Tourney Trip

It’s 12:30 in the morning on Wednesday the 16th of March. I must be sitting in an airpot terminal waiting for a flight to the midwest or the east coast. I”ve done this a lot in the years past, flying into Minneapolis, Lexington, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Detroit (several times). You get the picture. I am getting pretty good at it too. Everything is streamlined. Tourney coat is packed. I’ve got my headphones and some tunes lined up for a few winks on the plane. All is as well as can be expected considering I left my wedding ring on the dresser in the closet and my wife was crying when she dropped me off at the airport. I feel horrible about that. Really bad. Really good about the basketball coming up in the next few days though.

Since it’s already Wednesday, I can say that both Sam and I will be seeing an NIT game tonight. UW Milwaukee will be paying a visit to Northwestern. Seeing that the rest of the crew will be meeting up with us later on, we feel the need to watch a basketball game. So we’ll do that.

A couple things I am looking forward to in this tournament:

1. UNLV to win a game. They were knocked off last year by the darlings from Northern Iowa. Northern Iowa was good. I would be “ok” with a win vs Illinois, and would shit my pants if they beat Kansas after that. Just a good showing won’t be enough. Get the win fellas.

2. BYU losing to St. Johns. Yeah, BYU would be pretty brutal if they lost to Wofford. I like Wofford, and believe they can win, but I’m not going to count on it. What I will count on is St. Johns giving them the busniess and Lavin rubbing it in the way only a gangster slicked back hair dude can do it. Big East size and toughness, meet Jimmer. Jimmer, meet the floor.

3. Izzo to right the ship. Yeah, this is a long shot. It’s been a bad year for the Spartans. I’m not sure there are enough magic basketball skills left in Izzo’s bag of tricks for this season. He looks like the frazzled mad hatter from Alice in Wonderland. Right the ship, or bow out early and hit the beach for a month. You need it man.

4. Ohio State losing. They are a bunch of gangster clowns and deserve to lose. I don’t really think they will though. Nobody else in the country has their inside / outside game. They’ll probably dominate. Such is life.

That’s it for me. Anybody ever Fed-Ex a wedding ring with great success?

First of all, let it be known I am a BYU hater. I am a UNLV fan. I have to be. I can also admit that Mr. Fredette has been insane this year, and last nights 52 point outburst was exceptional considering the fact he attempted only a SINGLE free-throw. I challenge you to get your head around that, because I cannot.

Sitting at the top of the Thomas and Mack last night for BYU vs New Mexico, I was expecting a large BYU contingent to be on hand. There are a ton of BYU grads in the Las Vegas area, I encounter them all the time. Plus, BYU has the added bonus of having fans from an entire religion, and the Mormon faith is alive and well in Las Vegas as well.

I have encountered BYU fans before. I’ve seen them at UNLV games before, they’ve been through the Mountain West Tournament on previous occasions, tho not like this year. I’ve even been around them at tournament sites, last I can remember being in Lexington.

What I haven’t seen before was BYU fans en mass, that is, the home crowd majority. I wasn’t ready for it either.

BYU fans, when united, become the Voltron of douche bag fans, unmatched in the college basketball world. I feel I can say this confidently as I’ve been in the presence of large amounts of North Carolina and Duke fans at the Final Four.

Never in my entire live basketball watching career have I ever heard anybody have a discussion at halftime among 10 or 12 people about what kind of fouls they hoped to see in the second half. Never in my entire live basketball watching career have I heard entire groups of fans determine that something should be a foul when it’s not in the rule books.

BYU fans believe EVERY play is a foul in their favor. Without exception. EVERY. PLAY. They groan, moan, bitch and complain. They debate amongst themselves to rationalize their stupid trains of thought, and why rotating on your pivot foot should be a turnover if you are double teamed, and throwing it off somebody’s leg as you’re falling out of bounds is “basically cheating”.

I believe some of this has to do with Jimmer Fredette, and the bandwagon in Provo filling up this year with uneducated basketball fans. I also believe it has to do with the unspecific, but always present arrogance amongst this almost cult like following of BYU sports.

Amongst these same fans I saw several signs, one was a checklist for BYU to accomplish. One was TCU, the next was New Mexico, we’ve all seen them before. The last one on the list was already checked off. It said ditch the Mountain West for ESPN. I don’t think I need to elaborate on that.

So this afternoon, I will be rooting for San Diego State. I will be rooting hard. Their student section knows the game. Their fan base groans about questionable calls, like everybody else. They don’t invent the game, as it goes along, to suit their needs.

The Aztecs can save the Mountain West’s basketball soul by not allowing BYU to win the Mountain West Tournament for the first time, their last time.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

As of today, we are 20 days away from Selection Sunday. The conference season is winding down. Teams are playing themselves into, or out of, the NCAA’s. Championship week is coming.

It’s winning time.

UNLV won a gritty game at Colorado State on Saturday. This means UNLV has a decent shot to finish 3rd in the Mountain West, behind San Diego State and BYU. Had UNLV lost that game, they would have undoubtedly finished 4th, played New Mexico in the 4/5 game at the Mountain West Tournament, and seriously damaged their chances for an at-large. Now, they avoided the season sweep at the hands of Colorado State, proved they could win a big game on the road, and found the shooting touch they’ve lacked the past few games. Now, it’s onto New Mexico and The Pit, where New Mexico lost to Utah on a buzzer beater. Should be an interesting game. Should also be noted that the nerds at ESPN have UNLV as an 8 seed in today’s bracketology. Here’s to hoping for a 7 seed.

Michigan State won at home against Illinois. Even though the season has been a train wreck, all the Spartans can do is win the games left in front of them. It’s important to win games against the same teams you’re fighting for position with, so props to Izzo and Lucas for getting it done. Purdue rolls up to East Lansing next, and a win there could almost cement Michigan State into the big dance, when such a thing seemed impossible a few weeks ago. Just win the games in front of you.

Western Michigan has been on a little hot streak as of late. They won their bracketbusters game vs Illinois St. Not really a big game though. They have won 3 in a row, and 5 of their last 6 to put them in 1st place in the MAC West. The MAC West is pretty lame again this year for the most part. Everybody thought Central Michigan was going to be sweet with that Ziegler guy coming in, but they’ve been horrible, which is no surprise, because they’re Central. WMU hosts Toledo (who is shite, but beat WMU last time they played) and Kent State, who is really sweet. Pull that one off, finish up well down the stretch and you’ve got yourself a nice seed in the MAC tournament and anything can happen there.

So that’s my basketball world as of right now. Gonna watch some Syracuse / Villanova tonight and get ready for the short work and school week. Chicago looms in the distance, it’s time to dust off my drinking hat.

Several conversations with trip members in the past have gave way to a new revelation about college basketball, and what is accaptable in today’s hoop game.

If you are a gangster head coach, you cannot coach at a blue blood school.

Allow me to elaborate please.

A perfect example is John Calipari. He is a gangster coach, no doubt. Look at his super g’d up suits, the way he talks, and his association with shade balls like World Wide Wes. Also, note the fact that the two Final Four’s he’s been to have been exposed from the record books due to shady practices with Derrick Rose and Marcus Camby. Yeah, this guy is slimy and there’s no doubt about it.

Now, he is coaching Kentucky, a school with every imaginable advantage as far as basketball is concerned. This school does not need the advantages a gangster coach brings, at least it shouldn’t. Kentucky should be getting McDonalds All-Americans just by being Kentucky. Calipari at Memphis was great, cause Memphis is a historically relevant basketball school, fighting against the Duke’s and Kentucky’s of the world. That’s ok. You need an edge to compete with those clowns. When coaching at UMass, Memphis, or somewhere that puts you at a disadvantage vs the rest of the haves of the world, you gotta do what you gotta do. Instead, Kentucky sold it’s basksetball soul to the devil, and Calipari is ozzing his sick brand of recruiting on the world with the advantage of having the Kentucky brand behind his name. It’s just not fair.

When Tark was coaching at UNLV, the Rebels were considered super gangster. They had all the juco connections, and ran shit the way they wanted. The NCAA hated Tark, and tried their damnest to pin him with violations any way they could, yet they could not. Was UNLV gangster when they were going to the Final Four every year? Probably, in some round about way, everybody is. Tark managed to keep himself seperated from whatever was going on, because he came out squeaky clean. He even sued the NCAA, which chose to settle out of court with Tark, as to not expose the hypocracy of their practices. My point is, UNLV did what they had to do to become relevant in hoops, not having the advantages of UCLA or Arizona on the west coast.

So when you’re looking at some of these schools with questionable issues, take everything into consideration. I am not advocating straight up cheating (am I?). I am saying bending a few rules here and there, if you’re at a disadvantage, helps level the playing field. Putting both situations into one ball of grease makes things too gangster. Kentucky should be ashamed of itself. They aren’t though, they’ve been doing this for years. That’s just the way it is, right?

Or this doesn’t make any sense.