2007 College Basketball Thread

I guess this thread is about that March Madness thing happening about a mile from my house?

UNLV just knocked off Wisconsin. I officially give up.

Hooray! Butler's in the Sweet 16 yet again!

And this time I'll actually BE there to see the game!!!!

^ Too bad you have to play Florida.

I put Butler in the sweet 16. With Wisconsin.

sigh. There goes the last of the big 12 teams. Adios, Kansas. My brackets are so fucked.

Meh. There's no question that Butler outplayed Florida and made them sweat, which was fucking astonishing considering that most of Florida's players had 4 inches or more on Butler's guys.

Frankly, if they had such a hard time with Butler, considering the massive advantages they had, they are a fairly shitty team.

You want to talk advantages? Whatshisname from Georgetown fucking walked during the Hoyas last possession.....in which they go the bucket to put them ahead of Vandy by 1 point to win the game. It was a blatant walk. The camera kept showing it after the game with closeups with the announcer saying, "Here's where he changed his pivot foot. That's a walk." They zoomed in for a closeup on his feet when he traveled. Blatantly, blatantly obvious and glaring. I'm dumbfounded that the ref missed it. It should have been Vandy's ball with seconds to go, with Vandy already up a point.

I tend to think that the NCAA doesn't WANT schools like Vandy or Butler in the Elite 8 or anything like that.

Not enough of a TV draw.

So we get refs making shitty calls against smaller schools, so that more people will be invested in watching the larger schools go on to the Final Four.

It's fine to have the smaller schools in the Sweet 16, gives the illusion that the tournament is open to all sizes, but really, I don't think it is.

Butler's problem was that they shot themselves out of the game in the first half. That is a bad omen when one team comes out making lots of 3's.

It's a 40 minute game, and obviously Florida's talent and mental toughness eventually took over.

Edited for accuracy

Seriously, though, there's no way Butler could have gotten close to the basket, so 3-pointers were their only options.

If Florida had REAL talent, they woulda pulled the game far ahead of Butler from the get-go. Fact is, they had so much of a size advantage, it's almost comical that they couldn't hold Butler at bay with ease. THAT is a freakin' FACT.

I agree that the game was not well officiated. Frankly, none of the games in this tournament have been well officiated.

It's pretty silly to try to criticize Florida's talent. They won the national championship, how much more talent do you want? Run along now little Horizon leaguer...

Individual talent, sure.

As a team? Not so much.

These are guys looking to go pro. No one at Butler will. Logically, UF should have STOMPED Butler. And they didn't.

Look, everyone knew UF would win. When you have a sports budget in the tens of millions, players intent on going pro, and loose academic standards to keep your best players on the team, of course the outcome is pre-determined, poor officiating or not.

The Butler guys aren't gonna go pro. It's a..hobby, really. And they nearly beat UF.

I'm extremely happy with Butler's performance. I was at that game, and for a while, we all really thought we could win. That's freakin' astonishing, and to my mind, makes Butler the better team overall.

Both of the games tonight lacked true emotion and flow. Obviously the TV timeouts always serve to break the rhythm, but the culprit tonight was the crap officiating at a neutral site.

You have to feel bad for players like Hibbert and Wallace, who really played hard, yet their leader Green pissed his pants.

How bout them Gator boys? That team was not to be denied. Donovan had a great game plan, no reason to double team Oden, just let him get his points. Key in on the outside shooters and you force them into deep threes.

Florida was the most cohesive team in D1. All five starters will finish their careers with over 1,000 points while each averaged less than 10 shots per game. It's a great story of selflessness for all of them to come back and focus on the goal of a second championship. Go Gators! Time to get paid!