An advice column for people who live with people who live for sports
Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on: In today’s segment, I covered:
For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.
You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.
Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on: In today’s segment, I covered:
For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.
You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.
Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on: In today’s segment, I covered:
For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.
You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.
Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on: In today’s segment, I covered:
For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.
You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.
Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on: In today’s segment, I covered:
For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.
You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.
Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on: In today’s segment, I covered:
For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.
You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.
We’re interrupting our normal daily sports forecasts to concentrate on March Madness, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and American cultural obsession. We’ll run you through the games each day and give you a little flavor for each one.
This is a real glass-half-full, glass-half-empty game. On one hand, it’s impossible for both of these teams who provided us with exciting upsets in their first games to advance to the Sweet Sixteen. On the other hand, one of them surely will. Although their seeds are not so different, their history as basketball schools could not be more different. UAB is a true underdog. UCLA is an overdog fallen on hard times masquerading as an underdog. Because of that, I’ll be rooting for UAB.
“What happens when a bearcat meets a wildcat” sounds like the start of a joke my friends and I would have told in middle school. What’s likely to happen here is that the Wildcats will win but one thing is for sure, they’re not going to escape a game with Cincinnati without a few bumps and bruises.
Ohio State needed overtime to get by VCU. Arizona waltzed by Texas Southern. Still, if Ohio State point guard D’Angelo Russell has enough in his tank after playing 44 minutes on Thursday, I could see Arizona having a tough time winning this game. Russell was one of the most impressive players I’ve seen so far in the tournament.
Georgia State is the underdog everyone loves to love this year. Their star player is the coach’s son. Their coach tore his achilles celebrating with the team and seems determined to break something else as he continues to celebrate. Xavier should win this game but the entire world will be pulling for Georgia State.
Villanova was thought to be the weakest of the four 1 seeds coming into the tournament. The fact that this game is on TBS shows a continued lack of respect. The fun thing about sports is that we’ll get a clear signal from the outcome of the game about whether the disrespect was merited.
Georgetown fans were breathing a sigh of relief after their team won its first game in the tournament. In recent years, the Hoyas have been prone to being upset by lower seeded teams early in the tournament. Losing this game wouldn’t be an upset. Utah and Georgetown are a pretty even matchup. Perhaps the most even of the day.
Both these teams just barely escaped being upset in the first round, North Carolina to Harvard and Arkansas to Woffard. Neither one looked very impressive but one of them will be moving on. I wonder if we’ll be more impressed with the teams in this game or equally nonplussed.
NCAA Men’s Basketball – #6 Butler Bulldogs vs. #3 Notre Dame Fighting Irish, 9:40 p.m. ET on TBS.
It seems like ages ago that Notre Dame opened the tournament with a close win over Northeastern. In real-time it was only Thursday afternoon. Butler beat a disjointed Texas team but one of their best players went down with a knee injury. They’ll need him playing at least at three-quarters strength in order to challenge Notre Dame.
We’re interrupting our normal daily sports forecasts to concentrate on March Madness, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and American cultural obsession. We’ll run you through the games each day and give you a little flavor for each one.
After yesterday’s historic insanity, it’s probably too much to hope for for this game to be close. Then again, if there was going to be a 2 seed that gets a real scare in the first round, it would be Kansas. Most of the computer rankings say that Kansas should be flattered to have even gotten ranked so highly by the tournament’s seeds.
If you wanted an exhibit to show that coaching does matter in sports, particularly college basketball, you couldn’t find a better one than Michigan State Coach Tom Izzo. Despite not having the best players most years, his teams always seem to win at least a game or two in March Madness. They are favored over a solid but unspectacular Georgia team.
With all of yesterday’s upsets, the two 5 seeds actually managed to beat the 12 seeds they faced. The 12 over 5 upset is the one that armchair pundits (and we’re all armchair pundits, aren’t we?) everywhere look for. It just seems like at least one 12 seed always beats a 5. 538 ran an interesting article on why this might actually be true. Will Wyoming pull it off?
Or, maybe it’s Buffalo’s turn? Normally at this time of the year we’d see stories about how the snow struck city of Buffalo could really use something to cheer them up but this year, compared to Boston, living in Buffalo was like having a time-share in Palm beach. It’s hard to root against West Virginia and their pressing defense.
This is one of the few NCAA Tournament games that feels like a preview to coming attractions. If Wichita State can get by the Indiana Hoosiers, it will (probably) set up a matchup with in-state rival Kansas on Sunday. Everyone outside of Indiana is rooting for this to happen but I wonder if Wichita’s players will be guilty of looking ahead and get caught for it here.
It seems funny to stick a 2 seed on TRU TV but Virginia is no normal 2 seed. They play a slow, grind-it-out, defensive game. I guess the TV schedulers might have felt that their play was too slow for most viewers. I have to say, I’m curious to see it. The slower you play, the fewer possessions the game has, and the fewer possessions the game has, the higher the chance for luck to play a role in the outcome. Maybe Belmont can get a few bounces and keep this close or even win?!
THE ANTEATERS ARE GOING TO WIN, THE ANTEATERS ARE GOING TO WIN! Here’s a quote from the Wikipedia page on anteaters: “When a territorial dispute occurs, they vocalize, swat, and can sometimes sit on or even ride the back of their opponents.” THAT’S WHAT THEY’RE GOING TO DO!
NCAA Men’s Basketball – #13 Valparaiso Crusaders vs. #4 Maryland Terrapins, 4:40 p.m. ET on TNT.
Take some time before this game to read Jeremy Pahl’s wonderful article about growing up in Valparaiso and what basketball meant to him, his father, and the whole city. You’ll be pulling for the Crusaders afterwards.
Oklahoma State lost six of its last seven games before today. It’s hard to imagine that they’ll just be able to snap out of it and win this game but stranger things have happened. Actually, about ten stranger things happened yesterday. Hmm…
What an amazing matchup! Dentists vs. Devils — hard to say which one is worse. Just kidding, the Robert Morris team is actually called the Colonials, not the Dentists, but how great would that be? Duke is the team that most of the country loves to hate and, knowing that a 16 seed has never beaten a 1 seed, my guess is that we’ll all get to hate Duke for a little while longer.
The funny thing about this game is that despite making the tournament, both these teams are afterthoughts in their own states. Iowa is not thought to be as good as Iowa State or Northern Iowa and Davidson, located in North Carolina, is nowhere near as good as North Carolina or Duke. It kind of makes me want them both to win, although that is obviously impossible.
In case you’re wondering what a “Sooner” is, it’s a historical reference. A sooner was someone who jumped the gun and entered Oklahoma to claim what once was Native American land for themselves just before President Grover Cleveland legalized the land-rush in 1889. Perhaps not quite as bad as the Ole Miss Rebels historical nickname, it’s still pretty despicable. I guess we should all root for the dogs that look like horses team?
Wisconsin is famous for choking in the NCAA Tournament and losing when they’re expected to win. If they do it tonight, they’ll be famous for it forever and ever.
Alas, St. John’s big man, Chris Obepka, who made a name for himself this year for wearing short(er) shorts, is suspended for the tournament, so we won’t be graced by his leggy presence. Having seen St. John’s play in person just a week ago, I suspect we may not be graced by any of their presences for long. They didn’t seem like a very good basketball team to me.
Give yourself a pat on the back if you make it through to this game. That’s a lot of basketball in two days! Rest up, ’cause there’s more on Saturday and Sunday!
We’re interrupting our normal daily sports forecasts to concentrate on March Madness, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and American cultural obsession. We’ll run you through the games each day and give you a little flavor for each one.
Hooooray!! March Madness is here! Let’s get this thing started! Time to settle in on your coach or your bar stool or duck down in your cubicle and get your illicitly streaming phone or tablet going! Unless you’re a Notre Dame fan, you’re all going to be rooting for Northeastern here. The best part of March Madness is the madness — the upsets, so that’s what we want to see!
Okay, the first half of the Northeastern vs. Notre Dame game is over. Let’s switch over to the start of this game. What? What is TRU? Do I even get that channel? Ah, thank god for Sports Illustrated’s guide to finding TRU. Great, here we are. Hmmmm…. UAB’s name is “Blazers” and their mascot is a dragon? Who wants to bet that the dragon was added in later to bowdlerize the original meaning of the nickname. No, don’t look it up, that’s what bar bets are for.
Okay, the first two games aren’t going to satisfy the country’s itch for an upset, so maybe this one will. Why the heck did the tournament decide to start with three #14 vs #3 matchups anyway? I’m guessing those are always the lowest rated games, so why not put them during the day when most people are at least supposed to be working anyway, but it does make for a bit of an inauspicious start to the tournament. Patience. Patience and more popcorn. Let’s go Georgia State! This would be a great upset story — their coach tore his achilles tendon while celebrating the win that put them into the tournament. He was hugging his son, a player on the team. Also, that guy Kevin Ware who broke his leg so terribly when he was on Louisville and they were in the Final Four a couple years ago is on this team.
Okay, so this is unlikely to be a competitive game, but it does give all of us a chance to actually see Arizona. Unless you’re on the West Coast or are a real college basketball junkie, you probably haven’t seen the Wildcats play yet this year and they’re supposed to be one of the two or three teams that could give Kentucky a run for their money. Are they really that good?
Here we go! Two hours and thirty minutes since the tournament began and we’ve got what should be a real, competitive game. Not only is a 11 vs. 6 closer on paper than the earlier games but Texas is an unusually talented 11 seed. They’re one of those teams that, if they could put their shit together and play well for a week or two, could make a deep run. Butler, the team that’s used to playing the role of the underdog, is the overdog in this matchup and it should be interesting to see how they react.
UCLA was once the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team of men’s basketball. They won everything all the time. Nowadays? Not so much. SMU is a different story. They’re coached by the 74 year-old peripatetic coach, Larry Brown, who is still the only coach to ever win an NCAA championship and an NBA one. Many people felt they should have gotten into the tournament last year, so they’re a bit of a sentimental favorite this time around, now that they’ve made it.
Glurb. So much basketball. I gotta go do something else. But wait, this could be a good game. And after this one, there’s a quick break for an early dinner before the next one comes on. I’ll stick it out. Plus, there’s some built in interest here. The favorite in this game is VCU, a team from a small conference, and the underdog is Ohio State, a big school from a big conference. If you need a tie-breaker to figure out who to root for, VCU’s coach is named Shaka Smart!
“You’ve had your dinner,” the March Madness gods chortle, “now get back to the TV!” You meekly obey and watch poor Lafayette’s ritual slaughter at the hands of Villanova.
Now we’re cooking with gas. The second of four games all starting within 40 minutes. An 8 vs. 9 game is always a toss-up in terms of predicting what is going to happen and usually it’s a close game too. It’s hard to get too excited about either of these moderately successful teams in big, power conferences, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Cincinnati. They just seem like a tough team most of the time.
This is Harvard’s fourth appearance in the NCAA Tournament in a row. They’ve won their first game the last two years, upsetting higher ranked teams both times. This has a lot of people anticipating this game and hoping that Harvard can make it three in a row and show up the North Carolina basketball royalty. After a few minutes, you’ll realize this isn’t going to happen. Luckily, there’s lots of other games to watch.
This is another highly anticipated upset possibility. Two things play into that. First of all, there’s the tournament truism that a 12 always beats a 5. Also, Stephen F. Austin did it just last year when they beat number 5 seed VCU as a number 12 seed. Don’t buy into it. According to virtually all of the expert rankings out there, Utah is closer to a top ten team this year than the 20-24th best team their seed would suggest. They should be able to handle Stephen F. Austin.
Entering the home stretch for day one of the tournament. Only three games left. This is a sneaky good game. LSU has a couple of solid NBA prospects on their team, which is surprisingly something a lot of these teams can’t say, and North Carolina State actually beat Duke, Louisville, and North Carolina this year, so you know they can put on a show.
One day a 16 seed will beat a 1 seed. It won’t be today. One day Kentucky might lose but also, not today. I find it interesting that CBS would even want to show this game but I guess Kentucky is the biggest star of this tournament and even showing them in a blowout will get great ratings.
And now, finally, the game we’ve all been waiting for. This is one of the most popular choices for a big upset in round one. Somewhere between 15-20% of everyone who’s filled in a bracket thinks that the Eastern Washington Eagles are going to beat the Georgetown Hoyas. Why is this? Well, for one thing, a lot of people felt that Georgetown should really have been seeded lower than they were — that they made a better 5 or 6 seed than a 4 seed. Also, Georgetown has been a disappointing tournament team over the last few years. In fact, they haven’t made it past the first week of games since 2007.
Sports is no fun if you don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what’s going on: In today’s segment, I covered:
For email subscribers, click here to get the audio.
You can subscribe to all Dear Sports Fan podcasts by following this link. Music by Jesse Fischer.
