Friday, March 18, 2011

A diary of madness - chapter five

Early Friday afternoon, March 18

- Marv Albert is calling the games in Tulsa, OK. It makes me wonder if Albert has ever called a Kansas Jayhawk game in his storied career as a broadcaster.

- Albert's sidekicks are Steve Kerr, former Arizona Wildcat who will call Zona's game later today, and Craig Sager. Sager started his career in Kansas City, working for KMBC-TV (ABC.)

- It's fun watching Texas' Tristan Thompson and Oakland's Keith Benson go at it. Benson was impressive when he played in Allen Fieldhouse last season but his duel with Thompson points out the benefit of playing quality competition, each night, in a major conference. Benson is an NBA prospect but he's not an NBA-ready player.

- If the Vols lose, is this Bruce Pearl's last game as head coach of Tennessee? The less-than-ringing endorsement from his Athletics Director leads me to think that Pearl is out after the tournament. It was only six years ago, at the 2005 Final Four, where I saw Pearl walking through the coaches' hotel in St. Louis, wearing a Tennessee polo shirt, and thinking "well, we now know who got the open Tennessee job."

- Kansas has played nine teams in the field of 68--Arizona, UCLA, USC, Memphis, Michigan, Texas (twice), Kansas State (twice), Missouri (twice) and Texas A&M. Boston University has played three--Kentucky (91-57 loss), Bucknell (52-49 loss) and Villanova (82-66 loss.)

- Key stat for Kansas-Boston: KU's team assist to turnover ratio is 17.9 to 13.5; Boston's ratio is 9.6 to 11.6 meaning that the Terriers turn the ball over more often than they assist.

- Texas A&M has exited in the second round each of the past three tournaments.

- Okay, this Jeep Compass commercial with Muhammed and Laila Ali, and James and Scott Caan, talking about "bloodlines" is just a plain weird use of celebrities/public figures.

- Yesterday it was Leslie Visser with the weird hair. Today, it's Tennessee's Scotty Hopson sporting the Kid 'N' Play 'do. Bad hair runner-up: Oakland head coach Greg Kampe.

- J'Covan Brown of Texas yakking again at an opponent. Just play ball...

- Ah, the familiar voice of Gus Johnson, calling the Villanova-George Mason game. "Ha-HA!"

- Texas' win makes the Big 12 2-1 in three games thus far.

1 comment:

  1. I agree Marv Albert seems like an odd choice.

    Bruce Pearl is gone from Tennessee.

    ReplyDelete