What in The Wide Wide World of Sports is Going On Here??





Now its being reported that Billy Donovan is having second thoughts and is trying to go back to the University of Florida? So now he goes from being a money-grabbing, disingenuous jerk, to being a flighty, indecisive whimp.

And Here we Go. Right on Cue.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the emergence of Florida dynasty has spawned the age-old argument of the inane: “can they beat an NBA team?? I totally think they can!!”

Why do we have to continue to do this? Why? I really don’t understand why this makes me so mad, but it really gets under my skin. Morons did it with USC a few years back, saying that they could beat the worst of the NFL. It happens all the time.

First of all, full disclosure: regular readers will know that I am an Ohio State fan, and not exactly in love with the athletic teams from the University of Florida right now. That being said, I congratulate them (again) on winning the NCAA tournament and on the great accomplishment of concurrently holding the football and basketball championships.

Now that that’s out of the way, let me get to my point: An NBA team, any NBA team, would CRUSH Florida. They would sweep them in a seven game series with their backups.

Just look at the Charlotte Bobcats for example. They have basically a who’s-who of college all-americans from the past five years, led by Sean May, Raymond Felton, Adam Morrison, Matt Carroll and Emeka Okafor. That’s five all-conference players, four all-americans, two different NCAA tournament most outstanding players, and a national player of the year. This is a much more decorated team than this Gators club. They have 28 wins right now. They get their asses handed to them on a semi-nightly basis.

As great as this Florida team is, and they are GREAT, we have admitted as much in the past, how many guys on this team could even crack the starting five of the Clippers or the Nuggets or another around .500, average NBA team? Definitely Corey Brewer, probably Al Horford and Joakim Noah, but who else? I’m sorry, Taurean Green and Lee Humphrey ain’t starting in the NBA next year on a decent team. These five guys are college studs and they may not even start in the League.

Not only that, but how many NBA teams can you see losing by double digits to Vanderbilt or Tennessee? How many NBA teams would lose by 10 points to a 5-11 in conference LSU team?

Can we please accept the Florida Gators as what they are, that is, a great college basketball team, bordering on a dynasty. We don’t have to elevate them to something that they are not.

152 Days till Football Season in Columbus!

Ok, so that went about as well as we thought it would. That is to say, not well at all. Florida was just too good, too deep, too experienced for the young Buckeyes. We fully expect things to now return to normal, and by that we mean we expect Florida players and fans to gloat for the foreseeable future, we expect Oden and Conley to declare for the draft, and we expect Ohio State to return to its status as a second-tier college basketball program.

Ohio State spring game April 21st!

It all Comes Down to This (again)





















So its the Buckeyes and the Gators in a rematch of the BCS title game in January. A few quick thoughts:

• We have a bad feeling about this game. The Florida team is too talented, too experienced, and too deep. We really hope that we are wrong, but we think the Gators are going to win comfortably. However, the Buckeyes were a big favorite in the football game on January 8th and we all saw how that turned out.



• The Florida junior class of Taurean Green, Al Horford, Corey Brewer, and Joakim Noah has to be considered one of the best recruiting classes in college basketball history. Ahead of the Fab Five from Michigan. Remember, the Fab Five went to two championship games, just as the UF juniors now have, but the Michigan class never won.



• Georgetown has no seniors in their starting five, so if they all come back, they should be the favorites to win it all next year. That being said, we were surprised at how easily they were beaten by the Buckeyes last night.



• Billy Donovan should stay at Florida. Why would he want to deal with the scrutiny of coaching at Kentucky when he is already coaching at a school that is in a better position to compete for national championships. He has built something at Florida. He should get Florida to match the offer he get from UK and stay in Gainesville.

• It is really funny how expectations vary. If Ohio State loses on Monday night this basketball season would still be considered a huge success. When the Buckeyes lost the BCS championship game in January, the football season was considered good, but it sort of left a bad taste in the fans' mouths.

The Waiting is Over!

The weekend we have been waiting for has finally arrived. The anticipation is over, its showtime!

We are speaking of course about opening weekend for the cinematic train-wreck that is, “Blades of Glory.” We have already made our thoughts on this movie known. Unequivocally, this thing is going to suck.

We have also made it known that we feel that the only hope for this movie is Jenna Fischer,

Jenna Fischer, and more Jenna Fischer. We don’t know what you think about her, but we think she is not only funny, but really hot in a “girl-next-door” sort of way.

Other than her, we wouldn’t cross the street for a free screening of this piece of garbage.

As for the basketball, by our calculations we are (I am) still alive in the Just Call Me Juice sports blogger’s challenge. All we need is a OSU-UCLA final game, and we will give you one guess who we picked to win it all

By the way, since this IS the Friday T&A post, here is a gratuitous picture of Alessandria Ambrosio

Who would blow the doors off Gisele in a Big Picture-esque "who would you..." tournament of Victoria's Secret Models.

Ohio State can Score





Lately, we have been hearing a lot of talk about how Ohio State "plays a boring brand of basketball" and "can't score." We really do not understand this sentiment. First of all, Ohio State has played in arguably two of the most entertaining games in the entire NCAA tournament. Those of course being the St. Patrick’s day escape against Xavier, and last Thursday’s epic comeback against Tennessee. But more than that, they score better than most people give them credit for, and here is the proof:






Bada-Bing! Sorry, we couldn't resist. Here is the real proof - Among the Final Four teams:



Complete Season (regular season & tournament)


Florida - 79.3 ppg
Ohio State - 74.7 ppg
UCLA - 71.5 ppg
G'Town - 69.3 ppg



Within the Tournament


Florida - 84 ppg
Ohio State - 83.25 ppg
G'Town - 76 ppg
UCLA - 64 ppg



So there you have it. Fewer than five points per game separates OSU from the mighty Florida Gators during the season. And in the tournament, less than a point.


(And incidentally, Florida scored 112 points in their first round match-up against Jackson State, so their four game NCAA tournament average is a bit misleading)


So if you want, you can say that you don't think that the Buckeyes are that good. You can say that they are "lucky" to be in the Final Four. Hell, you can say that you think that Georgetown is going to beat them by 30 on Saturday if you feel like it. But don't say that their games are boring, or that they cannot score. Because the facts don't back that up.

Wow

Thats all we can say right now. Wow. Down 20 in the first half, Greg Oden in foul trouble the entire game, and they still pull it out. Wow.

Saturday night against Memphis. Lets keep it rolling.

Good For You Tubby

Orlando Smith, you probably know him as "Tubby," decided today that he was going to leave the University of Kentucky and take the head coaching job at the University of Minnesota. This is probably because if you coach the Gophers to 29 wins per year for 9 years, five conference regular season championships, five conference tournament championships, three elite 8 finishes, one perfect regular season, and one national championship, they won't hate you and call you a failure. He should have known he was never going to survive at a school where they name arenas after his most racist predecessors.

By the way, Wildcat fans, if you hire Tom Crean, and rumors are saying he is at the top of the list, just know that besides the year he had a spectacular sophomore named Dwayne Wade, he has never won an NCAA tournament game. Plus he looks like one of these days he is going to kill somebody.

Good luck with all that.

There is No Crying in Basketball

Found this on Deadspin today. It is post about an embittered Xavier fan’s hate letter to Greg Oden. It mentions Oden’s mother by name and even makes mention of his parent’s divorce. Classy.

But it struck us because it points to a larger issue: blaming Greg Oden for Saturday’s loss. We don’t quite understand this. Why it is that Oden is receiving blame for the loss instead of:

The Refs – let’s suspend reality for just a second and assume that Oden’s fifth foul was indeed a flagrant or intentional one. In this case, shouldn’t the referee who was four feet away from Oden at the time and made the call be to blame? Oden made the foul, but it was the ref who actually made the call, right? Why don’t you call him out rather than trashing a 19-year old and his parents who may or may not be divorced?

Justin Cage – If Cage makes the second free throw, then Xavier goes up by four points with nine seconds left. Instead, he missed it, and left the door open for Ron Lewis’ buzzer beating three-pointer.

Sean Miller – These Cinci-Tucky crybabies are so focused on Oden that they have neglected the fact that their head coach completely fell asleep at the switch in the final seconds. He should have been SCREAMING at his kids to foul Mike Conley or Ron Lewis as soon as the ball was advanced over half-court. This would have put a Buckeye on the line with somewhere around four or five seconds left and only two free throws. OSU would have needed a miracle missed second free throw and a tip in just to tie the game at that point if Xavier had done the smart thing.

The entire Xavier team – Because lets call a spade a spade here, they CHOKED. Not only did they completely cough up a double-digit lead in about five minutes of game time, but once the game went into overtime, they folded up like tent. Xavier completely fell apart in the face of the OSU rally.

So please Xavier fans, if you are going to whine about your own shortcomings, leave Oden, and his mom out of it.

Whew!

Wow, what a game yesterday.

Greg Oden and the Buckeyes danced their way into the sweet 16 by winning a game they had absolutely no business winning. WE have no idea how you OSU won a game in which they

- trailed by 11 points with just under seven minutes to play

- trailed by nine points with three minutes to play

- trailed by two points with nine seconds left with Xavier shooting two free throws

- lost Greg Oden who fouled out at the end of regulation

On a different subject, a quick memo to Dick Vitale and others of his ilk who continue to live under the misguided assumption that the ACC is the "best conference in America" every year: seven ACC teams entered the NCAA tournament, and six of them have been eliminated by Sunday evening.

We Told you They Sucked.

Duke Loses!

Its already a great weekend, because Duke has lost in the first round.

Enjoy the weekend, and the tournament.

Thanks for Playing Florida A&M!

This is the message that the NCAA has sent you.

Greg Oden: "I'm not NBA ready yet"

music to our ears.

The Play-in Game




What is the deal with the play-in game?

(By the way, the fact that the NCAA doesn't want the world calling it the "play-in game" means we will attempt to say “play-in game” as many times as we can.)

Why do they even have this game? The tournament was fine with 64 teams, why did they have to add this stupid extra game in the middle of the week in Dayton between the two worst teams in the field?

Also, why do automatic bid qualifiers play every year in the play-in game? These teams have “earned” their spot in the actual tournament by winning their conferences. If we are going to have this ridiculous game, why not have the two last at-large teams play for the 64th bid? Last week Niagara and Florida A&M were celebrating their wins in their respective conference tournaments, and were getting ready to be displayed on the national stage against one of the “big boys.” Now one of them isn’t going to get that chance because they are going to lose to another small program in a random play-in game before the official start of the tournament. One day you’re dancing at center court and getting ready for your 40 minutes in the sun as you are slaughtered by Kansas, but just happy to be able to one day tell your kids you shared the basketball court with Brandon Rush, and the next your headed home, with nothing to show for your efforts besides a free trip to Dayton.


And while the NCAA continues to pee on these teams shoes and tell them its raining, the coaches are less than pleased. Niagara coach Joe Mihalich said he was "shocked," and even "insulted" to be placed in the game. Florida A&M coach Mike Gillespie (whose team will be playing in its second play-in game by the way, they won the 2004 play-in game) said tonight's losing team will feel "cheated."

Why not let Stanford and Arkansas play in the play-in game? That way the loser goes home and says to themselves, “you know, we really didn’t deserve to be in the tournament anyway.” And slot the winner in as the lowest ranked 10 seed or something.

All that said, we’ll probably still watch tonight.

(quotes:Palm Beach Post)

The Worst Jerry, the WORST!

We are not huge college basketball fans, but we love the NCAA tournament. The tournament is probably the best single sporting event of the year, in as much as 64 basketball games can be considered one single sporting event. But for some reason, it brings out the worst from sports media every year. Actually, we take that back. It doesn’t bring out the worst in the sports media as much as it exposes exactly how brainless most of these analysts are in a public forum. Just a few snippets:

-Why is it that as soon as the brackets are released the talking heads have to rush to the forefront and weigh in on this ridiculous notion of "which bracket is the toughest?" There are like 6 teams that seem to be legitimately above the rest of the field: Florida, Ohio State, Kansas, UCLA, Georgetown, and North Carolina. There are also a handful of teams that just pretty much happy to be there. The other 40 or 50 teams are bunched up somewhere in between and evenly distributed among the 4 brackets. That is why the ESPN.com’s analyst symposium on the brackets turned into a giant cluster-fuck with Jay Bilas calling the East the hardest and the South the easiest, Doug Gottlieb calling the South the hardest and the West the easiest, and (this is our favorite) Dicky V calling the West the hardest (incidentally, Duke is in that bracket) and the easiest as “none.” None. Thanks Dick.

- Speaking of Dicky, Shocking that he would pick an ACC team to win it all. Truly shocking.

- Speaking of the ACC, how the hell did the committee make Duke a 6 seed?? Did you know that they haven’t beaten a tournament team (we don’t count BC) since December 21st?? In case you were wondering, the other 6 seeds are Louisville (3rd in the Big East and 8-2 in their last 10 games), Notre Dame (4th in the Big East and 7-3 in their last 10, including a trip to the conference semis) and Vanderbilt (10-6 in conference and the first SEC team to beat Florida this year). Duke, as you should know by now, was 8-8 in a weaker than normal ACC, tied for 6th place, and lost in the opening round of the conference tournament to a 5-11 NC State team. Anyone else would have been “on the bubble” but Duke is a 6 seed.

- Joakim Noah acting like an ass makes it easy to cheer against Florida, and we aren't the only ones who think so.

HUH??

Ohio State is the number 1 team in the nation in both polls coming into this weekend, they roll through the Big 10 tournament winning every game by at least 11 points, and win in the title game by 17 over the #4 ranked Wisconsin Badgers, they have not lost since January 9th and have only lost once by double-digits, (back in December mind you) and they are not the #1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament?

The #1 overall team is Florida, who lost games by 13, 10, and 10 points late in the season. Amazing.

The End of the Dead Zone

March is FINALLY here. With the end of February comes the end of the worst month on the sports calendar. It also brings the beginning of March, by our count, the third best sports month on the calendar (behind October and September in that order. We are willing to argue this point).

In honor of the beginning of meaningful college basketball games at long last, we bring you pictures of hot college basketball cheerleaders!

Whoops!! Sorry... Don't know how that got in there. Lets try this again, Hot college basketball cheerleaders!!

She is a University of Florida "Dazzler." We have trouble containing our contempt for the Florida basketball team, but we do love us some Dazzlers.

UCLA is a team that people seem to have forgotton, we hope they hang around the tournament long enough for their cheerleaders to make an appearance

And we leave you with two Texas cheerleaders. We have no idea what the hell they are doing, but we love it.

Happy March Basketball Fans!

Duke Should Not be Ranked

Last night, as we settled down on the couch with a cold one (and by “one” we mean 12-pack) for a night of college basketball, we were taken aback by something that had apparently completely slipped by most of the hoops-viewing world. Duke is ranked #14 in both polls.

First, let us say that we were surprised to learn this before the game, as we pretty much assumed that they would be handled by unranked Maryland (UM won 85-77). So this is not a case of 20-20 hindsight. Also, we should preface our comments by letting any new readers know that we previously took great joy in Duke’s struggles in early February.

We were not surprised to see Duke ranked when we tuned into ESPN last night, we were just puzzled as to how they could possibly go from unranked one week, to ranked #14 two weeks later, without any quality wins (BC was laughably overrated as they are just about every year. We aren’t counting that as a quality win).

Lets examine the ACC standings. Coming into last night’s game, Duke was 8-6 in conference, tied with Maryland, and two games behind the leaders. The ACC leaders were, again as of last night, North Carolina, 10-4, and ranked #8, who beat Duke in their only meeting so far (they play again in Chapel Hill on Sunday). Virginia Tech, 10-4, and -here’s where it gets screwy- ranked #21 who beat Duke in their only meeting of the season in Durham. And UVA (we know, UVA??), 10-4, and ranked #25 and also beat Duke in their only meeting of the year. So to recap: that’s two teams ahead of Duke in the standings who hold a head-to-head edge over Duke ranked seven and eleven spots BEHIND them in the polls respectively.

Right, we forgot to mention something. That UVA #25 ranking is in the Coaches Poll. The Cavs are unranked in the AP poll. Right now they are second among the “others receiving votes.”

So back to Duke. After being left out of the polls two weeks ago, wins over BC and Georgia Tech vaulted them to the rankings of #18 and #17 in the AP and Coaches Polls, leapfrogging teams like West Virginia, who was coming off of a win over then #2 UCLA, Vanderbilt, who was coming off of a win over then #1 Florida, and Texas, who we firmly believe is one of the more underrated teams in the nation and would smoke Duke on a neutral court. So in other words, beating BC and GT was more impressive to voters than WVU going to L.A. and beating UCLA, or Vandy giving Florida their first conference loss.

All of this brings us back to last night. If we found someone who didn’t know any better, and told them that one of the two teams we were watching was unranked, and the other was in the top 15, needless to say we could have won a lot of money from them. We know there is a bias in the media towards Duke, but this is really getting out of hand. So if the rankings come out next week and Duke is still ranked, we will just simply have to laugh and shake our head. If they come out and Maryland, who has now swept Duke, and beat UNC on Sunday and is really picking up steam, is ranked behind them, we will blow a collective gasket.

Has the Whole World Gone CRAZY??


Let us be the first (and it would seem like the only) ones to say that we thoroughly enjoyed Pat Summitt’s appearance at the Florida-Tennessee game last night. Even though Deadspin, Awful Announcing, and The Big Lead, three blogs that we read religiously by the way, have all called it a letdown, we thought it was great for several reasons:

It showed school spirit

Not many schools have coaches that are as close-knit as the University of Tennessee. Bruce Pearl knows that it is in his best interests to align himself and his team with the much more famous, and much more successful, Lady Vols squad. That’s why he dressed up like an idiot and cheered at the women’s game last month. And this was her returning the favor. Hell, even Fat Phil was in attendance last night, picking his nose and sitting with Peyton Manning. How many schools have coaches that are that close and that supportive of their colleagues? The Buckeyes could learn a lot from the Vols. It wouldn’t hurt to see Coach Tressell-Vest at some basketball games cheering on Thad and his guys.

It showed a different side of Summitt

We don’t claim to know much about Women’s Basketball, but we know that Pat Summitt has an image of a bit of a curmudgeon. She is sort of like John Thompson in a dress. This display last night showed a completely different Pat Summitt. She showed that she doesn’t take herself too seriously to show up in a damn cheerleading outfit in her mid 50s.

What exactly did you expect?

Did you guys think that she was going to come out topless with her chest painted like Pearl was at the women’s game? I think coming out in a cheerleading outfit singing “Rocky Top” is about as much as I thought she was going to do.

And most importantly, it led, however indirectly, to a Florida loss, and probably the loss of their #1 seed.