NCAA March Madness Diary by Jon Lauder

Guest Article by Jon

It’s awesome to be writing again for a website that nobody reads… really I’m thrilled. Anyway here’s my running diary of Friday’s action of the NCAA tournament modeled after the good stuff that Sports Guy used to write before he stopped being funny about a year and a half ago.

I’ll be watching the games alone today as I’m lazy and don’t feel like driving anywhere and my TV sucks so nobody will come here. Yesterday I watched the afternoon games with Ian, who openly pondered why Coach K’s hair length hasn’t changed in the last 20-25 years (we determined he either gets a hair cut every two weeks OR he’s wearing a rug - I’m betting on the former), and I watched the evening games with the young bucks. A few thoughts…

Boston College might be my least favorite team in the tournament. At least two of the three thugs (Dudley, Marshall and Smith) will be in jail within five years. Ian would like to know if Bob Huggins is secretly doing the recruiting for Skinner. Interesting question… I’d like to thank Pacific for having two chances to win the game (one in regulation and one in overtime) and getting exactly zero shots off. Also it was good to see that even though Johnny Gray is an American record holder, and that even though he was a bronze medalist in Barcelona, and that even though he was probably on TV close to 50 times in his twenty year career - he is still not above acting like a complete camera whore…

Nice job by Seton Hall. Way to show up boys… Game effort by Winthrop but Bradshaw (their goofy white guy with the military academy hair cut) was sabotaging them down the stretch. Also that shot by Lofton was absolutely insane… I think it’s safe to say that Nevada is one of the worst five seeds of all time. They should not have been higher than 11 or 12… It’s good to see Alabama is not limiting their recruitment of Africans to just track athletes. (Note to Novak: Try moving without the ball to create yourself a shot - OR, OR, OR better yet go down to the block and post up when the guy defending you is six inches shorter. Even Pittsnogle goes down low once in a while)… Watching Adam Morrison slam a basketball against his head was one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen… Horrendous coverage by CBS in the night games - UNCW blows a huge lead and they don’t show us any of it, then in the late game they stick with Duke/Southern to the end despite the fact that Indiana and San Diego St were going down to the wire.

On to today…

12:25 - Davidson is up 10-8. They’re a good team. I feel like this could be a sea-saw battle the whole way.

12:50 - Davidson up five! OSU is starting to look a little nervous. Meanwhile Arizona is hammering Wisconsin, Iowa went up early on Northwestern St and appears to now be milking the clock, and Bucknell has slowed Arkansas down into a “first one to 50 win type game.”

12:55 - OSU is 1-13 from behind the arc. It’s good to see they’re running their offense, taking advantage of their edge in athletic ability, and not just jacking up threes. Apparently Brendan Withers is related to Brian Withers, who “starred” at South Carolina. I hope they talk more about this as the game goes on…

1:05 - 14-0 run by the Demons to tie up Iowa, who apparently stopped playing 10 minutes ago.

1:26 - “Ian Johnson - a big Ben Franklin fan!” What? What? (Now that I’ve recovered from the shock of said statement - I might add - who isn’t? Who isn’t?!)

2:05 - I took a little nap in there despite the fact that Davidson/Ohio State was a pretty good game. Right now Davidson is prolonging the game by fouling even though they are down by 9 with 50 seconds to go… stop it guys, you’re not gonna win.

2:25 - Northwestern St has cut it to three. Meanwhile Bucknell and Arkansas are locked in a war. I smell two crazy finishes at roughly the same time!

2:27 - I’m thoroughly enjoying the lack of hair being sported by Iowa’s Brunner. It’s always fun to see a college kid nearly completely bald. The bald look is also a nice contrast with the picked out fro currently being sported by NWSU’s Lee. The contrasting hair styles could be used as an effective starting point for analyzing the differences in style in the two states that the two players represent.

2:32 - NWSU is taking a page out of Indian’s playbook and actually going for the quick two instead of the forced three to tie. Why more teams don’t do this bothers me every year… Brunner just called timeout instead of in-bounding the ball. I’m pretty sure one of his teammates (a 52% foul shooter) just complained that he was open to which (if I’m reading lips correctly) Brunner replied “I know - you can’t make free throws.” Wow!

2:36 - On the other end, Brunner gets away with a clear offensive foul (he hooked the defender) but instead goes to the line for a reach in. Meanwhile Arkansas just tied Bucknell - can we get a split screen with audio on one game?

2:38 - ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Are you kidding me? Wow! Wow! Who makes that shot? That was better than Lofton’s fading two yesterday. And we’re immediately cutting over to Arkansas/Bucknell - well done CBS.

2:41 - Bucknell misses three straight free throws while nursing a two point lead. Pull up jumper for the tie - in and out! Ball’s loose… clear foul on Bucknell goes uncalled, still loose - it’s absolute chaos! Bucknell grabs it and ices the game. Phew! Two games ended in complete and utter mayhem, at virtually the same time, is exactly why the opening weekend of the tournament is the best four days of the year.

3:25 - Well into the second set of games, and right now Monmouth has exactly 1 point (12:06 to go in the first half - come on Monmouth feed the ball to the 7′2 fatty who missed a wide open dunk in the play-in game)! Meanwhile Memphis is in the process of blowing out what I thought would be a game Oral Roberts team, and Georgetown and Northern Iowa are trying to play the most boring game in the history of college basketball. Little do they know that my Richmond Spiders and most of the rest of the A-10 have that market covered.

3:27 - Monmouth just hit a three - offensive explosion!

4:11 - It’s getting to the point in the tournament when I’m officially fed up with all of the commercials. For the love of God, they just showed the “Woof Woof, Booyah! Dancing fan in the cape” State Farm commercial twice in a row. If you have State Farm cancel your policy in protest. Other commercials that are bothering me include the cool Asian guy nonchalantly telling the dumb white guy that his phone sucks, and Gene Hackman narrating the Lowes commercial where the father puts in a basketball hoop for his son.

4:36 - Our brilliant analyst from Dayton (Len Elmore) has declared, “If you’re gonna lose sight of something, don’t lose sight of the ball.” Right, right….Moments later Gus Johnson would declare that Northern Iowa’s John Little looks like Ludicrous. Fair enough, fair enough.

4:48 - The announcers stationed in Dallas (Bollerjack and Wenzel) should be doing women’s basketball on ESPN 2… John Calipari has gained a lot of weight since his day of fielding John Chaney death threats.

4:56 - Jim Nantz is desperately trying to convince himself that Monmouth has a shot at winning this game, as Billy Packer declares “this game was over when the seedings were released.” Luckily for all of us, the lovable duo’s relationship remains in tact as they turned the nearly awkward moment into one of their patented flirting sessions. Get a room guys.

5:01 - Packer just declared that one of Monmouth’s guards (Azzarelli) was “bleeding profusely.” There is no blood in site, although he is dabbing slightly at his nose. One of us doesn’t know what profusely means (hint: it’s Packer)….

7:15 - The 7:30ish games don’t excite me much. UCONN should roll over Albany, Pitt will pound Kent in an unentertaining game, and Michigan State shouldn’t have too much trouble with the shorthanded Mason squad. The Cal game might be decent but does anybody outside of Berkley and Raleigh really care? I’m much more intrigued by UAB/Kentucky and hopefully either Bradley or Murray State will hang around late.

7:55 - Goo Moo is giving Michigan State everything they can handles, while Albany continues to lead UCONN. So, uh, I was wrong… The sixteen seeds are really quite frisky this year. Forget the year of the mid-major this is the year of the minor - even if they don’t actually win any games.

8:15-9:30 - I didn’t feel like recording the time… I was pretty sure UCONN would bury Albany early in the second half, but it turns out Albany is now up 10. Meanwhile Goo Moo is pulling away from a very disorganized looking Michigan State team, Kent State is attempting to steal today’s Seton Hall award from Wisconsin for the team that didn’t show up, and Cal and NCSU are locked in a tight battle….
Albany went up 12, and I was actually starting to think they might have a chance. Commercial break in the Mason game and when we returned Albany was only up 5. The inevitable run has come….
Mason just finished off Michigan State - UCONN has used a 20-4 run to end Albany’s upset bid, and we’re tired at 52 in the other game… Nice work by Cal taking the ill-advised three instead of going inside to Powe for the quick two. It’s no coincidence that Indiana and Northwestern St both won their games with the quick two strategy. Good round of games - it’s been a good tournament so far.

9:33 - Calhoun just said “I tip my hat, my shoes, my gloves anything I can find to Albany because they played a great game.” Chalk that one into the going overboard to try and sound sincere category. By the way, good read on Bucknell http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=forde_pat&id=2373066.

Going along with that - Pat Forde has been pumping out like two articles a day for the last two weeks. The man is an absolute machine.

10:14 - UNC is starting to pull away from the “Racers,” who according to espn.com play a slow down game. Yet they keep shooting with over 20 seconds left on the shot clock so apparently they’re throwing out the game plan for a chance to be heroes. It happens… meanwhile Penn is taking the air of the basketball in hopes of staying with Texas, but realistically they don’t have the size to hang around much longer. Bradley is giving Kansas all they can handle (this game should go down to the wire - Kansas is overrated and the Braves shoot too well for it not to close). UAB/Kentucky is still in the early stages. For the record, I like UAB.

10:22 - Murray St just went on a 8-0 run to make me look stupid. In other news, Tyler Hansbrough just looks dumb - like Vince Young dumb.

10:25 - The Racers are getting jobbed by the refs right now, but their coach is really funny looking when he’s mad. Penn is leading Texas 14-13 - it is believed that 84% of the people watching that game decided to go to bed early. I feel like this as good a time as any to announce that I haven’t showered since the tournament began.

10:31 - The four games right now are separated by exactly two points. This is tournament basketball (well men’s tournament basketball - women’s tournament basketball has all higher seeds winning and apparently is a lot like a Liz Phair song… and that reference is roughly two years old).

11:03 - Monster dunk by Griffith of Murray St - the Racers are good. This is a well played game unlike say BC/Pacific in which BC just played horribly and let Pacific hang around.

Sometime before midnight (I’m getting really tired) - Hansbrough just finds a way to score points. He doesn’t really do anything special but he’s the reason the Tarheels held on. Meanwhile Bradley outlasted Kansas eliminating a trendy final four pick, Texas had just enough for a surprisingly game Penn team, and Kentucky has been leading UAB by pretty much exactly two points the entire second half… I’m going to bed.