Ham on whole wheat, all right

Yes, another blog. And I know your first thought is "Somebody stop him!" but at least this one will serve a self-improvement purpose for me. Frankly, you don't have to read it and except for maybe three people, I don't expect you to. I'm not doing this for Fenster. I'm doing it for me.

FlaxRolling

You'd think that BlogRolling would allow you to set different sizes for individual groups of friends you want to separate in your sidebar, but apparently it doesn't. I'm a little disappointed, since the "groups of three" system I have going now makes things a bit choppier than I'd like, but I wanted to be able to separate my blogs from the rest. Why are my blogs there now? Because I figured that they might get a few more visits if people could see when they were updated, especially since the Lost and soccer blogs can be sporadic at times. (We'll see how the movie one holds up, but it's a lot easier to write since the entries are much more bite-size.) Of course, none of those blogs is exactly going to have the widest readership, since not everyone watches Lost or follows soccer. (At least everyone can understand the concept of "making fun of shitty movies," though.)

As for how I broke up the rest, they're basically in descending order of how often I click on those individual blogs myself (the groups are internally alphabetized as well, so don't take the order as any direct indication of visitation frequency). If your blog is a little lower it more means that it's updated less frequently than the ones at the top; don't take it personally.

Tired, tired, tired

I actually almost wrote the sentence "today's been kind of a weird week," which about tells you the mental haze I'm operating under right now. I'm not sure what exactly it is; I mean, I've been tired, but it's not like I'm getting significantly less sleep than usual. I do feel that I've been sleeping somewhat fitfully, though, so that may be a large part of the problem. Either way, this whole week so far has been fairly hazy; I barely know what day it is. On the one hand, I can barely believe it's Wednesday already... and on the other, it's only Wednesday???

Sorry about not updating the Challenge page. I'll try and remember to do it tonight. But we do all know how things are ending at this point, so it seems less pressing. In fact, most of you may not even care that I haven't done it. But I will anyway. Maybe.

Pub trivia last night, which I was enticed to at least as much by the promise of free food - finally cashing in on my share of the gift certificate I helped win back in September - as Jan's presence or anything else. It was pretty fun, though, and exciting as we won again, making up a five-point deficit thanks to missing just a single question in the last round. (To toot my own horn a little bit, we nearly went the wrong way on the "which baseball position has hit the most total home runs in history?" question, but I was able to correctly choose first base after some discussion.) So I guess I'm going back at least one more time.

That reminds me: for the small segment of people who don't already know about it but actually would have any interest, you can, if you so choose, vote in Greg and Leah's indie/college rock tournament at http://so-prolix.blogspot.com.

Speaking of links, I've started to semi-try my hand at a semi-humor site discussing upcoming movies that will blow. It's sort of like my old "Movies to Avoid the Shit Out Of" features theme-wise, with a moderate stylistic debt to sites like Go Fug Yourself and The Superficial. Anyway, feel free to check out the Movies That Will Suck blog. I hope it's at least a little funny.

Do I want to go to Duck Bowl on the 22nd of April? Seeing as how this entails writing a packet in three weeks at the most (not that this is hard, but then I do work now), and then driving to Indiana and back the week before I fly to Austin and back... I don't know that I do. It's a lot easier to play quiz bowl on consecutive weekends when the only thing you have on Mondays is a missable class period.

Hot dog! We have a weiner!

Dave Matthews Band, "Satellite" - Brian H. - played 3/28/06 at 8:13 AM

And the winner is:

The Beatles, "No Reply" - Jan!

Congratulations to Jan, who now does not have to pay his Tournament Challenge fee but will have it paid for him by yours truly. This really works out best for all concerned; Jan saves five bucks, and I don't have to try and make a mix CD that somehow features songs Jan would not hate and yet magically would also not have already heard.

And then there were two

As college basketball hits the Final Four, the iTunes Challenge hits its "national championship." Your most recent elimination?

Collective Soul, "December" - Ryan - played 3/26/06 at 11:16 PM

So your finalists are:

The Beatles, "No Reply" - Jan
Dave Matthews Band, "Satellite" - Brian H.

If "No Reply" wins, the fact that Jan has not yet turned in his entry fee for the Tournament Challenge will be a moot point. But as noted before, it will be somewhat amusing if Brian wins, because then I'll actually have to think of something else.

Ones down, four to go

Wow. Wow. That's really all I can say. I guess I sort of predicted this - in a post made March 3, I said, "The top of the field looks so shallow that this could - could - be one of the best years for upsets ever." But I was really referring to the #2-#5 lines, and more to first- and second-round upsets. But 2-3-4-11 in the Final Four?

The obvious history-making here is that since the field expanded to 64, not a single one of the previous 21 tournaments had passed without at least one #1 seed making it to the Final Four. (Although nine of those Final Fours featured just a single #1 - but five of those nine saw the #1 seed emerging victorious.) It also means that in future years, we can't look at a bracket and say, "Well, there has to be one #1 seed in the Final Four, there always is." Because no, there isn't.

George Mason is also the second #11 seed ever to make the Final Four (LSU, 1986) and the first true mid-major to do so since, as noted by many a broadcaster, Penn crashed the Final Four party as a #9 seed in 1979 (the first year of seedings). (Indiana State also made it that year, but then they were a #1 seed, so that's a little less surprising.) I would also be willing to bet - though I don't have the data on this and not nearly enough time to check it myself - that Mason is the first team since the field expanded, and likely the first team in the seeding era, period, to make the Final Four with the first four NCAA Tournament wins in school history.

That's what makes the whole thing so crazy for me. It's not just that Mason beat three of the last six national champions during their run, or started it by beating two of last year's Final Four teams, or even that they upset the #1 seed in the regional final. It's that this school had never won an NCAA Tournament game before this year. GMU was 0-3 before now - a narrow loss to #3 Maryland in 2001 (in that DC West subregional in Boise), a 24-point drubbing at the hands of #3 Cincinnati in 1999, and a 14-point loss to #2 Indiana in 1989. Never before had they been seeded this high or won a single game - and yet now, even if they lose to Florida on Saturday, they'll be a .500 team in the tournament.

It's also how little anyone saw this coming. With Tony Skinn out, 17 out of 17 people in the Challenge took Michigan State (though I wonder if that would have been much different had he played that first game). 16 out of 17 assumed UConn was a mortal lock for the Final Four. And the people I talked to yesterday seemed to think that Mason was finally going to run out of gas.

But the bottom line is this: this UConn team - it's a good thing they didn't win the tournament, because they would have been one of the least enjoyable teams ever to win. All the talent they had couldn't mask the fact that most of that talent didn't bother showing up for long stretches. Not once in the tournament did they put together a complete 40 minutes; had they done so, they probably could have won every game by 20-plus. But UConn, believing its own hype, didn't seem to care. With the possible exception of Marcus Williams, most of the team seemed like it was composed of guys who were made to play basketball because they were tall, but didn't really enjoy doing it. They didn't seem to care that much about winning, usually doing only just enough - they would go on little spurts where they clearly were the best team on the floor, and then would ease up as if to say, "Okay, that oughta be good enough." That seemed to be what happened today. Late in the first half came the blitz, but UConn couldn't battle back when GMU started raining threes in the second, and they seemed rattled by the aggressive Patriot defense.

I'm a little disappointed that Villanova didn't make it - because right now George Mason is probably the most senior team in the Final Four, which is weird, and because I liked Villanova - but otherwise you have to be pretty satisfied with this Final Four. It's not necessarily the most talented teams in the country, but it's some of the toughest and most spirited teams in the country. And really, I'd rather watch some previously unknown, passionate teams battle for the title than the usual three-teams-you've-seen-before-and-maybe-one-outsider-if-you're-lucky snoozefest. This Final Four should produce three close games, and that's all you can ask. Plus I really like watching LSU play (in retrospect, picking against them in the first round was really, really dumb, but then who knew being a veteran team would count for nothing this year?) and I love the Mason story. I'd prefer to see those two teams match up in the final if possible, but I can't complain too much about anything. It's been possibly the most fun tournament ever, and it featured, in terms of size and place put together, maybe the biggest upset in tournament history - at least since seeding began - with only NC State in 1983 and Villanova in 1985 contending for the title. If Mason does somehow go all the way, they would definitely be the biggest Cinderella in the history of March Madness. I'm rooting for that to happen.

Real quick, Challenge. It's down to one game now. If LSU wins, Alma wins. If UCLA wins, Stan wins. If Stan wins, Alma finishes second; I believe Rudnik would finish second to Alma. And my dad is last. Sorry, Dad (though really, finishing last is better than finishing third!).

Choose Your Own Adventure

I'm going up to Alma's tomorrow night, so I probably won't get around to updating the leaderboard until Monday after work. But fortunately for you, it doesn't matter, because I spent all of tonight designing the Choose Your Own Adventure-like scenario set found on the Challenge home page. You can play it right now based on who might win tomorrow, or come back after the games and click on the one that actually happened. (On Monday I'll remove the others.) I can also give you, right here right now, the people who would take home prizes under the current set of 32 possibilities.

People Who Can Win
Stan: 10 possible wins
Alma: 9 possible wins
Rudnik: 6 possible wins
James D: 5 possible wins
Chris Q: 2 possible wins

People Who Can Finish Second
Rudnik: 13 possible
Alma: 7 possible
James D: 6 possible
Flax: 3 possible
Chris Q: 2 possible
Stan: 1 possible

People Who Can Finish Last
Dad: 26 possible
Chris Q: 4 possible
Craig: 2 possible

Eesh. Sorry, Dad. Though what does it say about the overall closeness of this year's field that Chris Q can still finish first or last depending on the scenario?

UConn't do that in the tournament

It's amazing that UConn's laziness hasn't caught up with them yet. Or rather, it's not, because they've been handed by far the easiest regional... but it's still impressive that they've been able to play three games, been scared in all of them, but managed to play, basically, about twenty minutes of good basketball combined in the three and have that be enough for 3-0 and an Elite Eight berth.

Far be it for me to defend Duke, but this talk of them as the #1 overall seed plays like a bunch of shit. I'm really starting to think that the committee did that so they could set up UConn and Villanova for a possible Final Four rematch, because that would be a good story. Let's compare the regions as far as champions go:

West Region
Tournament Champions: #1 Memphis, #2 UCLA, #3 Gonzaga, #4 Kansas, #9 Bucknell, #11 San Diego State, #12 Kent State, #14 Xavier, #15 Belmont, #16 Oral Roberts
Regular season Champions: #1 Memphis, #2 UCLA, #3 Gonzaga, #9 Bucknell, #11 San Diego State, #12 Kent State, #16 Oral Roberts

Midwest Region
Tournament Champions: #3 Florida, #5 Nevada, #11 Wisconsin-Milwaukee, #12 Montana, #13 Pacific, #14 South Alabama, #15 Davidson, #16 Monmouth
Regular season Champions: #2 Ohio State, #5 Nevada, #11 Wisconsin-Milwaukee, #13 Pacific

South Region
Tournament Champions: #1 Duke, #3 Iowa, #5 Syracuse, #9 UNC-Wilmington, #11 Southern Illinois, #13 Iona, #14 Northwestern State, #16 Southern
Regular season Champions: #1 Duke, #2 Texas, #4 LSU, #8 George Washington, #9 UNC-Wilmington, #14 Northwestern State, #15 Penn, #16 Southern

East Region
Tournament Champions: #14 Murray State, #15 Winthrop, #16 Albany
Regular season Champions: #1 UConn, #7 Wichita State, #14 Murray State, #15 Winthrop, #16 Albany

One of these things is not like the other... one of these things just doesn't belong...

So of all the teams in their region, there is just one besides UConn in the top thirteen seeds that has either a regular season or tournament title to their name. And that team isn't from a power conference - the Missouri Valley was good this year, but having the Missouri Valley regular season champ at #7 isn't quite the same as having the Big 12 regular season champ at #2 (as Duke did in Texas). There is little to dispute that Tennessee was the weakest #2 seed. And now UConn's path to the Final Four is obscured only by a #11 seed that didn't win its conference tournament, didn't win the regular season (though they finished second only on a tiebreaker in favor of NC-Wilmington), and had never won an NCAA Tournament game prior to this year.

Did Jim Calhoun schedule this region? Is it December?

All this and Connecticut still should have lost its latest game in which no one but Marcus Williams showed up (someone probably told him the winner got free laptops). When Mike Jensen - who, if this were the NFL, would have been cut immediately following the game - fouled Williams on the and-one with ten seconds to go, I noted to Alma (who had, I presume amused by it, asked me to do color commentary) that "that's not a good foul by Jensen... he should have just conceded the layup. Now even if Washington hits both at the other end, it's only a one-possession game." I could not have been more dead-on - after Roy made his two free throws, UConn tied the game on a three with 1.8 left (of course). And anyone who thought Washington was winning in overtime was nuts.

The funny thing is, UConn has this ridiculously easy road with no seed higher than a #5, and yet they aren't even winning well. Their average margin of victory is 8 ppg, and that includes the "it was closer than this" 13-point win over Albany. Average margin in four games against their low-seed cakewalk in 2004? 17.5. Average margin in four games against their low-seed cakewalk in 1999? 15.5. It's abundantly clear that, despite the preposterous series of games the Huskies get to play (or really because of it), this is easily the weakest of those three teams. And if this team does somehow win the title, if it suddenly manages to stay interested for a full game - something that hasn't happened now since, oh, February 26 against Villanova - this will be one of the lousiest teams ever to do it. Not in terms of raw talent, mind you, but in terms of actual quality of play. In a better year, this team would already have lost by now (or with a fairer draw, instead of the worst #8 seed in the tournament who still nearly beat them and a #5 that was known for underachieving for much of the year); in 2006, with its unthinkable level of parity and lack of more than a handful of teams of significant quality, UConn can afford to coast. And it just makes me upset.

Oh yeah, other games. Glad Nova and Florida hung on to give me the right Elite Eight over there. And I'll be interested to see if Mason can hang with UConn like everyone else has. They should have the defense... man, if Mason goes to the Final Four? Can that please happen? I swear, if UConn loses to Mason the entire rest of the tournament is just gravy.

Blind as a buy

I mentioned the "Blind Buy List" to Rudnik in a long e-mail exchange, which led him to make a post on the topic. I think I may have posted some approximation of my list before, but it's due for an updating. Rules are similar to Rud's; only full-length LPs of new material really count towards the official totals, though I frequently buy other things for artists on the list, as noted.

A.C. Newman
Albums in release: 1
Albums I own: 1
Safe status: 9 out of 10. Newman only has one solo album so far, but he's also got three New Pornographers albums backing him up, and I happen to think he's one of the top five musicians out there right now.

Ben Folds
Albums in release: 3 (does not include EPs, live albums, or Ben Folds Five albums)
Albums I own: 2 (plus four EPs, all four BFF albums, and Ben Folds Live - but not Fear of Pop)
Safe status: 10 out of 10. Unless Folds decides his future projects are going to sound more like Fear of Pop than the rest of his work, he'll never drop off this list.

Death Cab for Cutie
Albums in release: 5
Albums I own: 3
Safe status: 6 out of 10. It's been hinted that the style the band employs on Transatlanticism and, even more so, on Plans is not 100% representative of their sound. If that's true of future recordings, I may not be as motivated. But I went back to We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes and have no complaints so far.

Doves
Albums in release: 3
Albums I own: 2
Safe status: 7 out of 10. I haven't gotten back to Lost Souls yet, but all indications are that I enjoy each successive record of theirs progressively more. Still, that kind of bombast-rock-pop sometimes walks a thin line when it comes to holding my interest, though Doves haven't come close to losing me yet.

Fountains of Wayne
Albums in release: 3
Albums I own: 3, plus Out-of-State Plates
Safe status: 9 out of 10. They're drifting from what made their first album so great, but then when you consider that I didn't sign on until after "Stacy's Mom," who am I to judge? It's still great power pop. They're due for a new album, too; sure, we had Plates last summer, but comprised mostly of rarities and previously unreleased tracks, it barely counts.

Guster
Albums in release: 4
Albums I own: 4 (one burned)
Safe status: 9 out of 10. Six months ago they would have been a ten out of ten easily, but the failure of "Manifest Destiny/Sorority Tears" to yet grow on me has me a little worried. This is a band that's managed to put out four albums where I enjoy every single track on all of them, no mean feat, so they have the benefit of the doubt for now, but we'll see how things go after Ganging Up on the Sun, or whatever it ends up being called, comes out.

The Long Winters
Albums in release: 2
Albums I own: 2, plus the Ultimatum EP
Safe status: 7 out of 10. "The Commander Thinks Aloud" is amazing, and "Ultimatum" is growing on me, but the EP wasn't as great overall as I might've hoped. The safety status on this list is more or less dependent on whether the forthcoming album sounds more like When I Pretend to Fall or Ultimatum, though the latter wouldn't result in an immediate boot.

The New Pornographers
Albums in release: 3
Albums I own: 3
Safe status: 10 out of 10. In September I might have told you differently, but Twin Cinema gets better with every listen.

The Shins
Albums in release: 2
Albums I own: 2
Safe status: 9 out of 10. The Shins are an interesting case because their first two albums are really very different sounding pieces of work, and I like one much more than the other (not that Oh, Inverted World isn't great, it's just not Chutes Too Narrow). Usually bands don't regress to earlier sounds, though, so hopefully the future prognosis is good, unless they evolve in some further weird direction.

Snow Patrol
Albums in release: 3
Albums I own: 3
Safe status: 8 out of 10. Final Straw is one of my favorite albums of the past five years, though I don't spin it nearly as much as I did when I first got it. Their older two albums are more scattershot and have lesser production, but the massive improvement onto Final Straw suggests we can expect more of that going forward.

That's pretty much it in the "guaranteed lock" category at this point, though there are a number of other artists where I own an album or two and would probably at least strongly consider picking up a new release. But I probably wouldn't rush right out like I would for these ten. There are also some artists who have gotten the boot over the years, including:

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (after the Last DJ fiasco)
Weird Al Yankovic (I guess it's kind of sad he was ever on there at all, but Poodle Hat ended it)
Fastball (I'm still lukewarm on Keep Your Wig On)
Five for Fighting (The Battle for Everything, with the exception of "100 Years," tries far too hard)
Something Corporate (they're teetering on the edge right now; part of this will depend on whether they actually do anything again and how mature it is if so)
Weezer (I find half their stuff on recent albums to be unlistenable, which is a shocking turn from my attitude toward their first three LPs)

Anyway, that's that. Quick basketball thoughts:

*What a finish to the Texas/WVU game! Shades of Jared West, though things didn't work out nearly as well for West Virginia in this game as that one (1998 second round, for those who are totally baffled by the reference). But how often do you see the double buzzer-beater? Might be the game of the tournament so far.

*Although Gonzaga/UCLA must be a contender too. Epic collapse for the Zags there - a double-digit lead for most of the game, and then they score just two points in the final five minutes while UCLA puts up the last 11. Woof.

*Not to pile on Duke - although why not! - but it has to be said: J.J. Redick was a great college talent, but he has to be considered one of the worst big-game players among his generation of college stars. Just a real train wreck in this one, but then Duke as a whole seemed to get a real case of uniform tightness down at the end. Four guys to one and you can't rebound a free throw because you're too busy staring at it? Just bad, bad play; they really earned that loss.

*Can we skip the five-year waiting period and just induct John Brady into the Bad Mustache Hall of Fame right now? It looks like he drew it on, for crying out loud!

You asked for it

The Final Four in the iTunes Challenge:

The Beatles, "No Reply" - Jan
Collective Soul, "December" - Ryan
Dave Matthews Band, "Satellite" - Brian H.
Five for Fighting, "Boat Parade" - Rudnik

Just watch, the one guy who isn't in the Tourney Challenge is going to win. And then I'll have to actually think about what the prize will be.

UPDATE!

The Final Three:

The Beatles, "No Reply" - Jan
Collective Soul, "December" - Ryan
Dave Matthews Band, "Satellite" - Brian H.

The Last Three Eliminated Since The Last Entry that Had Times in It:

Ben Folds Five, "Don't Change Your Plans" - Drew - played 3/13/06 at 10:56 PM
Five for Fighting, "Boat Parade" - Rudnik - played 3/19/06 at 4:08 AM
John Ottman, "I Work for Keyser Soze" - Nemo - played 3/18/06 at 10:13 AM

You may notice that "Boat Parade," which was included in the earlier portion of this entry, was eliminated before this entry was posted. However, it was the most recent one eliminated, and (a) when I posted, I was at work and couldn't remember which of the four I knew to be remaining had been the most recent one eliminated, and (b) I just thought it sounded better to say "Final Four" since we're in March and all. Hope I didn't get Rud's hopes up too much.

Say "uncle"

Welcome to the world, Aurora. I hope you always realize how great your mom is.

Off day

A few things to cover.

*First, at my mom's request, I looked at how many points a person who had taken the higher seed in every single matchup as their bracket would have accumulated so far (something Alma originally wanted me to do for her bracket but which I talked her out of). The answer: 430. (Alma currently has 390. Sorry, baby.) Of course, this isn't good enough for first, but it's just one Sweet Sixteen matchup shy as we stand now, and a first-round pick better than the score I've got with my first-choice bracket.

*My dad mentioned to me this morning that he heard Connecticut has been really lucky in their previous two national title runs in terms of the seeds they've had to face to get to the Final Four. And that is indeed correct. In 1999, #1 UConn faced a 16, a 9, a 5, and a 10 in their four West Regional games (the 10 was Gonzaga at the end of their Elite Eight run). In 2004, #2 UConn faced a 15, a 7, a 6, and an 8 in their four West Regional games (#8 Alabama had upset #1 Stanford and #5 Syracuse to reach the regional final). This year, UConn will face no higher than a #5 (Washington) during what now seems like a surpassingly likely Final Four run. (At least they're not in the West again too.) Has any team gotten a bigger break than that? Well, take a look at some other recent winners:

2005 North Carolina: 16, 9, 5, 6
2003 Syracuse: 14, 6, 10, 1
2002 Maryland: 16, 8, 4, 2
2001 Duke: 16, 9, 4, 6
2000 Michigan State: 16, 8, 4, 2
1998 Kentucky: 15, 10, 6, 1

So of the last eight national champions, fully half did not have to play the highest non-themselves seed in their region to make the Final Four, and only two of the eight (Maryland and Michigan State) had to play the highest possible seed they could have faced in all four matchups. In other words, give UConn - with at worst a 5-7 road - a better chance of going all the way than Duke, which could very likely end up having to run the 16-8-4-2 gauntlet.

*I know this is ridiculously early - a full year early, in fact - but I wanted to mention a couple of potential changes to next year's Challenge while people are actually reading this site and might be willing to comment.

First, next year I'd like to add the NIT Challenge to the repertoire. Basically, anyone who wanted to participate would kick in an extra buck on top of the usual fee and the winner would get the NIT pot - if someone lost the NCAA Challenge but won the NIT Challenge, it would basically be like getting a refund of the whole thing (assuming at least a handful of people were interested). It would be a little harder to pull off, of course, since the games usually start just two days after Selection Sunday, but as long as I got the brackets out that night you'd have at least a full day to puzzle over it. It could be kind of fun, at least.

The second thing was a change to the bonus system, but I think I need to think about it some more to come up with the fairest way to be rewarded for upset picks. If you have any input on that one (or the NIT one), leave a comment.

Day Four Roundup

Not a terrible day for me picks-wise, largely because it wasn't a great day for anyone. Bradley and George Mason won again, making my losses of Kansas and Michigan State in the first round largely moot since no one had either team going that far. And then I had West Virginia picked right (where many had had Iowa), got the three gimmes (UConn, Villanova, and Texas), and lost on Ohio State like everyone else because I wasn't confident enough to take the Georgetown upset (though I did select it on Alma's behalf as it was one of the ones I had looked at for a while). All told, nobody got more than five out of the eight games right, and I was one of them (unlike yesterday when I had five right but seven people had at least six).

This is a pretty crazy tournament. Let's talk about it.

Upset of the Day: You might say Bradley, but I'd say it was George Mason over North Carolina. Not a single person of 17 even took George Mason in Round One (one of just three 11-13 seeds of whom that was true, the other two being Air Force and Montana), and they were down early - North Carolina opened the game on a 16-2 run, in fact. George Mason wasn't one of the best defensive teams in the nation for no reason, though, and they held Carolina to just 44 points over the last 35 minutes of play while scoring 63 themselves in the same span. Plus, Roy Williams, who seems like one of the most even-keel guys in the game off the court, looked ready to kill half his team for much of the second half. When the higher seed's coach is doing that, it's the sign of a big-time upset brewing.

Non-Upsets of the Day: Is it time to start worrying about UConn and Villanova? I know the argument is that "champions win close games," but these were some serious second-round struggles against teams that underachieved all year. Connecticut probably still makes the Final Four because of who's left in their region - although I probably have as much confidence in Washington to possibly do it as I would have had in Tennessee or Michigan State, and clearly North Carolina could be rattled more easily than you'd have suspected. Villanova, however, might have to face Boston College and (if they win there) Florida. Think UConn got the easiest bracket?

Some Ketchup for Your Crow?: During the UConn-Kentucky game, Billy Packer described Bradley and Wichita State's wins as "impressive victories." Later, Jim Nantz mentioned that many people thought Bradley should not have been in the tournament, including "two people sitting right here." Packer's only response was a barely audible chuckle, which was probably accompanied by a withering stare and some teeth gnashing.

When you get right down to it, Packer (and Nantz as well, to be fair, but Nantz's face doesn't frighten small children) could hardly have been more wrong. Not only does the Missouri Valley have two teams in the Sweet 16, but that's exactly as many as the ACC has, and one more than the Big 12 has, after Packer made such a huge deal out of how the selection committee was implying that the MVC was as good as the ACC and Big 12 because it got the same number of bids and how clearly wrong that was. Meanwhile, two Big 12 teams went out in the first round to mid-majors. North Carolina, the second ACC team to lose, also went out to a mid-major in George Mason (another team that some thought should not have been included in the field). Can anyone honestly say it would have been better to have had Michigan and Florida State in place of Bradley and George Mason? Enjoy the crow, Billy.

Go, big conferences!: For the record, the Big Ten had six teams in the tournament (Ohio State, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Illinois, and Indiana) and not one of them made it to the Sweet 16 (with three losing in the first round). The last time a Sweet 16 didn't feature a single Big Ten team? 1996. (Coincidentally, this was also the last time Bradley made the field.) That year, the Big Ten entrants were #1 Purdue, #5 Penn State, #6 Iowa, #6 Indiana, and #7 Michigan - three of the five lost in Round One, with Purdue nearly joining that club as well as nearly becoming the first ever #1 to lose to a #16; Purdue and Iowa won their first-round games by a combined four points and were both eliminated in Round Two. (1996 was also the last time Duke lost in the first round, when they were a mortal #8 seed and went out to #9 Eastern Michigan.)

Who Wants to Be a Two Seed?: As I noted on the Challenge page, this is the seventh year in eight in which at least two #2 seeds failed to make the Sweet 16; it's also the eighth year in the last ten. Back through the 1997 tournament, there have been 40 #2 seeds, and fully 20 have not made it out of the first weekend! That's a pretty woeful percentage, wouldn't you agree? Especially when you consider that in the same time period, #1 seeds are 34-6 in the second round (and obviously none have lost in the first), and in six of the ten years no #1 lost that early at all, whereas at least one #2 went down every year. I guess there's more of a difference between the #1 and #2 seed line than we're inclined to think. Worse still for the 2s, it's not like they're always falling on buzzer-beaters. As this chart shows, only four of the 20 losses have been decided by one possession (and that includes the Iowa State loss to Hampton in 2001, which you would certainly expect to be a close shave), and eight were decided by double figures. (None of the six losing one seeds lost by more than seven, though only two lost by 1-3 points.)

Had I done that statistical analysis before the tournament, I might have been able to talk myself into Georgetown. (Though there's probably an equal chance I would taken Marquette and been screwed.) Sure, it's a little dangerous to base your picks on stats alone - stats tell us that the 8-9 game is more often won by the 9, but this year three 8 seeds won out of four. (Of course, those 8-9 games are usually a crapshoot when it comes to picking anyway.) Still, it's a pretty compelling trend that two #2 seeds lose no later than Round Two in just about every year nowadays. If you don't think that speaks to increased parity in the game, read this stat: between 1985 and 2005, 31 #2 seeds lost in the first two rounds. 18 of those came in the past nine years, with just 13 in the twelve years before that. In other words, it used to be one a year, and now it's two a year. Seems like increased parity to me.

So maybe we shouldn't be quite so surprised when we see results like this year's. Sure, Bradley is the first #13 seed to make the Sweet 16 since Oklahoma in 1999, and the first non-Big Six #13 to do it since Valparaiso in 1998. But that's not really that odd. What would be odd is if Bradley becomes the first #13 ever to make a regional final. What would be odd is if the national champion doesn't come from the top three seed lines (since the field expansion, only three - #4 Arizona in 1997, #6 Kansas in 1988, and #8 Villanova in 1985 - have done it, and twelve of the other 18 have been one seeds). What would be odd is if three mid-major teams make the Elite Eight (Wichita State and George Mason play each other, so there can't be four). But in the end, you know that the national champ will almost certainly be a #1 or a #2. The tournament is always exciting, but parity hasn't hit its full stride just yet.

Another surprise: this post getting more than a couple comments. Sorry it was so long.

Pardon the interruption

The less said about today's basketball results, the better. But I was also too busy to see pretty much any of the games for more than a little bit (chief thought: how the hell did Illinois blow that one?), so I wouldn't be too equipped to comment either way. (Sunday, when I'm sitting on my ass for much of the day, will be a different story.) So what did I do? Well, among the things I did was go out to dinner with Alma, her schoolmate Justin, and his fiancée Margie. A good time was had by all - at least, I hope so - but the more interesting part of this as far as telling a story goes is that this was my first ever encounter with sushi.

I've never been a huge seafood guy, and sushi always struck me as sort of the "cool kid" trendy food choice in a way that always sort of annoyed me - it seems like the same group of people who gasp at "I've never had sushi" also act shocked when you say something like "I don't watch Arrested Development" or "I don't drink." That said, it's certainly not the fault of the Japanese that self-absorbed white people tried to claim the food. Alma's school is somewhat out in the boondocks, and Justin and Margie are from Hawaii, so they had been missing sushi; Alma picked a place in Chicago and we all went. I went with a touch of apprehension, as you might expect, but hoped for the best.

Normally, I avoid foods where the dollar-to-bite ratio is 1 to 1, but it seems pretty hard to avoid that where sushi, if not Japanese food in general, is concerned. We started with an appetizer of green onion wrapped in beef, which was delicious - I love onions, as we know, and the beef was amazingly tender. This was also the last thing we'd order that was actually cooked. It cost $7.50 and came cut into three basically bite-sized pieces. (Big bites, but single bites nonetheless.) Was it worth $2.50 a bite? It was surprisingly close. I don't know if this was Kobe beef (or the American Wagyu/Angus hybrid that passes for it), which might have explained the cost, but it was tender enough to make me think of it, which probably works out about the same. Even the most tender filet mignon I've ever had - and I've had some good ones - wasn't as melt-in-your-mouth as this. And of course, scallions = teh awesome.

The meal for me was the spicy tuna roll (which comes as six small rolls), plus individual pieces of salmon and crab. I considered ordering the wasabi-flavored flying fish roe - because how cool does that sound - but after seeing what you get it's probably just as well I didn't make that my first time. My previous run-ins with sushi (seeing it places, that is) had more or less given me the impression that all sushi looked like the roll type, with the rice and seaweed ringing an interior portion of fish and vegetables. Needless to say, this isn't the case. "Sushi" really refers mostly to the rice, and there are a number of different ways to prepare something that can be called sushi. (Oh no, Wikipedia citation!) The spicy tuna rolls were makizushi, but the salmon and crab were nigiri - in other words, a piece of fish (or crab) sitting on top of a small mound of rice which can't even be seen from above. I'm fairly certain if the flying fish roe had shown up like that that I might have run screaming from the place. Not that fish eggs are some horrible sight to behold, but there's no way I would have been prepared for that.

The spicy tuna roll wasn't bad. I find the taste of seaweed interesting, and I like the rice; the tuna itself was masked a bit behind the spicy sauce, which was kind of creamy. I found the sauce's consistency a bit off-putting, but it wasn't terrible, just a little weird. Dipping either end of an individual piece in soy sauce cut the heat as well as some of the sauce's creaminess. I'm not normally a big soy sauce fan, but it helped me out.

The salmon was the really interesting part because there's no way to pretend you're not eating raw fish. Within a roll, hey, that could be anything! With the nigiri, you know exactly what it is and can clearly see that it hasn't been cooked. I was a little freaked out on the first couple bites... but actually, there appears to be something I enjoy about biting into a raw piece of fish. Unlike cooked salmon, which tends to be flaky, the raw salmon provided a pleasing resistance to the teeth, and the taste of fish was fairly mild rather than overpowering (which is usually when I don't like it as much).

I'm thisclose to falling asleep right now, so I'll wrap it up by saying this: my first experience with sushi (and really Japanese food at all) was positive overall. I can't say I'm running out every night to make sure I have sushi, but as a once-in-a-while thing, I'm no longer in a position where I would shoot it down or fear for my enjoyment level. You see, this is why we have girlfriends - to get us to try new things. You think I would ever in my life have eaten sushi if I weren't dating Alma? No way. I'm glad it worked out for all of us.

Brackets will be updated tomorrow afternoon and then again tomorrow night. But right now I must sleep.

Day Two Roundup

A good day if you like upsets. A bad day if you like winning pools, especially if your last name is Flaxman, as Dad and I each lost a Final Four pick to the day's two big upsets.

Upset of the Day: Northwestern State over Iowa. 3-14 upsets are really shockingly uncommon - we've had just five in the last ten years, though in the decade before that the tournament averaged one a year. Before last year (Bucknell over Kansas), though, there hadn't been one since 1999 (Weber State over UNC behind, of course, Harold "The Show" Arceneaux). So it's something of an event when one actually does come to pass, and this one ended on an improbable buzzer beater that was such a fallaway that Wallace actually fell down after the ball left his hands. I daresay it was even more impressive than Chris Lofton's shot to beat Winthrop. More impressive still was the fact that Northwestern State had been down seventeen points with just 8:30 left! You don't usually see that kind of comeback from a lower seed in these games. Wow. I got to watch the last two minutes of the game on TiVo when I got home, but at work I was stuck watching ESPN's scoreboard update itself. The score clicked to "final" before the rest updated, so at first I thought Iowa had held on... then suddenly the Northwestern State score blinked to 64. That's almost as exciting as watching a buzzer-beater live...

"No!" of the Day: Question for Verne Lundquist and Bill Raftery. Would you ever refer to Michigan State as "Michigan" during a broadcast? Of course you wouldn't. So why is it okay to refer to Northwestern State as "Northwestern"? Too lazy for that extra syllable? This drove me crazy in those last two minutes. I realize they were wearing purple or a color that could be mistaken for it on TV, but they're not Northwestern, they're Northwestern State. Even after the buzzer sounded, Lundquist declared, "Northwestern wins!" Don't I wish.

Non-Upset of the Day: Albany really had me going for a while. With 11:30 left, they were up 50-38, and I dared to dream. Sure, I had UConn all the way. But I don't really like this UConn team that much, and you had to love the potential history (as well as the irony in the only team everyone thought was can't-miss this year bowing out so early). Alas, it was not to be; it took longer than usual, but UConn did eventually show their superior talent, closing the game on a 34-9 run over that final 11:30. (How not to pull an upset in the NCAAs: score 9 points in eleven minutes.)

This did make me wonder, though. People sometimes say that UConn is basically the only team that can stop UConn - i.e. they sometimes have commitment issues. Bill Simmons picked against UConn because, as he put it, "I can't pick any college team with a best player (in this case, Rudy Gay) who occasionally mails in big games." (And in fact, Gay was a relative non-factor in this game, scoring just 8 points.) But how does a close shave against a #16 seed affect the title chances of a top team, if at all? For the answer, I crunched the numbers. If you want to see the whole spreadsheet, click here. Otherwise, just read on.

Since 1985 and the expansion to 64 teams - thus creating 16 seeds - there have been, including this year, 19 games (out of 88) in which the #1 seed has defeated the #16 seed by 13 points or less. Of the 17 #1 seeds prior to this year, four lost in the second round, six lost in the Sweet 16, two lost in the Elite 8, three lost in the Final Four, and two made it all the way to the national title game before losing (including Illinois last year). None of them won a national title, however.

Really, it's hard to draw any conclusions at all from this. After all, Kansas beat Prairie View in 1998 by the largest margin in history - 110-52, a 58-point thumping - and proceeded to bow out in the second round to 8-seed Rhode Island. So I guess you never can tell. Still, you do have to wonder about UConn. Maybe they just let themselves get so far behind because they thought, "Eh, we're playing Albany, we can dog it," and then Albany finally put them into "Oh, shit!" mode at the 11:30 mark, at which point it was over. Or maybe they are capable of falling behind early in any game and might meet a team which doesn't fold faster than a card table when UConn starts playing better. I guess we'll see.

Best "Fuck You" to Billy Packer: Even though it trashed my bracket, it was really kind of awesome seeing George Mason and Bradley, two of the last teams in the field and conspicuously mid-major, both get wins against power conference opponents on Friday. Packer railed against the committee for suggesting that the Missouri Valley was as good a league as the Big Twelve since they each had four bids... and then the MVC's last team in beats the Big Twelve champ in a head-to-head meeting. I hope Jim Nantz isn't kept awake by Packer's muffled crying in the next hotel room over.

Best Reason Not to Mess With Your Picks: Originally, I had North Carolina into the Elite Eight, but I wimped out on their youth at the last minute and switched it to Michigan State, because when they aren't losing in the first round (2004), they're doing quite well (a shock Final Four last year as a #5 and a shock Elite Eight in 2003 as a #7). Unfortunately, it seems like they alternate years these days, going out to a Tony Skinn-less George Mason team and submarining the entire bottom half of my East bracket.

Weekend Preview: Some storylines to consider for the upcoming two days of games:

1. Can Gonzaga finally get over the second-round jinx that's plagued them in every single-digit seed year?

2. Can UConn and Villanova regroup from closer-than-they-should-have-been opening round games to face seasoned 8-seed opposition?

3. Can the Cinderellas - George Mason, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Texas A&M (though as a major conference team, their inclusion on this list is a bit shaky), Montana, Bradley, and Northwestern State - keep dancing into the Sweet 16? Bradley could be the first #13 into the third round since Oklahoma in 1999, while NW State would be the first #14 to endure the first weekend since Chattanooga in 1997, and just the third ever.

4. Who will be the first top-two seed to fall? Duke, Tennessee, and UCLA all hit the court tomorrow; the Vols' narrow escape in Round One seems to make them the most likely candidate so far.

5. How many Sweet 16 teams will people manage to pick right? I've still got 13, but I've lost two Elite Eight teams and one Final Four squad (Kansas) already.

Day One Roundup

It was, unsurprisingly, a wild first day in the NCAA Tournament. Let's take a look at some of the action.

Upset I Wish I Had: Montana over Nevada. It seems like every year there's a mid-major team seeded between the #4 and #6 lines that maybe doesn't belong quite that high, and that team always seems to lose or at least comes really close. Recent examples:

2004: #4 Cincinnati barely holds off #13 East Tennessee State, 80-77
2003: #6 Creighton loses to #11 Central Michigan, 79-73; #4 Dayton loses to #13 Tulsa, 84-71
2002: #6 Gonzaga loses to #11 Wyoming, 73-66

The problem here was that Montana seemed to be overseeded as well, and in that kind of game it usually makes sense to pick the team with the best player - in this case, Nick Fazekas. But in retrospect, Nevada was due for a fall (high seeds tend to underachieve when they ride long winning streaks into the tournament).

Upset I Wish I Didn't Have: I looked pretty smart on Iona for a half, and then I think LSU's coach had them all hypnotized to forget it was March. And suddenly they played better! Speaking of that subregional, I also wish I'd taken A&M over Syracuse. I blame the seduction of Iona's flashy guards here; had I not taken them, I at least would have had LSU beating Syracuse, minimizing the damage. As it stands, that whole side of the South is gone except Duke. I thought Syracuse might be running on fumes, but didn't trust A&M to be the ones to do it. Whoops.

Upset That Was So Easy To Call I Shouldn't Give Points For It: Every year there's one of these too. Usually it's a 5-12 game. For example:

2005: #12 Wisconsin-Milwaukee over #5 Alabama
2004: #12 Pacific over #5 Providence and #12 Manhattan over #5 Florida
2003: #12 Butler over #5 Mississippi State
2002: #12 Missouri over #5 Miami
2001: #12 Gonzaga over #5 Virginia
2000: #11 Pepperdine over #6 Indiana

This year, as in 2000, it was a 6-11. The victim is always a power conference team that just seems like it isn't that good, and the upset-puller is usually a scrappy team from a small conference (counterexample to that: Missouri in '02). Wisconsin-Milwaukee actually has the honor of being the lower seed in this scenario two years running, knocking off #6 Oklahoma in a game that I believe the majority of the field picked right.

Game of the Day: I'm inclined to say Tennessee/Winthrop, which was palpably exciting even though (a) I was stuck in the office watching score updates flash on ESPN.com and (b) enough people had picked it that it wasn't nearly as exciting as any other potential 2-15 upset would have been. GW/UNCW was another good one, though UNCW's remarkable choke job in the last couple minutes was hard to watch. Similarly, BC/Pacific was great except for the way Pacific totally threw the game away with a botched last possession in regulation and their stunning inability to break a full-court press. ("How about instead of dribbling at all, I pass it cross-court? How about I kind of lob that pass so it's easy to steal?") And also, way to take a huge BMOC in the second OT, guys. Finally, I watched most of the second half of Indiana/SDSU, and that was pretty entertaining. It's pretty astounding to watch two teams shoot that well for a whole game (a combined 52.4%!). Indiana really escaped with one, though.

Conversation of the Day: As Tennessee/Winthrop came down to the wire, I watched on the internet scoreboard as Ryan watched the game. When Tennessee hit the unlikely shot with less than a second to go, here was how it went in the IM:

Ryan (4:21:27 PM): HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Ryan (4:21:33 PM): off balanced
Flax (4:22:09 PM): aw, lame
Ryan (4:22:25 PM): SO AWESOME
Flax (4:22:29 PM): though actually, since there are people who have winthrop, I wouldn't be as upset
Flax (4:22:37 PM): I thought you were rooting for Tennessee to lose?
Ryan (4:22:45 PM): sure, because they are lame and i like upsets
Ryan (4:23:16 PM): oh wait
Ryan (4:23:31 PM): i thought winthrop made the shot
Flax (4:23:37 PM): ha!
Flax (4:23:42 PM): aren't you watching the game?
Ryan (4:23:42 PM): LAME
Ryan (4:23:44 PM): yes
Flax (4:23:46 PM): haha
Ryan (4:23:50 PM): darnit

Defending the mid-majors

It's been argued in several corners that this year's tournament somehow features a watered-down field because it includes four teams from the Missouri Valley, two from the Colonial, and similar "irregularities." In today's Sun-Times, Rick Telander suggests that the tournament is missing some "magic" because these teams are in instead of mediocre Big Six teams like Michigan and Maryland, while Jim Nantz and Billy Packer fried Craig Littlepage to a crisp, so I've read, for some of the decisions regarding teams like Bradley.

Say what you want about the selection committee - and I have - but to suggest that it has a bias towards mid-majors is one of the funniest things I've ever heard. In most years, the pundits go crazy because seemingly worthy mid-major teams are left out in favor of major conference also-rans; this year a couple extra MVC teams get in and suddenly it's nuts in the other direction.

Of course, it's always just the angriest people who are the loudest, and The Three Billy Packer Goats Gruff has long held a vendetta against mid-majors. See 2004, when he railed against the selection of St. Joe's as a #1 on account of one loss to Xavier in the A-10 tournament. (The Hawks and Musketeers both ended up being among the last eight teams playing, which I'm sure drove Packer quietly crazy.) This year, he and others complained about the MVC's four bids - aside from tourney winner Southern Illinois, regular season champ Wichita State, analyst darling Northern Iowa, and house-afire Bradley made the field - as though it were some sort of injustice. Let's look at the facts.

1. Who the fuck got left out? You can complain about Air Force, a team with no top 50 wins (and I have). And Bradley wasn't the strongest choice ever, no. But teams like Michigan and Florida State had seed advantages in the first rounds of their conference tournaments and fell to Minnesota and Wake Forest (3-13 in the ACC this year) respectively. You're telling me a Michigan team that won 2 of its last 9 games was that much more deserving because it beat Illinois once? Sure, the Wolverines have a case, but they also held their own destiny. A win over Minnesota - not a good team this year - and they would probably have been in. Cincinnati had the strongest case, and I think they should have made it in over Air Force or Utah State, but the rest I could take or leave.

2. Missouri State got hosed! With an RPI well under 30, the Bears became the, statistically, best team ever to be left home. Now, the RPI is hardly a perfect system, but it's at least an easily accessible stat. Analysts were suggesting for two months that the Missouri Valley was practically a lock for five or even six teams. (Personally, I always thought four was the more likely prognosis.) Now it's down to four, a team that could be strongly argued as deserving was left at home, and the MVC was pulling some kind of snow job on the big conferences? Fuck you, Packer.

3. The MVC hasn't been as unsuccessful as Billy Packer suggests. Gee, Billy Packer said something sweeping, arrogant, and wrong-headed? No way! According to ESPN.com's Pat Forde, who had the stomach to sit through Nantz and Packer's attack on Littlepage, the two argued that "Past NCAA performance by teams from power conferences dwarfs that of teams from leagues like the Valley, and should be kept in mind when issuing bids."

First of all, past performance should NOT be kept in mind when issuing bids. If that were the case, we might as well have made Louisville and Michigan locks - I mean, come on, those programs have national titles, right? And CCNY's exclusion was bullshit.

Second, the MVC really hasn't done all that poorly for a traditional one-bid league (two at the most in most years) whose teams aren't expected by their seeds to win games at all. Let's take a look at recent performances:

2005: #11 Northern Iowa loses by five; #7 Southern Illinois wins by nine, then loses by eight; #10 Creighton loses by two
2004: #14 Northern Iowa loses by five; #9 Southern Illinois loses by one
2003: #11 Southern Illinois loses by one; #6 Creighton loses by six
2002: #11 Southern Illinois wins by eight, then wins by two, then loses by 12; #12 Creighton wins by one, then loses by 12
2001: #10 Creighton loses by 13; #13 Indiana State wins by two, then loses by 17

So in the last five years, by my count, the MVC is 5-11. Impressive? Maybe not. But you have to look at it this way: MVC teams underperformed their seed lines once out of those 11 trips (the 2003 Creighton team that was upset by #11 Central Michigan). By comparison, the teams overperformed three times. And no MVC team has lost by double figures since 2002, and both teams that did so that year had already won at least one game. So it's not like these teams aren't competitive.

"Big deal," you're saying (if you're Billy Packer). "You're going to tell me a team like Michigan or Cincinnati wouldn't do better than that?" I don't know, what makes you so sure they would? Would you pick Cincy over Georgetown (where Northern Iowa currently sits)? Do you think Michigan would have a much better chance against Kansas than does Bradley? I don't.

Really, that's what it all comes down to. The fact is this: as much as we complain about the last few teams in the field every year, none of those teams is winning the national title either way. No 12 seed has ever gotten past the Elite Eight; only one #11 seed has ever made the Final Four. And neither Michigan nor Florida State would have been seeded higher than that, and neither was going anywhere near Indianapolis.

In other words, I say let the mid-majors in over mediocre big-conference teams. Because if you want these teams to improve their scheduling, they have to improve their exposure. Look at Gonzaga! No one questions their placement now - Seth Davis, another prominent CBS face, stated on the air Sunday that he felt Gonzaga was closer to a 1 seed than the 3 they ended up. Why? Because they played a great early-season schedule. But they didn't get to do that because they play in the West Coast Conference. They had some tournament success and were able to build on that. I think we should want other mid-majors to at least be able to do similarly, and the way to do that is by rewarding them for good seasons and hoping that encourages major-conference teams to play them in situations other than "Here's fifty grand to come to our place." The problem is that it's not worth it to Big Six teams to play teams from the MVC when it's the bigger schools that have everything to lose. But college basketball is and should be a national game, and that means everyone should have a chance if they can make their chances.

Another good point by Forde: Packer and Nantz apparently charged Littlepage with suggesting that the MVC was as good as the ACC (because they both had four bids). This certainly proves that Packer and Nantz know nothing about math, but says nothing about the MVC or ACC. (Did I miss the part where Wichita State was a 1 seed?)

4. It was just a weak bubble. If the rest of that hasn't swayed you, cry yourself to sleep with this: it just wasn't a very good year for bubble teams. Remember 1998? Three teams from the MCC (now the Horizon League) got into the field, and Florida State - at 6-10 in the ACC - was possibly the worst at-large ever. Oh, and a mid-major made the final game that year (Utah). So you know what? Maybe this was just a down year for the big conferences. Big freakin' deal. You'll get over it soon, Packer, and will be plenty obnoxious on my TV set into April.

(Seriously, if CBS offered an alternate feed where any game for which Packer was doing color was transmitted with someone else doing it instead (pick whoever you want), but they made it a pay service, how much would you be willing to pay for that? I think I'd go at least fifty bucks for the whole tournament.)

Tournament Challenge update

All this info is available on the Tournament Challenge page, which you should check if you're in the Challenge because that's where I put the newest stuff. The challenge form Excel file is available for download; don't forget to include your birthday in the space below the final game when you're filling it out. As usual, if you are one of the six people on the planet without Excel, you can send the picks via e-mail; just try and do so in a coherent fashion, and don't forget to include the tiebreakers (final game score and birthday). Or print it out and give it to me if you have to. (And are able to; this isn't many of you, though.)

Remember, picks should be in no later than midnight on Wednesday night. I probably won't be able to post them all until Thursday evening (since I don't plan on staying home at all this week), but I'll at least be able to verify that they're all in. Good luck to all!

Thank God this only happens once a year

I think I say this every single year, but: I hate this bracket. It's really getting to me. Even though I've said for a while that this year seems like the kind where the favorites run away with things, I can't believe that would actually be the case. There are always some surprises. But where are they? My first two runs through the bracket yielded minimal stunners, and worse yet, I'm just having a hard time seeing places where I think they could happen. Of course, this could always be one of those years like 1999, where the Final Four was 1-1-1-4, but with the overall parity - and the obvious weak spots of the four #1s - I have a hard time believing that's the case.

If I weren't running the Tournament Challenge, I'd probably talk about my initial impressions of how far certain teams were going to go. But because I'd rather not publicize my picks at the moment, let's talk instead about some of the things that had me going "What the hell?" as I watched the selection show.

George Washington, 8 seed. We know the A-10 is down this year, and aside from a win over Maryland that got worse-looking as the season went on, GW really had no marquee wins and a bad OOC schedule. They also have a questionable Pops Mensah-Bonsu and went out early in the A-10 tourney without him. But at 26-2, was this team's conference really so bad as to merit an 8 seed? It's not like they went 26-2 in the Atlantic Sun. It's not even the 8 seed so much as "here, let's put you right opposite the overall #1." Really, really bad break for the Colonials in Round Two - if they even survive a hot UNCW.

Syracuse, 5 seed. Holy crap. I've talked in previous years about teams zooming up the seed lines beyond all reasonable expectations due to nothing more than a big conference tournament performance, but this was ridiculous. When the Big East Tournament started, Syracuse was out. The win over Cincy put them on the good side of the bubble, the win over UConn locked them... and then beating Georgetown and Pitt was apparently enough to move up, what, five or six seed lines? That just seems preposterous, 23 wins or not. Worth noting - the teams that have their seed lines inflated by a single tourney run frequently seem to flame out early (and if you think four games in four days hasn't taken a lot out of the Orange, you're kidding yourself).

Gonzaga, 3 seed. I don't buy the "Gonzaga had a case at #1" talk because of the weakness of the West Coast... but the Zags can't help their conference for the moment and they played everyone they could in 2005. They probably should have been a 2.

UCLA, 2 seed. And not only that, but based on their position across from Memphis, apparently the strongest 2 seed. Sure, they won the Pac 10 regular season and tourney titles, but how bad was the Pac 10 this year? Are we sure that the committee didn't switch UCLA and Gonzaga by accident?

Air Force and Utah State, in. These had to be the most shocking at-large calls, aside from perhaps Seton Hall (and at a 10, no less). What on earth was Air Force - who lost to the #7 seed in the first round of the MWC tournament and whose OOC schedule was brutally bad - doing getting in over Cincinnati or Missouri State? And how could the talking heads say that the committee was sending Florida State a "you have to play a better non-conference schedule" message when they turn around and let in Air Force? The bubble was weak, but it wasn't this weak. Ditto for Utah State. It feels like these teams only got in because someone on the committee said, "Hey, the WAC and MWC should be two-bid leagues... let's stick the #2 teams from those conferences into the field!"

Tennessee, 2 seed. I'm a bit surprised they stayed up that high with the way they finished the season. Then again, the win over Texas got better-looking as the year went along, and they did beat Florida twice. This year's poster team for "it's your entire body of work, not just how you finish." (They and Syracuse can fight to the death to determine which one the NCAA actually values more. Every year you get these opposite picks that prove that no matter what it says, the NCAA is nothing if not inconsistent.)

Villanova vs. the play-in game. Does this mean Villanova was the #2 overall seed? It can't, right? Because why wouldn't they be in the Washington DC region if that was the case? Does the committee even care who it puts the play-in winner up against? Nova and UConn are in the same subregional location, so it's not a matter of the whole Friday/Sunday thing. Odd.

Nevada, 5 seed. Maybe nothing in the whole field surprised me as much as this one (though Montana way up at #12 as their opponent was a bit shocking too). A win at Kansas before the Jayhawks found themselves is the only really impressive win on Nevada's resume; the 14-game win streak must have factored in here, but then why was Gonzaga only a 3? (Again, inconsistency.) Montana's 12 makes no sense either - aside from a win over Stanford, their OOC schedule ranks among the most pitiful in the field to my eyes, and they didn't even win their conference in the regular season! There's no reason Bradley or Xavier couldn't have taken this spot instead except that I feel like the committee thought matching up mid-major teams from out west had some cachet. Meh.

Flaxetology

Selection Sunday. The most wonderful day of the year? Not quite... but it's gotta be top ten in an average year.

In most years I would just sit back and watch things develop, but this year I've decided to take something of a stab at projecting the field. Of course, I'm doing it before the Sunday finals (of which there are only four anyway), but let's see if I can get even remotely close. Why not?

#1s: Duke, Connecticut, Villanova, Memphis

At first blush these don't seem like very bold predictions. But projecting Memphis as a #1 while Ohio State still has a Big Ten final to play is at least a little risky. A four-loss team with a Big Ten tournament (and regular season) title would certainly be a tempting #1, but Memphis had more impressive out-of-conference scalps; while OSU had just LSU (at home), Memphis took down Alabama, UCLA, Cincinnati, Gonzaga, and Tennessee. I think the Tigers can hold on to this spot. Either way, they and Ohio State will most likely end up on opposite sides of the same region (almost certainly the West).

#2s: Ohio State, Texas, Gonzaga, North Carolina

Other potential candidates for UNC's spot - which I think is the least secure of the four - include Illinois and a surging Boston College - but even though both of those teams own wins over UNC (BC's coming in Saturday's ACC semi), I give UNC the edge by virtue of their win over then-#1 Duke at Cameron Indoor on March 4. Neither BC nor Illinois has that kind of statement win.

#3s: Illinois, Boston College, UCLA, LSU

Some SEC team has to end up here. I take LSU despite their loss to Florida in the SEC semis because Florida's OOC schedule was so weak. UCLA's romping to the Pac-10 tourney title is impressive even in a down year. BC could swap spots with UNC if they manage to beat Duke in the ACC final (the ACC final always seems to carry a disproportionate amount of weight with the committee), but I'll take a chance and say they aren't able to.

#4s: Kansas, Florida, Pittsburgh, Tennessee

Few teams helped their seeding in the past couple days as much as Pitt, even though they lost in the finals to Syracuse. By contrast, Tennessee seemed like a lock for a #2 seed just three weeks ago; their free-fall - the win over Florida notwithstanding - makes even this #4 seem like a possible stretch. But then, who else could get it?

#5s: George Washington, Washington, Iowa, West Virginia

Not a very convincing seed line, if you ask me. GW probably can't get any higher at this point, and missing Pops means they might even drop to #6 (but no lower). Iowa's run to the Big Ten final earns them this spot. WV has a shocking number of losses - including six of their last nine! - but wins at Oklahoma, UCLA, and Villanova make them as good a candidate for this spot as anyone, ten losses or no.

#6s: Oklahoma, Georgetown, Arkansas, Marquette

Even more uninspired picks here. But I'm not sure I see the mid-majors creeping this high (maybe Nevada), so who else do you throw up here? At least there are some big wins in the group: Georgetown over Duke, Marquette over UConn, Arkansas over Kansas.

#7s: NC State, Wisconsin, California, Nevada

Nevada hasn't lost since January. None of their counterparts are that hot - though Cal's run to the Pac-10 final gets them up this high.

#8s: Syracuse, Wichita State, UAB, Indiana

Syracuse and Indiana, probably the two teams in the field whose tournament performances helped them the most. Syracuse went from out, to barely in, to all but a lock, to the automatic bid in just four days. They could slide up maybe even one more line depending (NC State limped down the stretch).

#9s: Southern Illinois, Arizona, Kentucky, Northern Iowa

Two struggling traditional powers and two MVC upstarts. UNI's slightly more impressive OOC performance about equalizes SIU's tourney win. Kentucky might have moved higher if they hadn't lost to South Carolina. Arizona might be lucky to be this high.

#10s: NC-Wilmington, Michigan State, Cincinnati, Bucknell

Cincy is one of the last at-large teams in, but I would keep them ahead of the competition (see the next two seed lines) for now. Many see Bucknell as an 11, but they did go unbeaten in their league, and the win over Syracuse looks better than it has in months.

#11s: San Diego State, Bradley, Texas A&M, Alabama

SDSU was a dicey at-large candidate, but holding on for the Mountain West tourney win should push them to an 11. Bradley's run to the MVC finals got them in, while A&M did well to win their elimination game with Colorado by a huge margin. Alabama had a mediocre record in the OOC, but at least they played some tough games to compile it.

#12s: Missouri State, Xavier, George Mason, Florida State

Any of these teams (save Xavier, auto-bid winners in the A-10) could be bumped if South Carolina wins the SEC tournament. FSU is probably the first to go after their weak exit to a bad Wake team in the ACC tourney's first round. GMU's position is a bit dicey as well, however, because of Tony Skinn's absence for any first-round game. (When you're that close to the edge, you don't want any "without this player they go down a rung" cases.) Seton Hall's loss to Rutgers (and their generally inconsistent form all year) makes them the first team out for me, but in theory they could swap with one of the at-larges on this line.

#13s: Kent State, South Alabama, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Pacific

Probably the four strongest of the auto-bid winners from the clear one-bid leagues. Incidentally, if South Carolina wins the SEC they'll probably show up here; UWM seems most likely to move up to the #12 in that event.

#14s: Winthrop, Northwestern State, Iona, Murray State

Northwestern State is the only one not assuredly in yet. If Sam Houston wins that bid instead, they could drop to a 15 and either Oral Roberts or Penn move up to this line.

#15s: Montana, Davidson, Oral Roberts, Penn

This actually seems like a fairly feisty crop of 15s.

#16s: Southern, Monmouth, Hampton, Albany, Belmont

And, of course, the B-O-B - bottom of the barrel. Monmouth and Hampton will probably end up in the play-in game; neither was a regular-season winner and Belmont was at least a #2 seed.

So that's that. Let's see how it plays out.

A few random thoughts

Not all about college basketball? Nope. But since this blog is going to be pretty much nothing but for the next three weeks or so, might as well get a couple extraneous thoughts out of my head now.

* First of all, just another quick plug for the Tournament Challenge. You can still sign up, and as per the last entry, you will not be excluded simply for not having five dollars into my hand by this Thursday. We're at 13 right now, so I'd love to have at least three more to include more people in the prizes.

* I was at Jewel the other day and there was a sign on the freezer case that said something to the effect of: "Due to massive demand, the Lean Cuisine Paninis are not currently available. Stouffer's is working to fill this demand and more Paninis should be available for June 2006."

Now, this raises a couple of questions:
1. Microwaveable sandwiches were so popular that Stouffer's ran out of them?
2. It takes three months to produce a reasonable supply of frozen sandwiches?

* Is there anything that could possibly be less like the spirit of the band Devo than this? I mean, the A*Teens, at least ABBA was a bubble-gum pop act to begin with. But can you think of a single thing more idiotic than a bunch of taking-ourselves-way-too-seriously middle-schoolers singing "Whip It?" Just take a look at that site - the lead singer describes her musical influences as "Gwen Stefani, Kelly Clarkson, and Fergie from the Black-Eyed Peas." Counter-culturals all! The girl who plays keyboards lists the musical "Wicked" as one of her influences musically. What?? None of these kids were even born within TEN YEARS of "Whip It" being a hit! It's also interesting to note that besides the bassist, none of them list DEVO as a musical influence! Gee, you think they really like Devo, or do you think that they're just doing this because it's a way to potentially get famous? Uh, yeah. Clearly no one at Disney has even the slightest sense of irony, since this whole thing is being done with what looks like a totally straight face. The real question is, why did Devo get in on this one? Either they really need the money or they thought it would be a chance to expose, from the inside, just how lowest-common-denominator pop culture is, and it's the ultimate in satire as most of the participants aren't even aware. I'd love to think it was the latter... but it's probably not.

The funny thing, of course, is that it's not like I'm even much of a Devo fan - I mean, "Whip It" is kind of cool in its way, but it's not like I own all their albums or anything. Heck, I wasn't born when "Whip It" came out either (by two years). Yet this really, really bothers me for some reason. I think it's just because it's symptomatic of everything I loathe about the modern entertainment industry - why have original thought when you can just remake something that was clever or entertaining or original when it was created 20 years ago? It's not even that part of it that bothers me, though, as much as the fact that such things sell. Why take the time to think about what was good about the original? The modern version comes pre-chewed, pre-digested - well, it comes pre-excreted. (But that's another issue.) Remakes almost never live up to the spirit of the original works; they dilute them, boil them down to their simplest parts, and deliver them in a way that removes all that was interesting or challenging about the original art. Think about Planet of the Apes - the original delivered a potent anti-global-war message, while Tim Burton's painful remake features a scene in which the human hero fends off the attacking ape army by detonating a nuclear bomb. That's just one of many, many examples. Musically, how about Britney Spears covering the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction," wholly oblivious to the fact that she's an ingrained part of the mainstream culture the original song so effectively satirizes?

It would be one thing if someone were updating a piece of art and adapting its message to one that fits into the modern world while remaining true to the original. But this happens so infrequently that it hardly even seems worth it. Someone should declare a moratorium on the production of anything that is, at the very least, an explicit remake of an older work. Give the entertainment industry a chance to be original for a while and see if, at the very least, they can't turn out a few things more worthwhile than watered-down rehashings of things that were actually quality.

67 Years and Counting

First off: I put up a page for the Tournament Challenge on the site proper, so check it out here; I'll also add a link to the sidebar for those of you who don't visit the main page (where there is the usual button) much anymore. Also, if you haven't signed up, there's still plenty of time - I hope I haven't driven away any potential players with my seemingly draconian demands for prompt payment. Realistically, any time before the end of the tournament (so, early April) would be fine; I don't want you thinking that if you don't feel like you can get it in within a week that you shouldn't even bother signing up. The earlier deadline was just to try and avoid a repeat of problems in past years. Of course, it may also just be that I don't have that many friends who like basketball. But why should that stop you? Rich and Dave know minimal amounts about sports, and they both finished ahead of me last year!

Second: The iTunes Challenge is really steaming along. I got my wish; we now have six songs left (see the previous post, which I've updated in lieu of cramming this post with most of the same info), and all of them were chosen by someone! We will have a true winner, folks. Good deal.

Third: Wow, Northwestern stinks. Though I think we all got starry-eyed over the Carmody hire at the time, I agree pretty much 100% with Tyler's post on this one (check my comment at the bottom there for a couple extra thoughts)... the Princeton offense works to a point - enough to upset Iowa and Wisconsin every year, and usually sweep the worst couple teams in the conference - but only to a point. The 2003-2004 season, in which the Cats went 8-8 in the Big Ten, was probably about the best-case, and of course that was the one year where they couldn't even manage a winning record during their typical shitty non-conference schedule (you lose at home to Mississippi Valley State and you don't deserve to make the NIT).

Now, Northwestern has never been good. Of the 326 teams that were full members of Division I (as opposed to transitioning schools like North Florida and stuff) as of this season, Northwestern's all-time winning percentage ranks... 320th. 320th! There are just six schools worse than NU's .401 - in order: Texas-Arlington (.398), New Hampshire (.381), Prairie View (.371), Georgia State (.357), VMI (.355), Florida Atlantic (.338). Now, that's bad enough... but as we all know - and as the title of this entry tells you - Northwestern has never made the NCAA Tournament. For that matter, Northwestern has just three NIT appearances DESPITE PLAYING IN A MAJOR CONFERENCE! Do you know how hard it is to miss the NIT when you play in a power conference? You have to... oh, finish below .500 every year. Yeah, that'd do it. (Incidentally, of those six teams below NU, four have made the tourney in their history.)

The funny thing, of course, is that in theory it should be harder to win in football - you need to recruit more players, a mere one or two blue-chippers can't make the whole team, etc. Yet Northwestern has three Big Ten titles (won or shared) in the past decade! Meanwhile, NU's 8-8 Big Ten basketball record in 2004 placed them in a tie for fifth... easily their highest conference finish in my lifetime! Between 1985 and 1997 they finished last or tied for last EVERY SINGLE YEAR! Now that's impressive.

What to do? Let go of Carmody. Sure, a new guy might struggle at first and won't get you the, you know, five or six conference wins that Carmody would... but Carmody went 3-13 as recently as 2003, a year after he led the team to a 7-9, seventh place finish that was at the time their best in nearly twenty years. He's not a bad coach at all, he's just not the right coach. His system isn't going to bring in the talented individual players - as an article in the Daily noted, Northwestern is really a very similar school to Duke, so we could, in theory, do what they do with the right moves. But we didn't get a CPL kid for what, 20 years? Because they didn't want to come to a bad program, and now they don't want to come to a program running the Princeton offense.

This can be done. Dump Carmody, hire a charismatic younger guy who's proven himself at a slightly lower level (see: Duke, Krzyzewski), give him a couple years to recruit. Surely this team can make the tournament in my lifetime.

And surely some other coach wouldn't allow something like what happened today, where the conference's worst three-point shooting team nonetheless hoisted up a tournament-record 31 shots from behind the arc, at one point missing twelve in a row. Ye gods.

I, Tunes

Obligatory reminder - there's still plenty of time to sign up for the BigFlax.com Tournament Challenge! Come on, we could use the entrants. Don't you want a better prize?

An update on the iTunes Challenge:

Remaining to be Played

The Beatles, "No Reply" - Jan
Ben Folds Five, "Don't Change Your Plans" - Drew
Collective Soul, "December" - Ryan
Dave Matthews Band, "Satellite" - Brian H.
Five for Fighting, "Boat Parade" - Rudnik
John Ottman, "I Work for Keyser Soze" (from The Usual Suspects score) - Nemo

Eliminated

The B-52s, "Love Shack" - played 3/9/06 at 9:04 PM
The Beatles, "Can't Buy Me Love" - played 2/28/06 at 7:05 PM
Cheap Trick, "I Want You to Want Me" - Greg - played 3/3/06 at 2:55 PM
Fastball, Better Than It Was - played 3/3/06 at 9:38 AM
Guster, "Medicine" - played 2/27/06 at 12:17 PM
Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, "Suite No. 3 in D Major BWV 1068" (from Bach's Brandenburg Concertos) - played 3/3/06 at 4:50 PM
Idlewild, "Quiet Crown" - Stan - played 2/28/06 at 5:59 PM
Jurassic Park, "Six Inch Claw" (movie dialogue) - Alma - played 2/28/06 at 3:39 PM
Led Zeppelin, "In the Light" - played 3/7/06 at 11:41 PM
Marc Shaiman, "The Slow Down Plan" (from The American President score) - played 2/28/06 at 7:03 PM
Mitch Hedberg, "Saved by the Buoyancy of Citrus" - Tyler - played 3/3/06 at 11:42 AM
Pearl Jam, "Alive" - Craig - played 3/9/06 at 7:56 PM
The Police, "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" - JQ - played 3/1/06 at 9:58 AM
The Romantics, "What I Like About You" - played 2/27/06 at 6:27 PM
Snow Patrol, "One Hundred Things You Should Have Done in Bed" - played 3/9/06 at 6:50 PM
Snow Patrol, "Ways and Means" - played 3/7/06 at 4:57 PM
U2, "Beautiful Day" - played 3/7/06 at 4:36 PM
Weezer, "Butterfly" - played 3/1/06 at 12:18 AM
Weird Al Yankovic, "The Night Santa Went Crazy" - Justin - played 3/4/06 at 6:48 PM

The ones in bold are ones that someone picked. I'm rather impressed with iTunes' (and the iPod's) apparent commitment to having someone really win this thing - we went from 12 left and seven picked, to six left and all picked! It's also funny how we won't have any plays for a full day, and then three go in the space of 135 minutes.

Shifting the Zags

A few continued thoughts on my comment last night that Gonzaga needs a new conference...

It's true, really. It's happened plenty of times throughout the history of college sports - a team changes conference affiliations based on what it thinks will help it become a more elite program. We see it all the time when schools move up from D-II, D-III, or even the NAIA into D-I in basketball, or even D-I teams moving conferences around, like the Conference USA-to-Big East exodus of the past offseason. When College of Charleston moved from the NAIA to D-I, they began play in the TAAC (now the Atlantic Sun), and when they became the class of that conference, they moved up a step to the Southern Conference. (Since then, John Kresse retired and the program has stagnated a bit, so they haven't tried to move up any further, something which might have seemed like a shoo-in eight years ago.)

So why shouldn't Gonzaga do the same? With seven WCC tournament titles in the past eight years (losing out only to San Diego in 2003) and eight WCC regular season titles in the past nine years (losing out only to Pepperdine in 2000 and sharing the title with the Waves in 2002), there's pretty much no competition for the Bulldogs in their league anymore. Despite the top-five poll rankings, however, Gonzaga has exited the NCAA Tournament in the second round each of the last four years. I think we all know that until they face elite competition on a full-season basis, the chances for improvement are marginal - Gonzaga can play all the Michigan States, UConns, Washingtons, and Memphises they can handle in November and December, but when their toughest challenge between Christmas and March is a slumming Stanford team in mid-February - a team they squeaked by at home, it bears noting - it's obvious that this team is not going to be as tournament-tested as one might like.

The only question is, where do you put a team like Gonzaga? If they were east of the Mississippi they'd have their pick of conferences; heck, Conference USA would probably be beating down the door trying to enlist them. But Spokane is pretty remote for most leagues. So let's take a look at the possibilities...

Pacific Ten
Pros: With the Pac Ten on something of a down cycle right now, Gonzaga would have less fear of a "newbie effect" and could probably step into at least the top four teams in the league immediately; it's the only Big Six conference on the West Coast.
Cons: The Pac Ten doesn't have any non-football schools and may not be looking to add any; with the conference on a down cycle, the middle-of-the-pack schools would likely have no impetus to add the Bulldogs, as that would seemingly diminish their own hopes of doing well in the conference.
Closest league member: Washington State is a scant 66 miles from Spokane; it could start a new rivalry!
Final verdict: The Pac Ten would seem like a good fit for the Zags - perhaps the only great fit - but would that conference really want to bring them on board without football?

Big Twelve
Pros: The only other Big Six league with all of its members west of the Mississippi; another conference that, aside from perhaps the very top, is not so deep, allowing the Zags to step in and contend without much dropoff.
Cons: Like the Pac Ten, the Big 12 is entirely made of schools with football - and even more importantly, there is little argument that the Big 12 is a football-first conference.
Closest league member: Colorado is the closest school to Gonzaga, and Boulder and Spokane are 800 miles apart - worse still, every other league member is more than 1000 miles away, with some of the Texas schools more than 1500.
Final verdict: The lack of football hurts here maybe even more than it would in the Pac Ten.

Western Athletic Conference
Pros: In its heyday, the WAC was nearly a major league; it hasn't been quite the same since the Mountain West broke away, but that's what happens when you try to have 16 teams (hint hint, Big East). Currently it gets some respect in the form of Nevada and recent Big West call-up Utah State.
Cons: Is the WAC big enough for Gonzaga? It's a step up from the WCC, but right now it's still firmly in the realm of the mid-major, and though Gonzaga and Nevada would give the league two currently elite (to at least some degree) programs, with a couple other teams that have made noise in the past (Hawaii, Fresno State), it's still not exactly the depth of a major (Idaho and San Jose State combined to go 10-48 this season).
Closest league member: Moscow, home of the University of Idaho, is just 68 miles from Spokane; Boise State is only 286 away.
Final verdict: The WAC might be a solid stepping stone for the Zags; if they can move up and dominate that league as well, perhaps someone like the Pac Ten might give stronger consideration. Still, that the Zags would be the only non-football league member gives pause.

Conference USA
Pros: Well, the name is "USA." It's already pretty spread out (UTEP and East Carolina are more than 1500 miles apart), so what's one more far-flung opponent?
Cons: Since the departure of teams like Marquette and DePaul, C-USA has become yet another football-only league. It's also gotten considerably weaker in terms of its basketball profile, though Gonzaga could help improve that.
Closest league member: UTEP is the closest and they're more than 1200 miles away. Not good.
Final verdict: Doesn't make much sense if the WAC is also an option, especially since the Big East exodus has thrown its status as the seventh big-time league in basketball out the window.

Independent
Pros: Gonzaga's lack of football wouldn't be an issue if they didn't have a conference affiliation, and they could schedule whatever teams they wanted to (or at least were able to).
Cons: When everyone else's conference seasons started, the Zags would suddenly find themselves with pretty slim pickings; how many teams are going to take on a top-ten team as a mid-season tune-up? The rest of the independent crop includes such luminaries as Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Indiana-Purdue-Fort Wayne, Utah Valley State, and recent 0-fer Savannah State. Also, leaving a conference means no possibility of an automatic bid.
Closest league member: N/A
Final verdict: There hasn't been a basketball independent that was a key figure on the national stage in at least 20 years, and with no DePaul or Notre Dame out there now, that doesn't figure to change even if Gonzaga joins the field. These days it's conference affiliation or bust - you think any of the independents wouldn't jump at the chance to be affiliated? Forget this one.

Conclusions
Even if Gonzaga would benefit from switching conferences, it's pretty clear it won't be happening any time soon. The big conferences are likely too football-invested (the only Big Six conference that has non-football schools is the Big East, which is already bloated and certainly much too far from Spokane), and why would Gonzaga want to switch to a conference like the WAC when they're assured of WCC domination as it stands and the WAC would only be a marginal improvement for their overall profile? As long as they can get into the top ten on the basis of a few early-season wins and stay there on the basis of not losing more than a game or two in conference, the Zags are most likely happy where they are - and I wonder if they even think to attribute their recent March struggles to a lack of competition in the league. If they do move, I think the WAC would probably be the best fit, but I'm not holding my breath, either.

And, back to sports.

First off, a Tournament Challenge update. The officially confirmed entrants so far are:

Dad
Drew
Flax
Jan
JQ
Nemo
Rud
Ryan
Tyler*

(* - paid)

The unconfirmed but previously interested:

Craig
Stan

Whether you're on the second list or not, you can officially register for the Challenge by sending an e-mail to this address. I'd love to get at least sixteen (so that someone other than the winner can walk away with something), but we've got a ways to go on that front.

Not much to update in the iTunes Challenge; we're still stuck on 12 songs remaining, with seven of them claimed - the alive participants are Brian H., Craig, Drew, Jan, Nemo, Rudnik, and Ryan.

Thoughts from the weekend-onto-Monday in sports:

* A melancholy Happy Trails to Kirby Puckett. Those of you who get here through the BigFlax.com front page, which is probably almost none of you at this point, may have noticed my tribute to Puckett, a shot of one of my favorite postseason home runs of all-time (along with a rather fitting Jack Buck call that I like so much I actually used it in my yearbook quote in high school).

* Strangely, Puckett's age appears to be up for some debate. Baseball-Reference.com lists March 14, 1961 as his date of birth; so does the back of his 1988 Topps baseball card. ESPN originally reported that Puckett had died at 44 (using the 1961 date), but later reported his age as 45, as did other news outlets. The CNN.com story admits that "Some sources list his year of birth as 1961," but it doesn't bother to clear up the matter for certain (other than going with 1960, I guess).

* Edit: The ESPN.com story no longer mentions the date change, but when I read it late last night it made reference to recent research by the Hall of Fame revealing that Puckett's birth year was 1960 and not the 1961 that had been reported to that point. It's worth noting that Baseball-Reference.com has since changed his date of birth to 1960, so I have as well.

* BMOC traditionally means "Big Man on Campus" and is used to refer to players who have big games, especially in meaningful situations. This weekend I decided it could have a second, opposite meaning - "Bowel Movement on Court," for the college basketball player who takes the worst dump in an important game. J.J. Redick deserves some credit for going 5-for-21 - especially since he went 1 for his last 16 - but he did score 18 points in the loss to UNC, and the rest of the team wasn't exactly picking up the slack - only Shelden Williams really pulled his weight. (And I guess DeMarcus Nelson off the bench, points-wise at least.)

But the winner has to be Jack Leasure of Coastal Carolina. Okay, he's only a sophomore, but the guy was conference player of the year in the Big South... and in 37 minutes against Winthrop, Leasure shot 1-for-15. 1-for-15! 6.7% from the floor! And that's 1-of-9 (11.1%!) from three, and 0-for-6 from two. 0-for-6 from inside the arc? That's horrible! Leasure finished with five points, putting him just fifth on the team for the game, behind a guy who only played nine minutes but scored six points!

What truly makes this worthy of BMOC, though, is that Coastal lost to Winthrop by a single point. 51-50. If Leasure makes ANY of his fourteen missed shots... Coastal wins. Ugly. You feel bad for the guy, of course, but he could probably have had better shot selection a lot of the time, too.

* Am I the only one getting more than a little sick of Gonzaga? Watching tonight's game (which was absolutely frittered away by Loyola Marymount), I saw a team that whines to the refs constantly even though they routinely take significantly more free throws than their opponents, features one of the most accomplished floppers in the college game (Adam Morrison), grabs like crazy, etc. Plus, I'm tired of Gonzaga dominating that conference; move into the Pac Ten or something already. We're not impressed by your ability to dominate these tiny, routinely mediocre schools. Put your school where your mouth is - and with Morrison on the team, it's quite a loud, obnoxious mouth indeed. Plus, as long as Gonzaga doesn't have to play anyone between December and March, they're never going to go anywhere; after watching them barely slip by two overmatched conference opponents (despite shooting 24 more free throws over the two games, something that won't happen in the tournament), I couldn't be ready enough to pick the Zags to lose in the second round (though of course this probably means this is finally the year they go to the Final Four).