Kentucky, Loovul, Michigan. We weren't beating any of them, if it's any consolation.
4 points from Akil Mitchell. Big time.
Well, thanks for playing, ACC basketball. See you next year.
Good night ACC. Piss poor showing in the NCAAT in 2014 by the supposed best conference in America.
I was 0 for 4 tonight. Not as important as Russ's ridiculous FT stat. I stuck with the UL-UK game, but what I saw of the other looked exciting.
If Kentucky wins 3 more games, I am going to throw up.
The A10 places 1 team in the Elite Eight and the ACC places zero. Who sucks more the ACC or the A10?
I'm starting to get a warm spot for Sparty. The whole Princess Lacey story is such a good one and the kids seem really decent
Guess I'm just asking which conference is better in a way that sort of takes jabs at both of them given Coach K's remarks and Shaka's response. In my eyes the ACC stunk it up in the NCAAT this year while the A10 had a team colossally overachieve. Gotta give the edge to the A10 if I'm comparing the conferences in terms of performance in the NCAAT.
And a flop wins it for Michigan. The replay clearly shows the defender start falling backward before the contact.
And good lord, Doug Gottlieb is so unlikeable. He just makes my skin crawl every time he starts talking.
Well, the ACC closes the books at 6-6 (Va 2-1, UNC 1-1, NC State 1-1, Syracuse 1-1, Pitt 1-1, Duke 0-1)
The A-10 still has Dayton alive, but the overall conference record is 4-5. Dayton is 3-0, but the rest of the league is 1-5 (St. Louis 1-1, VCU 0-1, GW 0-1, UMass 0-1, St, Joe's 0-1). FWIW, the A-10 losses can't be blamed on seeding -- two of the losses were by big favorites (No. 5 VCU lost to a 12; No. 6 UMass lost to an 11), two were essentially tossup games (No. 9 GW lost to an 8; No. 5 St. Louis lost to a 4) and only one was dictated by the seeding (No. 10 St. Joe's lost to a 7).
I would argue that you can't read too much into one NCAA game or even one tournament, but I disagree with the idea that the A-10's performance has put the ACC to shame. The ACC has had a terrible tournament, but in CONFERENCE terms, the A-10 has a worse record ... and is an Aaron Craft layup and an NC State meltdown from being 0-6.
If Dayton goes on and wins it all, I will revise this ... but if they lose Saturday, I'll take the ACC's 6-6 over the A-10's 4-6.
Heading into the Regional Finals, it's interesting to me that there's a 37.5% chance a Big Ten team will capture the 2014 National Championship and there's a 25% chance an SEC team will take it. Together, there's a 62.5% chance a Big Ten or SEC team wins it all this year. Those are great odds for two conferences that perennially get trash talked for the majority of the season by talking heads. This has been an extremely interesting NCAA Tournament.
In watching the UM Tennessee game, one thing that jumped out at me was the officiating. I thought that was one of the better officiated games I had seen in a while. The refs didn't seem to get in the way of the flow of the game. They called what they needed to call and let them play the game.
One other point that doesn't directly relate to the games: I talked to a diehard UK graduate and fan yesterday prior to the game who commented on attendance at Rupp arena. There are quite a few articles on the web that discuss this with various theories as to why it is happening. But this fan attributed it to recruiting one and done's. According to this guy, the fan base is not establishing a connection with them. He goes back a long way with UK, even to the point of witnessing Texas Western beating Adolph Rupp's UK team way back when. Maybe his thinking is influenced by an "old school" approach to things. But he said many UK fans are failing to connect with today's Wildcats.