It is that time of year again with brackets being completed and the debate heating up in preparation for the most enjoyable three weeks of the college basketball season, the NCAA Tournament.
In the first year of the 68 team tournament it has been proven that even adding three additional at-large teams doesn’t ensure happiness with the system.
In a year that college basketball experts say is filled with mediocre teams, there continues to be disappointment with some of the selections into the NCAA tournament field. Most specifically, the inclusion of Alabama-Birmingham and Virginia Commonwealth has some experts scratching their head and calling foul.
While both teams certainly have warts, the difference between them and some of the power conference teams that just missed the tournament isn’t significant.
What the NCAA Tournament committee seems to be saying is that conference success isn’t enough to get into the dance. Both UAB and VCU play in solid conferences and had a number of quality victories. Read the rest of this entry →
Lonnie McFarlan passes to John Smith for layup that shocks top-seeded DePaul.
The NCAA Basketball tournament began with the 1979 national championship game between the Michigan State Spartans and the Indiana State Sycamores, featuring Magic Johnson for the Spartans and Larry Bird for the Sycamores.
But the madness really began on March 14, 1981, when the top two ranked teams in the country and the defending national champions were all knocked off in buzzer beater losses.
All in the same afternoon.
The action began in Austin, Texas when the defending national champion Louisville Cardinals faced off with the Arkansas Razorbacks.
The game was close throughout but it appeared the Cardinals would advance to the Sweet 16 after guard Derek Smith hit the go-ahead basket to give Louisville a 73-72 lead with five seconds left. Read the rest of this entry →
It will take more than just the "Big 3" if the Miami Heat hope to win a championship.
The recent struggles of the Miami Heat offer another reminder that it takes more than just having great players to make a great team. Though the Heat have two of the best players in the game in Lebron James and Dwyane Wade and another All Star in Chris Bosh, they have yet to develop the chemistry needed to become championship contenders.
Through NBA history, there have been many teams with two or three superstars. However, what has helped some squads rise above the others to championship level has often been having a supporting cast specifically designed to accent the strengths of the star players.
Here is a look at five teams that had at least two superstars, but became super teams because of the supporting cast that filled specific roles and allowed the stars to be stars.
1980s Los Angeles Lakers – Arguably, the trio of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson and James Worthy makes James, Wade and Bosh look like the Three Stooges. When you add to the mix players like Byron Scott, Norm Nixon, Mychal Thompson, Michael Cooper, Kurt Rambis, A.C. Green, Jamaal Wilkes and Bob McAdoo you have the makings of a team that won five World Championships and reached four other NBA Finals in a 12 year stretch.
1980s Boston Celtics – To compete with the great Lakers teams, the Boston Celtics of the 1980s had to have their own stable of superstars and great supporting players. While the supporting cast evolved over the decade, the trio of Larry Bird, Robert Parrish and Kevin McHale was constant. At various times during the decade, the supporting cast that helped them to three titles and five finals in the decade included Tiny Archibald, Chris Ford, Cedric Maxwell, Gerald Henderson, Rick Robey , Danny Ainge, Quinn Buckner, Dennis Johnson, Scott Wedman, Bill Walton and M.L. Carr. Read the rest of this entry →
The March Sports Then and Now Vintage Athlete of the Month helped lead the North Carolina State Wolfpack to an NCAA Championship despite always being the smallest man on the court.
The 5-foot-7 Monte Towe never let his size (or lack thereof) minimize his impact on the court as he was the floor general for a Wolfpack team that went 79-7 during his three seasons as the starting point guard. Read the rest of this entry →
Ben Hansbrough and Notre Dame is just one of the teams that makes the Big East the strongest conference in college basketball.
Welcome to Part II of my ranking of the top conferences in Division I college basketball, just in time for the start of the conference tournaments.
Illustrating the volatility of the 2010-11 season, this past weekend, #1 Duke falls to Virginia Tech, who a few days later loses to Boston College, a team on the bubble hoping for an at large bid, pushing Ohio state into the #1 spot in both polls.
BYU suspends one of its marquis players, Brandon Davies, for violating the schools honor code, and they go from Dance Darling to big question mark. Ranked #3 after beating San Diego state last weekend, BYU, in its first game without Davies in the line-up, is upset by New Mexico losing by a margin of 18 points. Is this a momentary lapse by a team that has been dominant all season or is Davies that much of an impact player that it changes the dynamics of that team significantly? Only time will tell. That is an amazing kick off to the month of March and is why this season is like no other.
With that said, here are my Top 5 Conferences:
Top Conference #5: The Atlantic Coast Conference
No conference represents the volatility of this season quite like the ACC. This is a conference that at one time looked as though it could send as many as 6 or 7 teams to the tournament and now may be lucky to send 4. The ACC conference has only two teams in the top 25 in Duke (starting the weekend ranked number 1 and now ranked #4) and North Carolina outside the top ten at #13 with a chance finish tops in the ACC with one more win. This is a very competitive conference with Florida State and Virginia Tech likely heading to the dance but also includes teams like Boston College, Maryland, Miami, and Clemson who currently find themselves on the outside looking in. Duke is likely the 2 seed in the East, North Carolina the three seed out of the West, with Florida State the 10 seed and Virginia Tech the 8 seed both coming out of the southeast bracket. These four teams are a combined 8-9 against ranked opponents with Duke carrying 4 of those wins. So while this conference may only send 4 teams, they will be battle tested teams coming out of a strong conference. Read the rest of this entry →
Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a game on March 2, 1962.
Given his larger than life personality and talent, it is very possible that were he playing in today’s modern media era, Wilt Chamberlain would dwarf Kobe, LeBron, D-Wade, Shaq and the rest both on and off the court.
At 7-foot-1, Chamberlain was a scoring machine like no other. For much of his career, scoring as many as 50 or 60 points in a game wasn’t a “special” night, it was a routine. During the 1961-62 season, Chamberlain averaged 50.4 points per game and became the only NBA player to top 4,000 points in a season.
In fact, his career scoring average of 30.1 points is actually a point and a half higher than the 2010-11 average of the NBA’s current leading scorer (Kevin Durant averaging 28.5 ppg).
It was 49 years ago today that Chamberlain had his finest offensive night and one that will certainly never be duplicated.
As a member of the Philadelphia Warriors, Chamberlain scored 100 points on March 2, 1962 against the New York Knicks in a game played at Hersheypark Arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
The late season game wasn’t expected to be overly exciting and in fact there is no known video from the game. There is a radio broadcast that I have included below.
Chamberlain scored 41 points in the first half, which wasn’t overly exciting considering he had topped 60 points 17 times already during the season and 32 times in his three year NBA career.
However, Warriors coach Frank McGuire instructed his players to keep feeding Chamberlain the ball during the second half and the points started to pile up.
As he neared 100 points, the Knicks started fouling the other Warrior players to keep Chamberlain from getting the ball. The Warriors then started fouling the Knicks to slow down the game and give Chamberlain more chances.
He finally reached 100 points in the final minute and the game was halted for nine minutes as fans ran onto the court to celebrate Chamberlain’s milestone.
What made Chamberlain’s 100 point game possible was his uncanny free throw shooting for that game. Chamberlain converted 28 of 32 foul shots (.875), which is far greater than his career average of .511 from the line. He also connected on 36 of 63 field goal attempts in the 169-147 victory.
Below are some audio and video clips that remember Chamberlain and his record setting night: Read the rest of this entry →
