March Madness 2017

If you saw the end of the St. Mary's game you saw Bennet show little reaction. This according to Daschel of the O was how:

nick daschel‏ @nickdaschel 13h13 hours ago: Randy Bennett has the blow-by handshake down pat.

Does not take to losing well.

I'm really happy.

Seems a lot of Tarheels became Gamecock fans yesterday, too.

SouthCarolinaPilot wrote:I'm really happy.

Congrats to the other USC!

To steal something I saw online: "I think most of America was glad to see Duke get tripped up."

PilotNut wrote:

SouthCarolinaPilot wrote:I'm really happy.

Congrats to the other USC!  

To steal something I saw online: "I think most of America was glad to see Duke get tripped up."

In other not-quite-so-madness news,
USF got a CBI tourney bid, and lost in round 1 to Rice.

That leaves only GU standing in the post-season from the WCC, as SMC lost to Arizona 69-60.

up7587 wrote:ESPN types all bemoaning Syracuse being left out.  18-14 overall. 10-8 in the ACC. Tied for 7th place.  Lost 5 of their last 7 games.  Losses to bad teams.  No reason to put them in the tournament except East Coast Bias.  Good move by the selection committee.

Before their assistant signed on as the head coach at UW, the #1 Orange lost to #5 Ole Miss in the NIT second round.

DoubleDipper wrote:

up7587 wrote:ESPN types all bemoaning Syracuse being left out.  18-14 overall. 10-8 in the ACC. Tied for 7th place.  Lost 5 of their last 7 games.  Losses to bad teams.  No reason to put them in the tournament except East Coast Bias.  Good move by the selection committee.

Before their assistant signed on as the head coach at UW, the #1 Orange lost to #5 Ole Miss in the NIT second round.

Doesn't seem like a high profile hire by U-Dub. A 22 year assistant from the other side of the country.

BTW, don't look now, but the SEC is a basketball conference.

The first Elite Eight team is Oregon, 69-68 over Michigan. They held on when Michigan missed a last second shot to win. A missed FT with 14 seconds left didn't come back to haunt them.

GU almost blew their game with turnovers and missed FTs. But they clamped down on defense in the last possession, kept WVU from getting a shot off, and won 61-58.

First two Elite Eight teams are from the PNW.

#1 seed Kansas rolled over Purdue. Too bad.

#2 seed Arizona lost to #11 seed Xavier. Xavier now meets Gonzaga.

Well I guess I'll buy myself a different bucket.

up7587 wrote:#1 seed Kansas rolled over Purdue.  Too bad.

#2 seed Arizona lost to #11 seed Xavier.  Xavier now meets Gonzaga.  

Giving the dogs the easiest path to the final four.

Let's see if the zags can play one dominant game in this tourney.

I've been a fan of the Michigan Wolverines team since their aircraft crashed on takeoff on their way to the Big 10 Championship a few weeks back and the guys arrived on another aircraft just hours before their first game.  The team played that first game in their practice jerseys and borrowed sneakers and ended up sweeping the tournament. UO beat UM Thursday, but it was a good run for the team that wasn't supposed to win any Big 10 Tournament games, let alone make it to the Sweet 16.

It turns out the reason the team and their support crew are alive is because of the quick recognition and reaction of their pilots.  The NTSB has found the right elevator geared tab inboard pushrod linkage was damaged  restricting the movement of the right elevator.

In other words, the pilots pulled back on the control column for takeoff at 152 knots, but the nose wheel did not come off the ground. Some might have instinctively thought they needed more airspeed to get the nose up, but this crew immediately recognized the need to reject the takeoff and quite possibly save the lives of their passengers.  Even after quickly idling the throttles and applying the brakes the aircraft reached 173 knots and overran the end of the runway and broke through approach lighting systems and a perimeter fence. The airplane crossed a road and came to a stop about 1,100 feet past the runway end with collapsed nose gear and main gear in a ditch. The aircraft was substantially damaged.

As a professional pilot, I salute this crew's quick thinking and reaction to a grave situation...it was an extraordinary decision to reject the takeoff after exceeding the maximum rejected takeoff speed.  The pilots knew they would not be able to keep the aircraft on the runway, but going off the end of the runway was a much better choice than actually getting "slightly" airborne on half an elevator, but unable to climb.

It only took 60 years, but the WCC finally has a team reach the Final Four! Grats to the Zags. #TruckStopConferenceRepresent

Had no about the Michigan plane thing until DD's great post up there. Interesting stuff.

You guys cheering for Gonzaga should be commended. You are way less petty than I am.

While I haven't watched any of it, Reveno's new Georgia Tech squad has made the Final Four of the NIT.

Dean Murdoch wrote:You guys cheering for Gonzaga should be commended. You are way less petty than I am.

By making the Final Four, GU has maxed out on money for the WCC. So there is that.

Someday Mark Few will retire, and we'll find out if the Zag's WCC supremacy is eternal. Lot's of coaches have taken over programs with massive resources and tradition, and not had dominant tenures. For example, Matt Doherty at N. Carolina following Dean Smith and Bill Guthridge, and just about everyone at UCLA after Wooden.

SouthCarolinaPilot wrote:While I haven't watched any of it, Reveno's new Georgia Tech squad has made the Final Four of the NIT.

I've watched virtually all of Georgia Tech's games this year, including some nice upsets, but they appear to be peaking at the right time.  

Besides winning, Rev says the reason he stays so calm is because as an assistant he focuses on his job, which is not to run the game or question the refs.

Final 4 games coming up in an hour on ESPN!

up7587 wrote:

Dean Murdoch wrote:You guys cheering for Gonzaga should be commended. You are way less petty than I am.

By making the Final Four, GU has maxed out on money for the WCC.  So there is that.  

By most estimates SMC's 2 units and GU's 5 units this year (no units added past the Final Four) will bring about $11 million to the WCC over the next 6 years....I don't know how it is split percentage wise in the WCC, but all 10 schools and the league office will take a share.  

Going back to the 2011-2012 season, when BYU joined the WCC, the conference (well, GU, SMC, and BYU) has earned 27 units in the NCAA Tournament resulting in a significant financial windfall for the "takers" in the conference.  

Confused?  Yeah, me too until I read this 2015 article from Bloomberg about the March Madness Makers and Takers....

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-march-madness-basketball-fund/

Geezer, this is something you and all the accounting majors on PN can really sink your teeth into!

That article somewhat reinforces my belief that Gonzaga has become too good for us. It's like a positive feedback loop. I know that they rarely ever make it through the WCC season with a perfect record, but their earnings and spending are so far ahead of everyone else that it would take a monumental run by one of the rest of us (excluding BYU and Saint Mary's) to properly copy the Gonzaga recipe.

Last I heard it was an even split. We get the same amount of that money as Gonzaga or St. Mary's the way the WCC does things.

I wrote an article on this for the Beacon after GU had their first big March run in 2000. I don't think that the set-up has substantially changed but I think that only the conference champion earned for the entire conference. It could have changed and/or I could have my misrecollected my facts.

Not sure about 2000, but currently all teams, not just the conference champ, earn money for their school and/or the conference.  That's why a number of people shook their head when the ACC had nine schools in the tournament, $$$$, when many felt they were not deserving.

It may also have been an "even split" between schools in the WCC at one time, as dholcombe stated, but that is no longer the case....I just don't know what the split is.

SouthCarolinaPilot wrote:While I haven't watched any of it, Reveno's new Georgia Tech squad has made the Final Four of the NIT.

And now Rev and ACC Coach of the Year Josh Pastner and the Yellow Jackets are in the final at Madison Square Garden tonight....5:00 PM PDT on ESPN.  

Rev says the best part of the NIT has been the extra experience and practice the team is getting....a big boost for the Yellow Jackets next year in his view.  #togetherweswarm

Tech has defeated four top-100 RPI teams in the NIT so far - Indiana (79), Belmont (60), Ole Miss (77) and CSU Bakersfield (76). TCU, their opponent tonight, is No. 67, and Tech, at No. 106, is the lowest-ranked team in the NIT final four.  They were a #6 seed in the Syracuse bracket and TCU was the #4 seed in the Iowa bracket.