Cool Hand Lucroy

Yeah, thumbs down on the lettering for sure. I am I the minority, but I LOVE the Brewers CC unis. That powder blue is awesome. Even the chintzy grill patch is fun. To each their own, I guess.

I just don't think you want to turn over the entirety of the strike zone to a machine. Check out "Subject to Review" on ESPN+. It's a fantastic deep-dive into Hawkeye in tennis, and it does a great job of covering some of the drawbacks of a camera-based system. Mainly, those drawbacks involve the cameras having their own margin of error and promoting the illusion of certainty. For me, the debate isn't between "wrong" umpires and "correct" technology. It's between authentically subjective umpires and falsely objective technology. The automated strike zone would have a bias. It would not be neutral. I'd prefer we correct the most impactful missed calls rather than adopt a once-and-for-all, binding machine-centered viewpoint. If that makes me a Luddite, I accept it.

It's like tennis. You get a limited number of challenges per game and need to be judicious about how you use them.

I don't know. The pace isn't bad in tennis. I just think there are going to be some very "ugly" strikes with a fully automated system. There are also going to be a lot of unhittable strikes. Every change creates unintended consequences, but the hybrid, challenge approach seems to make the most sense to me.

I'm pretty worried about Strez and Peguero. Payamps has earned my confidence, but it's pretty tough to compete when both the middle of your order and the last third of your bullpen is shaky.

The challenge system is a great solution. Limits the downsides of a purely automated system, preserves pace, and introduces an element of strategy.

I'll say this. The Brewers sure can't afford to lose games because of outfield defense. At some point, the middle of the order has to hit, you would think?

Yeah, their schedule into the ASB is tough. Braves, Orioles, Brewers (plus a 4-gamer against the hopeless Nats). Heavy BP usage too. They get the off day tomorrow, but the Brewers definitely have the scheduling advantage into the next two weeks. Too early to be going through all this, of course. I'm just hoping this team can stockpile wins into the break. If they get today's game, I'll be ecstatic.

I remember when GameDay Audio let you listen to local commercials AND was only about 30 seconds delayed instead of what? 4 minutes?

Yeah, there is so little difference between winning the division and winning that last WC spot now. The Brewers are totally fine standings wise. Their schedule is easier over these last 94 than it has been. And the division is very bad. That's the good news. The bad news is, they're a really middling baseball team right now. Until Woodruff gets back, the rotation is what? A little above average? Maybe? The bullpen has been good enough, but beyond Williams, do we have faith in anyone? The offense is a big weak point. Unless Tellez or Willy or Urias or all three really pick it up, I have a hard time seeing this crew stringing together a bunch of wins. 23 games to the All-Star Break, with 13 against the Pirates, Reds, and Cubs. I think the Brewers need to hit about 15-8 for me to feel pretty good about things by mid-July. Anything less than 13-10 will be disappointing. This is the part of the schedule where they need to make hay, I think. The 3 against Arizona are the only 3 against a team over .500 in that stretch. Plus, they come out of the break with 6 against the Phillies and Reds. So, let's say the next 29 games will tell us something about how much we should hope for playoff baseball.

Caratini's throws to second today were indeed very very bad. I like the guy, and he's a backup catcher. Whatever. I'm just not sure he's bringing much value at this point?

This is the case for optimism from where I sit: 1) The schedule has been brutal and gets less so in June and July. 2) The team has ground out wins and avoided sweeps and generally maximized win totals during an awful stretch. 3) Injury luck has been bad and should hopefully improve. 4) The NL Central is bad. Somebody has to win it.

I think this is the most compelling Sweet 16 I can remember. Great matchups pretty much across the board, a good mix of true low-/mid-major teams (Princeton and FAU), favorites (Alabama, Houston, UCLA), and fun teams that could go on a run (Creighton, Gonzaga). High-octane teams like Xavier and grind you to a pulp teams like Tennessee and San Diego St. 11 different conferences. Hoping for good things from the Big East, Gonzaga, and FAU.

Agree completely. Look, I wasn't exactly a neutral watching that game (I follow Wisconsin much more closely but always hope Marquette does well), but just as someone who doesn't watch every possession of Marquette basketball, I thought Kolek made a lot of bad decisions. Jones was the best player for Marquette and didn't get enough touches in that middle portion of the second half (though he also hoisted some bad shots at the end, mostly in desperation mode). Some of that's on the coaching staff, maybe, just from a scouting, in-game adjustment perspective, but overall Marquette just seemed a little overwhelmed by how hard MSU defended in the halfcourt. That's happened to plenty of UW teams over the years. Big picture: I'm both happy for and envious of Marquette's position right now. Basketball-first league, essentially immune to any type of realignment that doesn't directly benefit men's hoops (say, adding a team like Dayton or Gonzaga (a long-shot, yeah, but always a rumor in an area of unbalanced schedules)), a roster without a single senior, pretty much destined to be a preseason top 10 team (I could see them being #1 honestly), and with a young coach who really fits in. You can't make good things happening. The NCAA Tournament is a random results generator for the most part (look at Bill Self, who's had the best team maybe nine times and won the thing twice), but Marquette is as well-positioned as anyone. I'll be following Marquette more closely next year, that's for sure, and, trust me, as a Badger fan who's generally happy with where the Badgers are given the larger MCBB landscape? I'd trade places with Marquette in a heartbeat.

Yeah, looks like the bracketology crowd was right on re: Wisconsin and very wrong re: Rutgers.

So, I know we're all pretty resigned to the Badgers being in the NIT. I think that's by far the most likely (and probably the most fair, honestly) outcome. Still, to the extent that the actual committee deliberations work differently than the Bracketology hive mind, here's the case for Wisconsin: They have more/the same Q1 wins and the same/fewer Q3/Q4 losses than Clemson, Pitt, Mississippi St., Utah St., Arizona St., and Nevada. Their win @Marquette is probably the best win of the bunch, along with ASU's @Arizona. The truth is: there isn't a lot separating these 7 teams. I'd have this Badger team closer to first team out than next four out, at least from a numbers perspective. The Badgers' big disadvantage is that the NET really dislikes them, as does KenPom. I don't think the Badgers will get in. I don't think they should get in. All I'm saying is I think it will end up closer than the general consensus. No point speculating further, I suppose. All is revealed at 5PM Central. EDIT: Forgot about Rutgers, a team everyone assumes is fairly safe. They have the head-to-head win at the Kohl. Has to matter. But they also have 4 Q3 losses and one less Q1 win than Wisconsin. When you get down to that cutline, there's a lot of flawed teams. Always is.

Usually better to win in dominating fashion on Saturday than on Sunday in terms of seeding. I'd be pretty surprised if Marquette were any lower than the strongest 3, and I'd have them as a 2. Rather be a 3 and play in Louisville or KC than a 2 in Sacramento, should the Sweet 16 happen? Always an interesting question.

Man. I love Big East basketball. What a game, what an atmosphere. Shaka was pumped at the horn there, rightly so. Congrats, Marquette fans. Conference tournaments can be weird, but there is nothing quite like 'em, especially in a league so hoops-centered.

Mostly a Badger fan too, but always liked Marquette. I said when the Golden Eagles got Shaka that it was a great hire. It's just a good fit. Shaka was awesome at VCU and then had to basically play the game of appeasing recruits and focusing on minutes and keeping people happy (by getting them attention) rather than just winning. At Marquette, he can run his style, get a higher-caliber player than in the A-10, and still not deal with the egos of the five-star, top-of-the-top guys. He can get total buy-in. And he's flexible enough to find transfer and build that way if he has to, as has happened this year. Honestly, that was Villanova's blueprint. Good players (NBA role-player potential, but a lot of just great, great college players a la Arcidiacono), high basketball IQ, a really smart coach, and total buy-in. Not saying Marquette is the next Nova or that they're national title bound, but I cannot remember the program being in a better spot in my lifetime as it relates to sustained success (Dwayne Wade=anomaly). I don't think Shaka would work at Wisconsin for a hundred reasons, but I'd trade places with Marquette if I could.

While we're on the subject of coaching, I was watching Tony Bennett and Virginia tonight and thinking about coaching philosophy. Dick Bennett leaves Wisconsin unexpectedly. The Soderbergh weird thing. Then, Tony Bennett remains as assistant under Ryan for a couple years before heading to Washington State, where he takes that program about as far as its been in a half century and really commits to the pack-line and the overall Bennett philosophy. Wisconsin, meanwhile, has Ryan and the swing. Both programs, Wisconsin and Virginia are probably happy with this weird fork-in-the-road. Wisconsin gets some sweet 16s, an Elite 8, back-to-back Final Fours. Virginia gets the one FF, but is lucky enough to win it all (review that 2019 and how many narrow escapes they had...not that they didn't deserve it because I think they did, but you know what I mean--the difference between how things turned out for Virginia and UW over the last 20 years comes down to luck). The difference is that Virginia remains committed to their philosophy, offensively and defensively. They don't run a lot of high ball screen, pick-and-roll stuff. It's passing and cutting and downscreens. That's an anomaly. UW, meanwhile, really moved away from the swing offensively. That worked fine for Kaminsky and Dekker, two guys who both could thrive in the pick-and-roll (to say nothing of Koenig and Gasser), but, lately, there just isn't enough ability to generate points from that offensive set. It used to be Wisconsin games looked different than the rest of the NCAA. Now, not so much. Sure, they play slow. Sure, they defend. But, in the halfcourt, it's the same ballscreen offense with late-clock isolation. I'd like to see Wisconsin embrace the swing, that modified flex, some coherent, different offensive philosophy the way that Virginia has. Honestly, I think Jordan Davis would thrive in that Virginia system. Klesmit and Essegian too. And Chucky is a classic Tony Bennett PG who get a lot more open looks if defenses didn't have the luxury of sitting back and letting him take a 17-foot, late-clock fadeaway.

As a Saint John's grad (2008), I'm a little jealous of St. Thomas men's basketball, as much as it hurts to admit. I'd trade those D3 football national titles for an NCAA tourney berth (though I definitely wouldn't trade the domination of St. Thomas, a couple of years in the early 2010s aside ;) (this post brought to you by the MIAC).

Yeah, I'm just not close on Gard yet. This was actually a pretty good performance in a reset year. Maybe we got spoiled by early results, and the team just couldn't hack it in a physical, very well-scouted league. I think team's regret getting rid of guys like Gard more often than not. Jaime Dixon at Pitt. Tubby at Minnesota (and Memphis, for that matter), throw somebody like Tim Miles at Nebraska in there, and I think this is something Iowa understands about Fran, with all his flaws. Obviously, CBB is changing, has changed. Maybe Gard won't be able to adapt. We'll see. I just think we're three years away. If Wisconsin misses the NCAAs again next year, I'll consider the following year the prove it one for Gard.

OSU sure did try to give it away, but yeah. Badgers just couldn't find the big bucket. Honestly, that looked like a team that needed to put out of its NCAA misery for the last couple weeks. Even against Purdue, there just didn't seem to be a lot of belief that they could really win that game. And that's an uncool thing to say in the era of analytics, but Wisconsin has always, over the course of my lifetime, been a team that basically wins with belief. They've got guys who trust themselves to get stops and score enough to win. This team appeared to have the offensive yips. Even guys like Essegian (who emerged as a real scorer) and Hepburn (who was the guy) looked rattled at times, unsure whether to hoist or drive or dish. Every great Wisconsin team has a guy you can really trust down the stretch, and this team didn't. That's the whole difference. One guy you can trust and a bunch of role players who believe. Tyler Wahl wasn't Jon Leuer and had to play like him (without the jump-shooting ability), and, as a result, it's NIT in all likelihood. Oh well. Time to enjoy the fun of March without the pressure of knowing your team could be eliminated at any time. I know I will.

Yeah, I agree about realignment. I think part of the reason Creighton worked out is just the Big East becoming a basketball-first league. It was football dollar-chasing that created that scenario, and I think it's worked to the benefit of all of those schools, even though Butler might be a more natural A-10 fit.

Yeah, the Horizon is a mess. Complete mess. And men's basketball is THE opportunity for schools like UWM to get on the national radar. Just look at what St. Thomas is doing in Saint Paul. Getting massive exposure for a school that has always been a major player in Minnesota but will surely establish a firm national brand if they keep building up their profile in the Summit League. GB had that under Bennett for a while, and UWM under Pearl, but they just weren't able to sustain that level of success. I think it really takes the right coaching hire (and probably several in a row) to stay relevant. Gonzaga got this right. Saint Mary's got it right. Very few other teams (maybe Dayton) can say the same. Speaking of Butler, they're maybe the team that hasn't managed realignment well (maybe Wichita State too, though I think Gregg Marshall's abuse and its fallout really hurt the program, as well as, probably, some Koch-brothers related backlash). Really struggled in the Big East while Creighton has been consistently impressive. I doubt they wish they'd stuck around the A-10, but they sure haven't turned a Big East schedule into an at-large resume very often lately.