I Am Preoccupied With College Basketball

  I have suffered from sensory overload this week. Seemingly wall-to-wall basketball, both college and pro. Upsets and close finishes. Disappointments more than I want. All with my editor sojourning in Spain (Basquing) and nobody to proofread this blog but my own bleary eyes—compounded by my devouring a “beach read” paperback for our book club entitled People We Meet On Vacation. And cold weather lingered one more day before Spring arrives—in the same week which we actually had snow remain on our lawn for almost 12 hours, a new seasonal record for 2023.

Sure, Rutgers fell to Hofstra in a stirring finish to an overtime NIT game at Jersey Mike’s Arena. Take away all that talk about RU being slighted by not making the NCAA Tournament. The Pride—I longly wanted to call then the Flying Dutchmen once more—simply wanted this game more. Speedy Claxton, a Hofstra star who played in the NBA, returned to Hempstead and made his team better. The hustle, the second chance rebounding and inside scoring were all a product of an intensity which I saw in the NCAA’s this weekend by the teams which produced the wins. 

Forget that Hofstra went home and played badly in a second round loss to amore formidable Cincinnati squad. At least they won a post-season game. 

For that matter, Seton Hall, the other “top” New Jersey team, also lost to Colorado by one point in an opening round NIT match played in Boulder.  Two losses by a hair and these programs had nothing to show for it. 

Conversely, New Jersey started out 4-0 in the NCAA Tournament. That’s because Fairleigh Dickinson—every sports fan now knows who they are, and the school isn’t named after Emily’s brother—went out and smoked Texas Southern to get into the main draw and then smote mighty Purdue in maybe the greatest upset in tournament history. The second time in 152 tries a #16 seed beat a #1 seed—five years and a day after UMBC demolished Virginia 74-54.

With Princeton drawn into the same conversation with wins over first #2 seed Arizona and then #7 Missouri, the Tigers are a sweetheart team in the Sweet 16. Anybody who thought they were just another Ivy League team and did not warrant enough attention thought wrong—hey you on the Selection Committee, I’m not happy with you for a lot of reasons. This was the 10th best rebounding team in the nation and that was on full display against Mizzou. 

FDU gave every small team great hope. I mean that literally because Purdue was the tallest team in the country with 7’4” Zach Edey, while undistinguished FDU was the smallest team in Division I. 

FDU had heart. They weren’t even the winner in the Northeast Conference. Merrimack won the conference tournament title and since the North Andover, Massachusetts school hadn’t finished the four year probationary period assigned by the NCAA when transitioning to Division I, the second place Knights received the automatic bid. 

FDU was the last team placed in the tournament. Number 68. The oddsmakers had them listed as a 23.5 point underdog. Now the Knights can claim that they were the lowest seed EVER to win a first round game and they overcame the biggest odds to win a game—which will resonate heavily in New Jersey, Nevada and online. 

You have to hand it to Tobin Anderson, the FDU coach. After winning versus Texas Southern, he brashly commented that he saw weaknesses which could be exploited against Purdue. And that’s what the Knights went out and did. Plus it didn’t hurt that the Boilermakers disintegrated at the end of the game and they couldn’t seem to get the ball to their tall star in the post. 

These kids shouldn’t have been in the tournament let alone have the ability to stand up to mighty Purdue out of the Big Ten. Yet, inspired by the basketball lifer, son of a coach who coached at Division III schools Clarkson and Hamilton and Division II’s St. Thomas Aquinas prior to landing in Teaneck, his team achieved the nearly impossible. With grit and determination any team would want to have. 

Alas, the bubble burst. Florida Atlantic downed the Knights but never will this loss end their memory of a lifetime. 

Princeton took care of the Pac 12 winner in Arizona and a ranked SEC school in Missouri. Their dead eye shooting without fear showed, just like the smiling confidence of their coach Mitch Henderson, himself a Princeton grad who was a star on the Tigers squad which downed a vaunted UCLA team and whose leap in joyous celebration has forever been captured in Princeton lore. Do not believe that this team might not do more damage next weekend in Louisville. 

I thought the Selection Committee did another lousy job. Already, two top seeds were eliminated by the end of the Round of 32. Only Houston and Alabama are alive as #1’s, and they had to work hard to survive. If there are a number of upsets, this shows that the ratings the committee formulated weren’t very accurate. Just look at St. Peter’s last year—exciting but another abysmal failure to properly rank teams. 

We had other upsets along the way, just not as monumental. Snake-bitten #4 Virginia fell to #13 Furman, an upset a number of pundits touted. #11 Pittsburgh had to defeat Mississippi State in a play-in game on Tuesday, then came back to handily dispatch Iowa State, which left the state of Iowa 0-3, as the Cyclones joined Iowa and Drake on the sidelines. A tough Xavier team took care of the Panthers’ hopes. 

Penn State, coming off its second-place finish in the Big Ten Tournament, throttled Texas-A&M before losing to a better Texas Longhorns team. Should Houston and Texas win next Friday in Kansas City, they battle for the Midwest Regional crown and a trip to the Final Four. 

Northwestern valiantly battled UCLA before falling to the Bruins. How about the UCLA bench player with the dyed yellow hair with the blue paw prints? San Diego State has quietly looked good, as has Houston, but the Cougars were expected to be a title contender while SDSU is more of a long shot. 

Duke was a hot team heading into the the tournament. Then a key player was injured. Tennessee played a level of thuggery which the officials didn’t reign in and executed better. No surprise that the Vols advanced. 

Kentucky, with its elite talent, was one-upped by a diminutive guard for Kansas State by way of Harlem, The Patrick School in New Jersey and the University of Arkansas-Little Rock. Markquis Nowell introduced himself to those who did not know him. Get used to this kid—he just might make it to the NBA.

Michigan State and Marquette engaged in a slugfest. Just like revered Marquette coach Al Mc Guire would have liked it—and how present MSU head man Tom Izzo, current possessor of the longest consecutive number of NCAA appearances with one school apparently liked it more, as the Spartans prevailed, setting up a tremendous matchup with K-State at Madison Square Garden. MSU is the only one of eight Big Ten schools to survive to next weekend. 

Arkansas dethroning Kansas was not that big a surprise; I believed the Big 12, like the Big Ten to be a bit overrated. So the final accounting of the Sweet 16 is this: SEC 3; Big East 3; Big 12 2; and the ACC, West Coast, Big Ten, WAC, Conference USA, AAC, Pac 12 and the Ivy League have one representative. 

My wife picked Duke to win it all. I picked Gonzaga. Her final four was Alabama, Duke, Xavier and Gonzaga. Mine was Duke, Gonzaga, Arizona and Indiana. She feels she is finished. I know her bracket is very much alive and well, potentially poised to vanquish me two years in a row. She has Xavier, Alabama and Gonzaga alive to the Final Four. I only have Gonzaga. Do the math. 

In between all of the March madness, I managed to watch the Golden State Warriors lose three games on the road this week in Los Angeles against the Clippers; in Atlanta without Draymond Green, who was suspended for attaining his sixteenth technical foul versus the Clippers; and then Saturday night at Memphis, minus Ja Morant. 

Somehow, the Warriors are not the same on the road as they play when in the Chase Center. Without Andrew Wiggins, the team seems to be devoid of a key presence, both offensively and defensively, to take the pressure off of Steph Curry and Klay Thompson. Look for a very quick exit from the playoffs if things don’t change—which I cannot imagine they will. 

While I have reveled in the Golden State championships, I long for much more from my teams. Ergo, I have come around to the thinking that the Jets should go all in for Aaron Rodgers, provide the needed players and make one concerted push for a long-awaited second title. Rodgers does not have much more quality playing time left in his Hall of Fame career, and I am not going to wait forever on the heretofore ineptitude of the franchise. 

Let me also chide Rutgers. You are a behemoth. Act like one. Sure, three appearances for men’s basketball in the post-season is fine. But you can do much better—it isn’t that hard to be Northwestern, Maryland or Purdue (although coach Matt Painter seems to be snake-bitten by double digit seeds and New Jersey teams) or even Indiana in basketball and challenge yearly for the Big Ten crown. And it is not enough to know that Rutgers football produces talents like Isiah Pacheco of the Kansas City Chiefs but cannot peek at .500 in the conference. My patience runs thin. 

With no Yankees baseball until March 30 and Rodgers’ trade has not been formalized, I am preoccupied with college hoops for another week.