Sunday, March 25, 2007

The Most Overblown Storyline of the Day

The UNC/Georgetown game is so awesome on so many levels. One of those levels is the respective paces of each team - UNC ranks 9th fastest and Georgetown 9th slowest in the nation in adjusted tempo. And of course we’ll hear over and over from the CBS personnel how the team that controls the tempo will have a big advantage.

But neither team will control the tempo. Georgetown will play slow and UNC will play fast. I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that early on, Billy Packer will lament that the game is being played at Carolina’s pace and Georgetown won’t be able to hang because of it. The game will probably be played at a medium pace with a decent amount of points, making it seem a little faster paced.

Consider though that the Hoyas fastest game was a November 15th battle with Vanderbilt that they won by 16. Their most recent game against Vandy was 17 possessions slower than the regular-season contest, and the Hoyas needed a swallowed whistle to survive.

Sure, Georgetown shouldn’t play in a 75 possession game and UNC doesn’t want a 58 possession game, but it’s unlikely either will happen. You’ll hear the tempo thing brought up as the most important aspect to this game, and it’s not close. Let’s start with keeping Roy Hibbert out of foul trouble…

Saturday, March 24, 2007

End of the World Liveblog

The chance of all four #1 seeds winning their Elite 8 games is 17.7%. I’ll keep you posted.

          Final4 Finals Champs
1 UNC      63.6   42.2   24.7
1 Kansas   63.2   38.9   22.0
1 Florida  75.6   37.1   18.8
1 Ohio St. 58.2   24.3   11.0
2 G'town   36.4   19.3    8.7
2 UCLA     36.8   18.1    7.8
2 Memphis  41.8   14.2    5.4
3 Oregon   24.4    5.9    1.5

4:55 PM MDT - Joey Dorsey fails miserably to defend planet Earth. Doomsday is a very real 30.3% possibility now. If you don’t beat Ohio State when Oden is off the court, you’re not going to beat Ohio State. Now, maybe Arron Afflalo can save the world.

          Final4 Finals Champs
1 UNC      63.6   40.2   23.6
1 Kansas   63.2   38.9   21.6
1 Ohio St.        41.7   19.0
1 Florida  75.6   37.1   18.5
2 G'town   36.4   18.1    8.2
2 UCLA     36.8   18.1    7.7
3 Oregon   24.4    5.9    1.5

7:18 PM MDT - Global destruction averted. I shall build a shrine to Arron Afflalo.

          Final4 Finals Champs
1 UNC      63.8   39.0   24.2
2 UCLA            52.4   23.6
1 Ohio St.        43.9   22.5
1 Florida  75.1   40.6   19.8
2 G'town   36.2   17.1    8.3
3 Oregon   24.9    7.0    1.7

I’ll update these odds for the new ratings later. [Update: the final set of odds is updated with ratings including Saturday’s results.]

Friday, March 23, 2007

Scoring Oddities

Anybody remember Tennessee’s Josh Tabb making a three-pointer last night? He was officially credited with Chris Lofton’s first 3-ball. Thus, Lofton officially finished with 24 points when he should have had 27. [Update: Tabb hit a 3 later in the first half which was credited to Lofton. So it’s all good, I guess.] And yeah, from the Vols perspective, it was nice to have Greg Oden on the bench for so long. While Tennessee was a scorching 16 of 31 on 3’s, they gave some of that back by going 0-for-11 on 2-point jumpers.

The other HD’s…

SIU/Kansas
Pitt/UCLA
Texas A&M/Memphis