Hoping we never have to play Illinois.

Poster format courtesy of Motivator

Why I Hate March

I just spent the last three hours not watching the Kansas-Boston University first round NCAA game. In case you didn't join me in not watching, KU spent the first 25 or so minutes wondering why the BU players weren't genuflecting. Then they concentrated for a few minutes, and the game was over. Because of course, you know, when #1 meets #16, #16 has never won, right?

Trust me. Some day it will happen. And which team will that be? We'll, let's look at the past for some clues, starting here:

• 2010: #1 Seed, lost in second round
• 2007: #1 Seed, lost in Sweet 16
• 1998: #1 Seed, lost in second round
• 1997: #1 Seed, lost in Sweet 16
• 1995: #1 Seed, lost in Sweet 16
• 1992: #1 Seed, lost in second round

Not to mention Bradley, or Bucknell, or the suffering I did during the Ted Owens years.

It's enough to make one start a website, except a) someone beat me too it, and b) Roy was as bad, or worse, because he didn't win a Championship until he clicked his heels three times and went home.

But mark my words, the #1 Seed in NCAA history to lose in the first round will have a six-letter name on the front of the jersey, and have two Crimson and Blue mascots that look something like this.

Well, It's Over

and there are no Kansas teams left playing basketball this year.

Some thoughts:

• K-State's loss to Butler was, in large part, due to the fatigue left over from the Xavier game. Just this morning, the Washington Post ran a story of the great KSU conditioning program.
• At least the left side of everyone's bracket is blown up as badly like mine. I doubt there were more than 100 people, all from Indianapolis, who had Butler in the Final Four.
• And, as will be noted 5,000,000 times between now and next Saturday, the Butler gym was the scene of Milan's historic defeat of Muncie Central in 1954.

Damn

Well, at least K-State is still in it.

You have no idea how painful that is to write.

One Down

Phew!.

All year, every game, KU has always played down to to the opposition. And it's going to come back to bite them before we're done, certain prognosticators notwithstanding.

It will be a morality play, just like Memphis can't hit free throws turned out to be in 2008.

My bracket, and my heart, say KU wins it all (it's sort of mandatory for KU alums), but if I had to bet, my wallet would say it ends next week.

And I'd never be happier to lose a bet.

Who Woulda Thunk?

Bobby Knight and I go way back — I was at Indiana University from 1973-79, including the great undefeated 1975-6 team featuring Scott May and Quinn Buckner. Over the years I've had the chance to notice that when he's coaching he's not particularly stable.

However, over the last year Knight and Brent Musburger telecast Big XII basketball games, mostly those involving KU and/or K-State. I've also heard him on the Mike & Mike radio show on my drive to work.

When he's not coaching, Bobby Knight is smart, witty, thoughtful, and doesn't just talk to fill the air. It's amazing.

Of course, I have no way of knowing what he's like off-camera, but it's a considerable improvement over the old Knight.

Maybe he should have started out as an announcer.

Something You'll Never See Again

A little more fun with the Major College Major Sports in 2007-8: I found 239 teams which played both Division I Men's Basketball and either Division I (Bowl Subdivision) or Division I-A (Championship Division) football. The table below presents the wins, losses, and winning “percentage” for Football and Basketball. I then averaged the two percentages, to compute a “Combined Percentage,” and ranked the schools in order according to that. Fans of Kansas football (remember the slogan: “A Tradition Since September”) will note that this year was, indeed, special.

This table just shows the top 25. I've put the complete list elsewhere. Let me know which teams I've missed, there are probably several.

Rk	School	Football			Basketball			Comb.
		W	L	Pct.	W	L	Pct.	Pct.
1	Kansas	12	1	0.9231	30	3	0.9091	0.9161
2	Brigham Young	11	2	0.8462	27	7	0.7941	0.8201
3	Dayton	11	1	0.9167	21	10	0.6774	0.7970
4	Tennessee	10	4	0.7143	28	4	0.8750	0.7946
5	Texas	10	3	0.7692	27	6	0.8182	0.7937
6	Wisconsin	9	4	0.6923	29	4	0.8788	0.7855
7	West Virginia	11	2	0.8462	23	10	0.6970	0.7716
8	Boise State	10	3	0.7692	24	8	0.7500	0.7596
9	Memphis	7	6	0.5385	33	1	0.9706	0.7545
10	Southern California	11	2	0.8462	21	11	0.6562	0.7512
11	Northern Iowa	12	1	0.9231	17	14	0.5484	0.7357
12	Oklahoma	11	3	0.7857	22	11	0.6667	0.7262
13	Massachusetts	10	3	0.7692	21	10	0.6774	0.7233
14	New Mexico	9	4	0.6923	24	8	0.7500	0.7212
15	Connecticut	9	4	0.6923	24	8	0.7500	0.7212
16	Ohio State	11	2	0.8462	19	13	0.5938	0.7200
17	Appalachian State	13	2	0.8667	17	13	0.5667	0.7167
18	North Dakota State	10	1	0.9091	14	13	0.5185	0.7138
19	San Diego	9	2	0.8182	20	13	0.6061	0.7121
20	Drake	6	5	0.5455	26	4	0.8667	0.7061
21	Clemson	9	4	0.6923	23	9	0.7188	0.7055
22	Davidson	6	4	0.6000	25	6	0.8065	0.7032
23	Southern Illinois	12	2	0.8571	17	14	0.5484	0.7028
24	Western Kentucky	7	5	0.5833	25	6	0.8065	0.6949
25	Arizona State	10	3	0.7692	19	12	0.6129	0.6911

Baskeball Rule Changes I'd Like to See

While watching the (fantastic) NCAA Men's Basketball tournament, I realized that there are a few rules I'd like to see changed. One I've mentioned before, but the others are new, at least for me.

• As I mentioned before, eliminate the ability to call time out when you're about to loose the ball. In the Monday night game, during overtime, I think, there was a play where a half-dozen players were on the floor going after the ball. Someone tried to cradle the ball and call time. And we've all seen people call time as they're flying out of bounds. Why do we allow this? If you're trying to put the ball in play from out of bounds, you can't call time after the four second count. You can't call time after you've spent eight seconds in the back court. Yet you can call time as you catch an errant pass while you're flying out of bounds, if you can get your hands into a “T” before you touch down.
  
  In the timed cases mentioned above, the purpose of the rule is to forbid a team to call time out before a change of possession. Well, in the case in Monday's game, or the guy-flying-out, a change of possession is about to occur. So why can you call time?
• Move the three-point line out another foot or so. Looks like this will happen in the fall.
• Except in the case of injuries, a substitute has to stay in the game for two changes of possession: this eliminates the offense-defense substitutions you see at every whistle during the end game, which tends to slow things down immensely. I noticed this while watching taped games during the tournament. My DVR has a ten-second advance button. When I heard the substitution buzzer sound, I'd hit the advance once. I never missed a single second of play, or a free throw.
• And here's the biggie: Eliminate the Hack-a-Shaq. Kansas won the game because they did something illegal: they fouled. Repeatedly. That Memphis didn't take advantage (and I'm glad they didn't) is the Tigers' fault, but the point is, KU took advantage of a bad rule. It gets worse, at least from my point of view: in the last ten seconds of regulation, Memphis was trying to foul someone, anyone, so that Kansas would get two free throws, rather than a chance to hit a three and tie the game. A Memphis foul, an illegal act, would most likely win them the game. OK, KU could have done the make-the-first, miss-the-second, trick, but then they'd have to get the rebound and put it back up with only five or six seconds left, at best.
  
  Not to mention, the endless trek to the foul line at the end of a close game is boring. It doesn't help your ratings, CBS, got that?
  
  So let's change the rule: let the team fouled in the last two minutes have its choice, assuming they're in the bonus:
  • On One&One fouls, if the team makes the first shot, they can either shoot the second shot or take the ball out of bounds.
  • On Two shot fouls, the team can take the both shots, or take one shot and then get the ball out of bounds.
  • On Three shot fouls, it's two shots plus ball.
  • Of course, on flagrant fouls, it's still two shots plus the ball.
  • You still only get one shot if you're fouled in the act of shooting and make the basket.
  • If you're not in the bonus yet, you get the ball out of bounds, same as now.
  This change would speed up the end-game considerably, as well as keeping a team from profiting while fouling. (Sorry, Memphis, it's not retroactive.)

Anybody else like any of these?

Note added in proof: I swear I did not read this until after I first posted the above.

The Game

KU 75, Memphis 68 (OT)

(Photo from Sports Illustrated, motivational design from Motivator.)

I didn't watch all of the Davidson-KU game yesterday, because I was waiting in line for the Washington Nationals' Season/Home/Stadium opener – more about that in another post.

I did watch most of the first half, except for the ten or so minutes after the first TV timeout when I turned the TV off because my blood pressure was getting up to pre-medication levels.

KU was cold, nervous, and generally not playing up to its potential – if you have to rely on Sasha Kahn to save you, then you're in trouble. Fortunately they managed to “contain” Stephen Curry, holding him to 25 points – almost half of Davidson's total.

So next week we get to play Roy – the first time that Carolina and Kansas have played since the divorce. I don't know what to think. Did KU get its bad game out of its system, or is it really, truly, the fourth-best team in the Nation, just like they were seeded? At least if they are officially the underdog they will probably be a lot looser than they were on Sunday.

And, way back in about 1990, a Kansas coach who had never been to the Final Four led his team to a victory over Dean Smith in the semifinals. I think it's about full-circle time.

Kansas by five.

Yet Another Reason To Hate Duke

Even though I'll probably be spending a year there:

CoachK.com

The photo just says “Snake Oil Salesman,” doesn't it?

Junior Madness

Back online again. It's been a while, I know.

While the Big Dance gets started, I just want to mention there's a smaller version going on simultaneously: The National Junior College Basketball Championship. This has been in Hutchinson, Kansas, for as long as I can remember, and in Kansas, it's a very big thing, at least if the Hutchinson News has anything to say about it. Sixteen teams, one week, and twenty-six games – you play four games or until you lose twice, whichever comes first. When I was a kid our coaches used to take us to the early round daytime games: back then it probably cost $2.00 each to see four games. Only a few big-college teams went to the NCAA tournament, so there were a lot of out-of-competition Division I coaches there, looking for some help for the next season. There was also a certain lack of defense, so the games were all fun to watch – remember, this was back before the shot clock and the three-point line, so a team that wanted could really slow things down. Not in Hutch, because you can't impress a D-I coach with your ability to dribble the ball at half-court.

Unfortunately it's on neither ESPN, nor Fox Sports, nor national radio, though you can buy radio rights for $150/game. It's a shame, since a lot of these kids will be playing for the Big Boys next year. I know, it conflicts with the upset round of the Dance, but still, you think there would be a market...

The Best Place to See a Basketball Game

We could go on about the Mitchell report, and the fact that a couple of newly acquired Nationals are on it. But let's not.

Instead, let's celebrate what The Sporting News calls the Trip of a lifetime: Kansas' Allen Fieldhouse.

I spent many a happy hour in the Phog from '69-'73. Some not so happy ones, too, as KU wasn't all that good in '72 and '73.

The Madness of March (Part III)

Some years ago I created a “Top Ten” list called The Top Ten Reasons You Know You're a Jayhawk. The top reason was:

1. You spend a week or two every March crying.

That about sums it up.

I'm trying to install a 200 GB HD for my /home directory. I'll post my experience, good or bad, sometime this week.

The Madness of March (Part II)

If you write something that says Part I in the title, then you've got to do a “Part II”. Unless you're Mel Brooks, of course. So let's talk about last night's Kansas – Southern Illinois game:

God, it was ugly. I know, that's the way SIU plays, and I say “more power to you,” except when I actually have to watch the thing. There was no offensive flow on either side. Bodies flew frequently. No one was seriously hurt because, most likely, he was falling on someone who was already down on the floor.

The officiating contributed to this, I think. Off the ball the game was called very tightly. I don't think I've ever seen so many illegal screen calls in a major game. However, near the ball, you could practically assault people with a pipe wrench and not get a call. This helped SIU more than it hurt, but that's not their fault.

KU did just enough to win. They had a very few near-transition baskets. Several times they tried to score off transition in a 2-on-3 3-on-4 situation, and they'd inevitably get stuffed. SIU did everything that they needed to do to win, except get the ball in the basket two more times. KU was lucky, without a doubt. But just about every winning team needs a bit of luck, so they say.

Maybe this is the year?

Aaagh! I've violated the pessimism rule! We're doomed!

The Madness of March (Part I)

Well, here I sit, watching the Kentucky-Kansas game on my computer. Currently it's 15-14 for the good guys.

Historically, of course, this series has not been a lot of fun for KU. However, the last two years have been OK. Of course, during the last two years the season ended before this weekend.

(19-19 at the 8 minute TV timeout.)

Anyway, I want to take this opportunity to continue to break all the basic rules of blogging, go completely off topic, and give you one of those bullet-lists of thoughts about the tournament:

• The ACC, as even Billy “Duke University” Packer, admits today, was over-rated. Duke especially. Seven teams in, only one remains. Of course, if I had my druthers, no league would get more than four teams into the tournament. I mean, really, if you can't finish in the top three/four or win you conference tournament, why should we think you can win the Big Dance?
• 28-25 KU at the four minute timeout
• The other 3 number-one seeds had some nervous moments getting out of the second round. Eventually we'll see a number 16 seed beat a number one, and even get into the final four. Things are that balanced.
• CBS's March Madness On Demand (MMOD) works well on the Linux box, using the mplayer plugin. Oddly, it doesn't work on the Mac, because OS X doesn't support Windows Media Player, and I'm not going to search around for the appropriate plugin. So I'm typing this stuff up on the Mac while I watch the game on Hal. This also allows me to avoid watching when it gets too tense: I just work on this entry.
• Sports Illustrated picked KU to win it all. Well, I guess I won't have to worry then.
• 36-30 KU at the half. Kentucky's basically keeping KU from running, and KU had some early frustration charging fouls. Nevertheless, KU isn't playing badly, and Billy thinks UK is getting tired. We'll see. Hopefully KU learned enough from the two Texas games so they don't fold (see the Texas A&M game) if the 'Cats make a run. If you asked me at the beginning if I'd take a 6 point lead at half, I'd have said “hell yes”, of course.
• KU 54 UK 42 with 14:11 left in the half. No idea how. I spent halftime and the first few minutes of play vacuuming rabbit-droppings off the back porch — don't ask.
• Irritatingly, the CBS live scoreboard and play-by-play are now about 80 seconds game-time ahead of the video. So I know what's about to happen. Actually, when I think about it, this is a good thing, since I know when not to look.
• If I was going to really reform the NCAA tournament, I'd let everyone in. Make it like a state high-school tournament. It's almost that way now. Is there a conference that doesn't have a tournament? If not, then the only teams that don't have a final chance at the dance are independents. Even Notre Dame, the most famous independent of them all, plays in the Big East for the basketball tournament.
• 56-43 at the 12 minute timeout.
• Another thing I'd do is take the money out of the equation. Teams should only get expenses for the players (plus parents and siblings), coaches (ditto), cheerleaders, band, and a few VIPs (A.D., President, Governor, etc.). All the other money goes into the NCAA pot, and it's divided equally among all the teams in Division I. That way there's not as much pressure to cheat to win. Of course, this has about as much chance of happening as Arnold has of becoming President.
• One of the irritating things about MMOD on the Linux box is that the mplayer-plugin doesn't play unless it's visible. So I can't move to another area of FVWM's virtual desktop, nor can I completely cover the video part of the browser window. Which is why I'm typing this on the Mac.
• 64-51 at the 7:38 TO, but Kentucky's at the line. Still waiting for them to make a run.
• In baseball, it's often the case that the winning team will score more runs in one inning than the losers score in the whole game. Basketball, too, is a game of streaks. I haven't seen a study of it, but I'd guess that in most games the winner has one or more runs where they score 8+ points in a row. It's partly talent, partly luck. The example is the Syracuse-KU title game in 2003, where KU was the superior team, but Carmelo and company kept running off streaks that force Kansas to keep coming back.
• Scoreboard says that Kentucky only has 6 team fouls to KU's 8, which is a bit surprising, considering UK has so many players in foul trouble.
• In other games, looks like Texas is going home, which means that Kevin Durant is playing his last college game. He's going to be a great one in the NBA if he gets on a team with some support.
• 71-56 at 5:46. KU now has 10 team fouls, which Billy and Jim somehow haven't noticed. If Kentucky gets on a run, they get two shoots on all fouls. Of course, the 'Cats show no sign of making a run, but that doesn't mean they don't have one in them. KU hasn't exactly broken away, and a 15-point lead is only a five-possession game.
• Speaking of Billy and Jim, who decided that Chicago was the prime site this weekend? Not that I don't think so, but doesn't Billy ACC really belongs in Carolina. They aren't really talking about the game, anyway, just the tradition of the teams. Which is fine, but there's a friggin' game going on, and it's not totally out of reach for UK, at least not yet: 76-61 at 4:12, and Randolph Morris has 18 points to go with his three fouls.
• KU stops a 7-0 Kentucky run (see?) with a Collins FG. 78-63 with 2:52 left. Maybe? I keep flashing back to the 1978 game at Lexington, where KU was ahead by about 6 points with a minute to play, no three-point shot, no shot clock, clock keeps running after a basket — and lost anyway. 6 points/1 minute/old rules < 15 points/3 minutes/new rules. It's still a five possession game, and I don't like KU's historic freethrow shooting.
• OTOH, now it's 81-66 with 1:50 left. KU basically blew a minute off the clock without losing ground. Not bad.
• CBS, having learned nothing from the 2000 election, has put KU into the regional finals with 1:32 left. Of course, now it's 83-66.
• The Chant is going through the crowd. Funny, when I was at KU we never did this during the game. I guess it's sort of like Red Auerbach's cigar.
• Finally, it's over: KU 88, UK 76. And KU's now 6-19 in the series, with the last three in a row.
• And they're waving the wheat. Nor more than four more nights of agony left this year.

Well, thanks to all of you that stayed through the whole entry. Sometime next week we'll get back to the Linux part of the blog.

And We're Back

... from Denver. Actually, I've been back for a week, but I've had a bad cold for all of that time and just haven't been up to posting.

I want to talk about the NCAA tournament (KU plays Kentucky on Sunday, Joy.), but first I want to mention a few things about the trip, which, as you may recall, took me from DC to Denver to Holyrood (KS) back to Denver to DC.

• The trip started out uneventfully, as I walked up to the United Counter at Former-Republican-President-Capital-City-National-Airport, where I was informed that my flight had been canceled and that I was a really bad boy because I was too late arriving to board the flight which left an hour before my scheduled flight. So they gave me a $58 cab voucher and sent me on my way to Dulles, where I got a direct flight to Denver, meaning I didn't have to stopover in Chicago. It also gave me time to have a leisurely breakfast at Dulles, rather than a quick lunch at O'Hare, so I was more than satisfied. United, I suspect, lost out on the deal.
• Acre for acre, the flattest country in the world is in — Eastern Colorado. Denver, famously, is 5,280 feet above sea level. So, claims its sign, is a town 100 miles to the east on I-70. (Sorry, forgot the name.) On any 100 mile stretch of I-70 in Kansas you're going to change altitude by at least 1,000 feet. So don't give me any of this flatter than a pancake crap.
• Nevertheless, I love the plains. When I picked up my rental car at DEN, the clerk looked at my driver's license, saw I was from Maryland, and said, “I lived there, once. Too many trees.” I agree. Between Denver and Salina, when you do get to the top of a hill, even an overpass, you can, indeed, see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles.
• Kansas was windy — how windy, you ask? So windy that everyone complained about it. I don't think the wind dropped below 30 mph from Thursday through Saturday. Sunday was a bit better, but I was driving back to Denver, then.
• Just after you pass the “Denver 100” sign on I-70, you can see Pike's Peak. Impressive. It's only 50-60 miles away, but still. Then you get to see the whole front range all the way into the airport.
• Denver's not a bad town. 16th Street is set up as a mile-long open mall, and it's reasonably easy to walk. The best restaurants, though, are off of 16th. Ask where they are at your hotel, because if you wander too far off of 16th you get into some pretty rough areas really quickly.
• Denver has one of the greatest innovations in city planning I've ever seen: the caddycorner cross walk. At busy four-way intersections, once in every stoplight cycle all traffic lights turn red. Then, if you look across to the far street corner, you'll see one of those little white men shinning at you. You're then allowed to walk directly across the center of the intersection to that corner. This cuts down dramatically on jaywalking. I hope other cities adopt the practice.
• The meeting went pretty well. The session where I gave my talk was populated by old friends, so we had a lot of friendly discussion, back-and-forth, and catfighting. A fun time was had by all, and we might even get a few papers out of the deal.
• Flying back was surprisingly uneventful, except that I couldn't watch the movie (A Night at the Museum, I believe) because the headphone connection on my armrest didn't work. Oh well, it will be out on pay-per-view shortly, anyway.
• Of course, the DST time change meant that I went through a 3-hour time change, meaning that I was totally jet-lagged. On top of that, a came down with the aforementioned cold, so I've been completely wiped out for the last week. I only revived about 10 minutes into the first half of the KU-Niagara game, when it became apparent that KU was actually going to get to play on a weekend in March for the first time in three years.

So that's what I've been doing lately. More on basketball tomorrow, and maybe we'll even get to computing sometime next week.

The Max Factor

When I was a young kid, in the 60's, we used to listen to Jayhawk's basketball on the radio. The announcer was Max Falkenstien. He'd already been at it for almost 20 years.

Last year, if you listened to KU basketball, the announcer was ... Max Falkenstien. He's been at it 59 years, and still going.

Persistence pays off. It also helps to be good. In September, Max will receive the 15^th annual Curt Gowdy electronic media award from the Naismith Hall of Fame.

Previous winners include Gowdy, Chick Hearn, Marv Albert, Caywood Ledford, Bob Costas, and somebody named Vitale. Of them all, only Ledford and Falkenstien spent there entire careers associated with one school. (Oddly enough, both schools have the initials K and U, though not necessarily in that order.)

I can't find it anywhere on the web, but I seem to remember that Gowdy stopped doing college basketball after the 1971 NCAA semifinal between Kansas and UCLA, when he forgot the names of some Kansas players.

How much is one shot worth?

At the end of the Connecticut-Duke NCAA semi-final game, with Tech leading 79-75, Duke's Chris Duhon launched a one-footed, one-handed, 40 ft shot with less than 1 second on the clock. It went in, but Duke still trailed 79-78, and Tech won the game. So it's a meaningless shot, right? Wrong. The point spread was Connecticut+2. So about $100 million changed hands in the opposite direction from what would have happened if Duhon had just dribbled out the clock.

(Thank's to ESPN's Mike & Mike in the Morning for pointing this out.)

Yes, I originally had Georgia Tech-Duke. Asleep, I guess.

9:21 p.m. EDT

That's when this year's NCAA Division I National Championship Game began. Why? I can think of three reasons:

• CBS didn't want to shut out the west coast fans. This way the game starts at 6:21 PDT, or 6:21 MST for Arizona. Of course, the last team from the west that went to the final for was Arizona -- in 2001.
• CBS really wanted you to watch the Peter Jennings special on ABC about Jesus and Paul.
• CBS wanted to plug two lousy sitcoms in the 8-9 hour.

("I'm going to take door number 3, Monty.")

Let's see. What would happen if Major League Baseball started a World Series Game at 9:21? Media explosion. "You're keeping the game away from the young fans.!!!" But the NCAA gets a free ride on this. Why?