dorsey fouled out with 1:23 left, one of the wives asked, "What's that look on his face mean? Look, there in the huddle. He's still making it."

Memphis was so cocky, and it was a delight to see them fail.

this game got super sloppy near the end.

got sad for dorsey for some reason.

darrell arther is a baller, and i like that big white freshman kansas occasionally put out there (not sasha kaun). he was going crazy vs. carolina.

kansas dude's kneecap exploding in pregame was nuts.

got sad for dorsey for some reason.

i was too, esp. because all the memphis players were saying t hat their biggest motivation was winning it for him. but i he seemed relatively jovial in the post-game press conf, i think being on the bench for the last 3 mins (or w/e) and ot kind of helped him come to grips. cdr on the other hand was basically choking up

darrell arther is a baller

yeah. him pulling up and just drilling that j from like one step inside the three when a miss would have like effectively ended the game was pretty O_O. kansas has a lot of great dudes- collins looks like a fullback

this game got super sloppy near the end.

sure as hell did. downright ugly. they got kinda sloppy against UCLA on Sat, too, but the shit they were throwing up was actually going in.

*sigh*

I was a little worried about KU missing Rodrick Stewart (dude w/ exploding kneecap) because he was really the only wing defender besides Rush. Obviously ended up not mattering, though Rush always had to be in to defend CDR.

Arthur really has become a very effective scorer. If he gets a touch down low with decent position he can almost use his hook shot to score. I did definitely assume he was going to miss that 18 footer, though.

Aldrich is all you could hope for in a giant white-dude freshman. He really knows how to rebound and uses his size well. He's almost certainly the starting center next year. The announcers during the semifinal said something about him losing weight since the start of the season, which was wrong, but he did get better conditioned as the season went on.

Texas Tech 167, East Central 115

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/boxscore?gameId=283252641

Nobody scored more than 20 points.

jesus christ MOVE THE 3PT LINE BACK

Mike Singletary, F

true or false: only racists prefer college ball to the nba

I never liked the college regular season better than the NBA, but early entry has definitely made me less interested in the tourney.

college bball is gonna be fucked up this year. no great teams besides unc, no great players really, already #5 duke got took to the wire by a mid-major in cameron and last night michigan beat #4 ucla, so obv no one has any idea about anything

true or false: only racists prefer college ball to the nba

False.

There have been times, quite recently, when the nba game was so tedious (see: Pat Riley's ideas about "defense", meaning you shove and hack yr opponent so much the officials give up on calling fouls) and nba officiating so crappy (traveling anyone?), that college bball seemed like the only creative bball being played (see: Vanderbilt's 4-guard lineup a couple of years ago).

i just dont understand how anyone can keep up w/ college hoops - near impossible
then shit happens like my friend who doesnt know shit about bball but entered her workplace pool anyway (at her coworkers encouragement - they thought it would be easy $$ i guess), made her picks on what cities her friends live in and proceeded to beat the entire office

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/nov/25/bruce-pearls-ex-opens-new-business-alimonys/

georgetown just beat savannah state 100-38 O_o

savannah state recently lost an ot game to michigan by 2 points

michigan beat duke a few days ago by a score of 81-73

therefore, #19 georgetown should be favored by about 70 points over #7 duke

michigan beat duke a few days ago by a score of 81-73

this is reminding me of when ga tech went from undefeated -> nat'l title game

the gophers are going to be fun to watch this year : )

WOW Cleveland State makes a 3/4 court shot to beat Syracuse.

That's why they heave 'em up there, fellas. Sometimes your prayer is answered.

ya that shot was @_@

There is a Washington player named Isaiah Thomas.

A Derrick Rose by any other name would eat as many sweets.

golden gophers are on FIRE! : ) : ) : )

tubby is god

I would just like to point out that it is now 2009. Maybe a new thread is in order, so we don't mashup the 2008 NCAA tournament with the 2009 NCAA tournament.

it always seems like minnesota should be better than they are given that it's the only d1 school in a state that seems like it should have pretty good basketball talent.

lol did anyone hear dickie V's kinda creepy comment to erin andrews?

?

i didnt really catch the lead-in, but erin was saying something abt "havig a lot of passion" or something, and dickie v said something like "erin you sure showed a lot of passion and heart when you were a cheerleader for florida" in his famous ascending-shout voice, but the whole thing had a kind of "dude you could be like her grandfather wtf" creepy vibe, and was followed by abt 5 seconds of hilarious awkward silence

unc game btw

ya my mom was really bothered by that exchange

it always seems like minnesota should be better than they are given that it's the only d1 school in a state that seems like it should have pretty good basketball talent.

― circles, Saturday, January 17, 2009 3:28 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

monson's (old coach's) in-state recruiting was by all accounts pretty bad....tubby so far is doing a lot better at keeping dudes in-state.

our loss to northwestern sucked last weekend....our shooting went cold as hell