Cool Hand Lucroy

Yeah, they gave up the 9-0 run up 64-59. That was killer. Nearly overcame it, but Queen just made the better play at the end.

Tournament needed that. Great game. Was hoping for the Rams there, but not at all disappointed to see a fun, really good Maryland team pull it out. They have a much better shot against Florida.

Bama seems vulnerable, and that game is a true class of styles. I just don't trust SMC against that kind of athleticism. Vandy was a great matchup for them. I think Randy Bennett deserves a second S16. That program does. I will be rooting for it like crazy, but I don't have a lot of belief. Florida just made clutch shots and UCONN didn't. Failure to rebound missed free throws killed them, along with the ball turnover into the under 4, where they had the ball up 3. Duke took some gearing up, but they are now making this a blowout. Good team there. I weirdly like their guys a lot. If not for the name on the jersey, I'd almost be cheering for them.

Especially with replay, the umps argument is nuts. Bad work. Bad union leadership. Pros of this FAR outweigh the cons. First base has always been a footrace scenario. Footraces work best with finishing lines and not finishing points. Anyone who has ever done musical chairs with grade schoolers knows that races to points are a recipe for injury.

They had already used one at 25-11 or something? 26-12? So, they didn't have the use it or lose it, and you did end up needing the last TO for Gilmore to secure the possession at the end. I think Tonje could have been better there. The feed to Crowl is something you should ignore. Wasn't like he had a massive mismatch. Now that Marquette and UW are both gone (yeah, it's good to see both teams win, especially in March), as are most of the underdog stories, I'm finding myself drawn to Houston because their long-haul build. I also really like Texas Tech because Grant McCasland has a great defensive mind, and I liked him a lot at North Texas. Turns my stomach to root for Hurley today, but at least Danny's just a garden-variety jerk. Golden I find much more troubling, for reasons that have been widely reported. Outside the Big 12 teams, who I find pretty universally fun to watch because of the way they defend without really trying to ugly it up too much, I also like Tennessee. Maryland is a team I'm really high on, but of course I'll be all Ram and Gael this afternoon, hoping for a true, outside-the-power-structure team in the S16. Same goes for New Mexico, who I think has the best chance of the bunch, though I've seen the Mountain West crap the bed often enough that I can also see Izzo just giving the coup de grace to the Pitno family. Excited for one more day of wall-to-wall hoop, even if I find Oregon-Arizona the blah of all blah to close the night.

Lots of good post-mortems here and thoughts ahead to next year. I thought BYU was the much looser team, with more guys playing with more confidence for more of the game. The more I think of it this biggest issue with Badger teams of recent vintage is that they lack some of that. This year, we had Tonje and Blackwell. Last year, it was pretty much Storr. Davis before that. Lots of deferring to those key pieces. I think this year's team was very balanced, but comparing it to the Hayes, Kaminsky, Dekker, Koenig, Gasser (or Brust in 14) teams....you can see the huge gap. All five of those dudes wanted the ball but knew their roles (I know Nigel faded a little in 2015). Plus, they could bring an insanely confident Showy or Duje off the bench for either energy or shot-making. That's hard to find these days and harder to build at UW. And, really, it goes for about every non top-4 team this year. One thing about the portal is that these become a bit more like NBA teams, where everyone knows the hierarchy, and BYU had none of that. It is five on the floor, ten deep, everyone sharing and running pace and firing when they sight the hoop. You could see that tonight (I second "playing scared" as ridiculous--that team was feisty and up front all night, they just got the flagrant 2 and turned it over and finally missed shots in the last 3 min). Underrated credit: BYU's defense. We missed some open looks, but they mixed zone and man effectively and generally stopped our drives to the hoop (Blackwell excepted, I thought he played an incredible game). They forced the ball to Crowl and Gilmore, and though the former made some shots early, he wasn't much of a threat beyond the first quarter. And they were willing to live with his occasional three. Good strategy, well-executed. Tonje and Blackwell got theirs, but BYU defended especially well in the first 35 minutes. Some fun teams still left. I really like the Big 12 teams as a group. Different flavors but a lot of toughness and fluidity from Tech, Houston, BYU, and Iowa State. For all the SEC talk, would not shock me one bit, if we've got two of those teams in the FF.

Aside from the offensive boards we gave up, some key first half FT misses stung. Janicki missed a pair in the second half. Just fine fine margins in March. Could go round and round all day. We played a B game, they had an A one. That's probably the hottest team in the country save for Colorado State and Florida.

Wow. What a crazy finish. Hated the last sequence. Rather have a step-back three. At least you get it clean with a chance to win. The end of the first half and the offensive glass killed them. That's March. They couldn't defend, BYU hit more shots, and the late run failed. Not bothered, really. BYU was better. Chippy game comes with the stakes. The F2 didn't seem dirty to me. McGee got burned on one of those too early in the year. All year, I felt like this team was really good, but something was missing. Call it magic, call it confidence, I don't know. Tonje and Blackwell are stars. They needed a third guy to really take the reins, and they just didn't have it.

Yup. Crowl did bad.

Pretty happy to only be down 11, but no excuse for Crowl to shoot a jump hook instead of holding for the last shot. Worst case scenario you're down 8. We lose by 3, that's a huge deal. BYU was clearly the better team that half. Better shot making and more fluidity. We obviously can't win shooting like this, but the good news is this is going to be played in the 80s or 90s. Lots of possessions left. I would not feel safe with an 11-point halftime lead.

Okay, but can they be here to go to school? Because NIL is not a salary (the NCAA has been pretty clear on this point). It's simply the benefit of being good at sports. These guys are not employees. They're students, right? I get the law is designed to clearly separate "study" from "employment" and NIL's financial volume seems to put it into the latter category. But I would also imagine somebody could make a claim in court that federal requirements around "work" and "active income" don't apply to NIL and have a decent shot at a favorable ruling. Not disagreeing here, really. Maybe I'm looking at it wrong and others have a more specific understanding of the case law. It just looks to me like you can maintain an F-1 visa if your income is passive. A lot of NIL deals are structured that way, or at least close to it, so it seems this is an issue we'll see in the courts at some point. Lots of ambiguity. I'm also skeptical that whichever gutted federal department is assigned student visa oversight is ever going to be competent enough to effectively punish international athletes, and there seems to me zero chance this administration has any political interest in doing so, even if they were capable of actually making competent policy on these layered and complicated issues. Seems like a risk I'd be willing to take if I'm a university, or even a high-major hooper.

Yeah, it's a fun game because BYU is basically us. They play offense at a similar level, at close to the same pace (a little faster), and they play a lot of guys, most of whom can shoot. They are deeper. We guard much better. In theory, it should be a good matchup for us. We're about at their level in terms of offensive efficiency and guard way better. 1.5 as a line seems too low to me, I'd take UW to cover while acknowledging anything can happen. You've got to be a pretty big believer in altitude to make it basically a toss-up. I'd guess KenPom has us favored by 3-4.

I think the top 4 seed lines were unusually strong this year, and the 13-16 lines unusually weak. Perhaps having to do with transfer portal just making the Power 5 leagues a lot deeper. Looking at the set matchups for Sat/Sun, you'd think there'd be at least one or two true surprises. Not a lot of fluky wins in the final 32 so far. Xavier-Illinois might be the game of the round. Something to stay up for anyway.

I hope this proves true, but it's still very possible we look up and have 4 of the final 8 (or even Final Four) teams from the SEC. All the clearly good teams are winning, and Vandy looks in good shape as an underdog (a win for them would set up an all-SEC round of 32 matchup with Bama), and Ole Miss is currently hammering UNC. When you have 14 teams in the field, you have a lot of room to lose.

I think it's hilarious that the only SEC team to win a game so far is coached by the guy a lot of folks declared officially done for like two months ago. Love to see Drake finally getting a win in the big bracket. That program and that league deserve it, wherever McCollum ends up. UC San Diego looks entirely unprepared for Wolf and Goldin. Yikes. Long way to go, but adjustments will be needed if that's going to become a game.

I was right there with you. Clemson was sleepwalking for the first 25 minutes there. They made it...kind of interesting? Looked like McNeese was just perfectly ready to run that thing down. Have to say, I've also been impressed with BYU's defense. VCU is not great offensively, but they have guys who can hurt you and usually BYU struggles with teams on the more physical side. I still think BYU is a good matchup for us, but they've also been playing hot lately and will have the geography advantage. Should be a very good second round game.

This is where the plus/minus of our bracketing slot comes in. I thought we looked a little bit sluggish, just getting our feet under us most of the half. Against a better 14, we might be down or tied. But Montana is too little. We can get whatever we want inside, and get open looks on kick outs. If we lose, it'll be because we fall asleep on defense and fail to hit shots (or Montana gets absurdly hot). Just don't think they can hang for another 20 minutes.

I'm more optimistic on Ole Miss than lots of folks, I think, mainly because of Beard's track record in the NCAAT. I also think last night was way more about SDSU than UNC. North Carolina has not beaten a single team as good as Ole Miss this year. They beat UCLA on a neutral. That's as close as they get. I'd take Ole Miss over UCLA on a neutral.

Well, one of these teams clearly doesn't belong. I guess we were all right. SDSU's inability to be any kind of threat offensively is a killer here. UNC shooting the lights out doesn't help. SDSU was going to have to win this one in the 60s in all likelihood. Good bye to that.

Sounds like 5 mil a year. I would say coaching at Indiana is a hard way to earn that much money, but I get the appeal. Great opening NCAA game. Hope SDSU-UNC delivers more of the goods. SDSU gets after you, but, man, is their offense ugly. At least those low-tempo Badger teams of the Bennett era were efficient. They just didn't play a lot of possessions. This Aztecs squad has to win with defense. I'd like to see them do it.

Count me worried about this pitching staff against a tough opening stretch.

Good hire for IU. I think that's an impossible job, so I hope DeVries got paid.

Pomeroy posted on Bluesky an interesting idea. Basically, with one exception (Xavier instead of West Virginia), Wins Above Bubble predicted the selected teams. Pomeroy just argued that the committee should just let WAB decide who qualifies for the tournament. It becomes a computerized calculation, and then the committee can focus on seeding and bracketing fairly. I get that that will get a lot of blowback. And I'm on record as thinking UNC's inclusion was pretty bad, which Pomeroy finds generally okay because of its grounding in WAB. I'm not sold yet, but I'm phenomenally curious about it. It works for hockey, right? The teams are selected entirely based on a mathematical formula (that's duplicated in the Pairwise rankings)? Obviously, you'd need to make sure WAB, or whatever metric you use is sophisticated enough. 356 teams is a lot. But it can't be as hard to solve as chess, right? Or Go? My one thought about why it might work: the distinction between the 37th or 38th at-large (in) and the 39th one is almost always really arbitrary and clumsy. If you just make that process transparent and quantitative, you free up the committee to do the harder work of properly seeding and bracketing. That deserves the bulk of the time because it's the hardest process, and it has the most impact on the actual tournament results.

Love these thoughtful posts. Like @Oxy said, how you weight the predictive versus resume-based metrics is a major challenge. You can justify all kinds of ways of doing it, and every committee member probably has their own unique weighting. It's impossible to have consistent logic given the way the committee selects and seeds the tournament. I wish we'd just acknowledge that, rather than having the committee chair go on TV and spout what is essentially a lot of nonsense and bad-faith arguments. It's an imperfect process. You just hope to do it as fairly as possible. I have some issues with seeding in several places, but that always happens. I'll defend the "UNC doesn't belong" position quite hard, though. That feels like an avoidable error. I mean, if 8-0 in Quad 2 is what gets you into the tourney, that's crazy. Indiana was undefeated in Q2 with FOUR TIMES as many Q1 wins. Heck, Iowa went 6-0 in Q2 with more Q1 wins than UNC. To be fair, I would make the same critique of Xavier. I guess they gave the Musketeers a lot of leeway for the Fremantle injury. UNC has no such excuse. It's always hard to determine those last four spots. Usually, it's six of one, half dozen of another. Here, though, I think this is clearly the less defensible options, and it's needlessly complicated by the committee chair being the UNC AD. WVU and Indiana have serious gripes. On a more positive note, both BYU and VCU are good teams. VCU is better than a typical eleven, but we're very similar to BYU, only we play better defense. And we defend at about the level of VCU, only we play better offense. Sure, you'd prefer to have worse teams in there. I think there are worse 6s and 11s. But matchup wise, these are pretty decent draws. And we'll be favored against either team, probably by two possessions. Narrow margins in March, but this is what you want.

I have to admit to being wrong. Selection committee chair said on CBSSN that there WAS a contingency bracket based on the B1G title game. No idea where it had the Badgers, and that genuinely shocks me, but there it is. I was wrong. On the game: We got the shots we wanted but didn't make them. Period, end of story. If I had to pick one thing, tied at 53-53 with 1:34 left, Michigan got two free throws after three possessions and gave the ball back to Wisconsin with 46 secs left (might have been 49?). I thought we had chances there, but just couldn't come away with the ball. A few other rebounds off missed free throws helped Michigan too. Not much else to say. Sometimes, that's basketball. On the Badgers NCAA tourney spot: I hate playing Thursday afternoon at altitude when this team looked gassed today. Oof. And BYU goes ten deep and also plays its home games at altitude (albeit maybe 800 ft. lower than Denver). That's pretty brutal. I also think VCU is closer to an 8 than an 11 (top 30 KenPom), so our pod has three LEGIT S16 contenders. Good news is Montana is rated as the worst 14 by far. More than that, they'd be the worst 15 seed per Pomeroy. That's a misseeded team. Clearly benefits Wisconsin. Losing to them would be horrendous. We can lose to anyone shooting 20 percent from the field, but Montana will rightfully be a massive dog. Bigger picture, no one in this region scares me, especially if Duke isn't healthy. Alabama is three-point dependent and has been inconsistent, plus they are a good matchup for us. They'll let us run and get looks. That would come down to who shoots better. Everyone else in the top half is about what you'd expect, and I'm thrilled to avoid a team like Tennessee or even Saint John's. So, some good, some bad. Would I switch with Iowa State given the chance? I don't know. Lipscomb is BY FAR the best 14, so the odds of a first round upset would go up, but I like the placement in Milwaukee and Friday game much better. Plus, I'd rather face Ole Miss or NC than BYU. But I'd want no part of SDSU. Probably a wash in the end. Overall bracket thoughts: The committee really leaned into the advanced metrics this year. That's the only way you can justify UNC in the field. They went 1-12 in Q1 and have a Q3 loss. Come on, man. Meanwhile, you're leaving out a West Virginia team with 6 Q1 wins and a nearly identical Wins Above Bubble rank. No idea how you justify that other than committee logic. Similar story with the Big Ten seedings. Purdue's 4, Michigan's 5, and Illinois' 6 are all roughly in line with their predictive numbers. So is Maryland's 4, though I think that's a miss. Watching Purdue lately, I'm licking my chops if I'm in that pod, but maybe that's a team that benefits getting outside the B1G. I think the committee booted UNC and otherwise made pretty consistent choices. Xavier getting in surprises me, given how little regard the Big East had. I'd have WV and Indiana ahead of both them and NC. But at that point in the bracket, I guess you're just talking about kinds of mediocrity. To close on the Badgers, the NCAAT's generally tighter whistle and more free-flowing style SHOULD help. I also have a lot of faith in our scout, so getting out of the B1G will hopefully pay dividends. Best time of the sports year, man. Let's go. EDIT: to add that the VCU and Gonzaga seeds are terrible. How the committee continues to not understand small conferences is baffling. Why you apply predictives so hard to schools like UNC or Illinois (who really doesn't have a six-seed profile, I don't think) but can't to Gonzaga or VCU is kind of stunning.