Monday, March 18, 2024

The Madness. Some thoughts.

 I'm gonna miss Robbie Avila this week.

I'm gonna miss Indiana State's big galoot of a center, with his dad body and Revenge of the Nerd goggles and A-rating game. Looks like a stiff; plays like a stud. Guy has the whole package going for him -- even the nickname, Cream Abdul-Jabbar -- and had Indiana State made it past the velvet rope into Da Tournament, he would have become part of March Madness lore.

Alas, Indiana State, the 28-6 Missouri Valley regular-season champion, wasn't granted entry. Michigan State, which won nine fewer games and finished 10-10 in the Big Ten, is the nine-seed in the West. So the Sycamores don't get in, and MSU, which had exactly the same number of conference and overall wins as Indiana and lost the head-to-head to the Hoosiers, goes Dancin' while the Trees opt for the NIT and Indiana turns down an NIT invite.

Life isn't fair.

And on that note, the Blob presents a few more thoughts on the upcoming mayhem, instead of just shutting up and going away:

* The Long Haul loses again.

Which is to say, one of the reasons ISU will be NIT-ing instead of Dancin' is because North Carolina State came out of nowhere to win the ACC tournament and San Diego State did the same in the Big West and UAB and Montana State did the same in their respective conference tournaments.

Collectively, those four schools lost 56 games this season, with Montana State finishing 17-17. That they're all imposters someone smuggled past the Madness guards goes without saying.

This is why the Blob has long maintained, against all reason, that it's the winner of a conference's regular season title who should get the automatic bid to the Madness, not some down-standings team that pulls three or four wins out of its hindparts after stinking it up for four months. And if this renders the conference tournaments moot for the mid-majors, so be it.

As John Wooden once sort of said,  they're nothing but cash-flow window dressing for the conferences anyway. And that's especially true for the Power Five conferences, which are going to get multiple bids no matter what.

OK. I'll get off my soapbox now.

* Who will Purdue lose to this time?

The Boilermakers landed the No. 1 seed in the Midwest, which means they'll play in Indy Friday night, which means their loss to Wisconsin in the Big Ten semis didn't mean diddly. As didn't 1-seed North Carolina losing in the ACC final or 1-seed Houston getting blackjacked by 28 in the Big 12 final.

Anyway, it's on to the Madness, and on to a first-round matchup Purdue has weirdly (or not so weirdly) been pointing toward all season. They got laughed off the big stage last year after lowly Fairleigh Dickinson knocked them out in the first round, a 16-seed taking down a 1-seed for only the second time ever. The ridicule stung, and it's given the Purdues a nasty edge they were missing last season.

So, anyway, beware, whoever wins between 16-seeds Grambling and Montana State. Purdue wants your livers on a stick. The Boilers want to feed you a steady diet of elbows, posterizations and a hard rain of three-balls. 

It's nothing personal. And, of course, it's entirely personal.

* Little Guy alert!

Every year the Blob picks out a tiny no-hoper to root for, because Da Tournament is all about the tiny no-hopers and sometimes the tiny no-hopers win. So who are the Little Guys That Might this year?

Well, you've got your Bigger Little Guys, like Yale and Colgate and Vermont and even Your St. Peter's Peacocks, last seen knocking Purdue into the offseason a couple years ago. They've all been here recently, as has Grand Canyon, WAC champion and Madness participant for the second straight year. And so they can almost be considered Madness regulars. 

However ...

However, it's the Littler Little Guys I'm looking at, the underdogs of underdogs. And there are a few.

I'm talkin' Samford, to start with, and Wagner, and Stetson, whose star player is Jalen Blackmon from Fort Wayne and Marion. There's Howard and James Madison and Longwood and, yeah, Long Beach State and Montana State.

I'm not in the tank for any those, however.

No, sir. This year, my heart belongs to Duquesne.

And, yeah, I know, you probably don't think of Duquesne as a Little Guy, because a lot of people have heard of it. It's a private Catholic research school in Pittsburgh that opened in 1878, so it's been around awhile. Its athletic teams are called the Dukes and they play in the Atlantic 10, and the university has a campus in Rome, the big one in Italy. Which is kinda cool if you think about it.

That's not why I'm rooting for the Dukes, however.

I'm rooting for the Dukes because they haven't been Dancin' in 47 years. In fact the last time they won any sort of postseason national title was in 1955, when they cut down the nets at the NIT.

That was 69 years ago, for those of you keeping score at home. Sixty-nine years -- and 47 since they've even been a part of the Madness.

Forty-seven years! Man, that was 1977, the back half of the Decade Taste Forgot. Disco was big. Fashion was fake-silk shirts with 747 wingspan collars and leisure suits made from fabrics not found in nature. Music was the BeeGees and The Night Chicago Died and Bobby Goldsboro singing "Honey" and "Watching Scotty Grow."

 (But also Steely Dan and other cool stuff)

In other words, it was a long damn time ago. And now the Dukes are BACK, baby. And they're an 11-seed in the East, which means it won't be a monumental upset if they knock off 6-seed BYU in the first round.

After which they probably get washed by 2-seed and Big Ten tournament champ Illinois, although it's a Big Ten team and we all know how Big Ten teams like to poop the bed in the Madness. So who knows?

In any event: Go, Dukes. Make us all proud.

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Underdog of underdogs

 I know who I'm rooting for when the Madness descends this week, and it's not Vermont or Howard or Samford or Wagner -- or even St. Peter's, despite the fact the Peacocks have the coolest nickname in the field of 68.

No, sir. I'm rooting for the real underdog.

His name is Dan Monson, and he's the head coach at Long Beach State, at least until he loses this week. That's because Long Beach State has already fired him. 

Did it last Monday after State wrapped up an 18-14 campaign that included five straight losses to end the regular season. Did it, according to all parties, mutually, Monson himself saying that after 17 seasons the program "needed a new voice."

Maybe that's why Long Beach State agreed to let him see the season through to the end, which presumably would be until The Beach got ousted from the Big West tournament.

Except ...

Except Long Beach State then hauled off and won the thing. 

Whipped UC Riverside, top-seed UC Irvine and finally UC Davis to cut down the nets, and now The Beach is headed to the big show. And Dan Monson, the lamest of lame ducks, gets to go out the way someone who's given 17 years of his life to an institution deserves to go out.

He and his team will likely get bounced in the first round. But wouldn't it be great if they didn't?

Wouldn't it be great if, a week-and-a-half from now, they're in the Sweet Sixteen? Wouldn't it be great if they became the story of the tournament, because it's always the Little Guy Who Could that puts the madness in the Madness every year?

Sure it is. And you know what?

Dan Monson isn't just the Little Guy Who Could. In the larger context, he's also the Little Guy Who Can't.

Turn that page

Well. Alrighty then.

Guess we know now why the Chicago Bears signed All-Pro running back D'Andre Swift this offseason, and picked up tight end Gerald Everett from San Diego, and just a couple of days ago went to the Chargers well again to scoop veteran wideout Keenan Allen, who caught 108 balls for 1,243 yards last season and was leading the league in receptions when an ankle injury shut him down with four games remaining.

Guess we know it wasn't because they were going to stick with Justin Fields and were giving him more weapons to work with. No, sir. It was because they were giving presumptive No. 1 pick Caleb Williams more weapons to work with.

This after the Bears dealt Fields to the Pittsburgh Steelers yesterday, and were apparently so all-in on moving him it cost the Steelers only a provisional sixth-round draft pick. This soft market was interpreted as either a league-wide lack of enthusiasm for Fields' skill set, or an unwillingness to add a guy with that skill set who's in the last year of his rookie deal.

The Blob's take is it was probably a bit of both. 

The Blob's take is also that the Bears are clearly turning the page here after a 7-10 season in which Fields put up some of his best overall numbers essentially to no avail. So they've bookended DJ Moore with Allen and added oomph to their run game with Swift, and beefed up their tight end room by adding Everett to Cole Kmet. And now -- unless something extremely weird or extremely Bears-like happens -- they'll hope Williams is That Guy. 

I'm not sure he is. Then again, I'm not sure he's not.

But the Bears are shoving all the chips to the middle of the table betting he is, and, listen, if you're not getting a deja vu vibe from all this, you either don't live in Chicago or have some short-term memory issues. Because the Bears are right back to where they were three years ago, when they were moving on from Mitch Trubisky and betting Justin Fields was That Guy.

Turns out he wasn't, although the jury may still be out on that. All I know is the jury's definitely still out on Williams, who after all has yet to take an NFL snap.

And so we're right back to a familiar mantra with these Bears: Guess we'll see.

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Fight, hold the flight

 Your Purdue Boilermakers survived a '90s-style bludgeonfest against Michigan State yesterday, winning 67-62 in an ugly crawl in which blood was literally spilled and the Spartans did what the Spartans do in March, which is refuse to go down easy.

At one point, Purdue also seemed to do what Purdue does in March, which is arrive with a less-than-adequate supply of good luck.

A lot of oh-crap gasps emanated from Boilermaker World when point guard Braden Smith went down clutching his knee at one point, and then disappeared up the ramp to the locker room. With the obvious exception of Zach Edey, after all, Smith is the one indispensable man for Matt Painter's bunch, the engine that drives what has been an absolute juggernaut this season.

Ah, but a few minutes later, back came Smith, declaring himself good to go. And back onto the floor he went.

It was at this point the Blob (and other observers) had a heretical thought: Why?

Look, I get it. Matt Painter is as competitive as competitive gets, and his team takes its hard-nosed flavor from him. It's the trait that most separates this year's Purdue model from last year's, and it's been evident since the first tip back in November.

They're a nasty, pugnacious, bring-it-on lot, these Boilers. And that's largely been fueled by the fact they're sick to death of hearing they're a bunch of chokers whose throats get narrow at the very thought of March.

So, yeah, they fought like hell yesterday, and, yeah, they'll fight like hell against Wisconsin today, and if they win that they'll fight like hell in the Big Ten championship game tomorrow. But the question persists: Why?

Because Braden Smith going down, and then coming back in, illuminated an obvious and inconvenient fact: If you're Purdue, why worry about a quarterfinal conference tournament game when the tournament that matters is next week?

After all, if Painter had parked Smith after he went down, and Purdue had lost, it would have zero bearing on what happens next week. The Boilers are a lock No. 1 seed, and they were going to be a lock No. 1 seed no matter what happened yesterday in Minneapolis. So all that's really at stake for them this weekend is the chance to collect another shiny knick-knack for their trophy case.

And, yes, I know, that matters to them. But enough to risk losing a vital cog right before the big show?

No one in charge of the multiple-bid conferences wants to hear this, but their conference tournaments matter only to the financials and the bubble teams. The Purdues, the UConns, the Houstons aren't going to be affected an iota by whether or not they win or lose in their conference tournaments. And so, in the case of the Big Ten, this week was crucial only to the Michigan States, the Ohio States, the Nebraskas and the Wisconsins. And maybe to the Indianas, the Northwesterns and other riders of the cusp, too.

Purdue?

Purdue could have sat out the whole schmear. But of course the Boilermakers wouldn't be in a position to do that if they were the sittin'-out kind.

So buckle up, Wisky. No take-it-easy in these Purdues. 

Over and out

 In the end, Mike Woodson turned his back on it all.

In the end, he walked away from his bench, from his staff, from his team with 5:20 to play and Nebraska leading his Indiana Hoosiers by, I don't know, eleventy gazillion points. Got the heave-ho after his second technical foul in less than four minutes, Woody did, which suggests it was less a spontaneous outburst than a deliberate act of I-can't-watch-this-anymore.

Hardly anyone could, if you bled cream-and-crimson. Any hopes Indiana had of getting its season beyond about 11:30 last night was swept away in a torrent of Nebraska 3-pointers, same as in the previous two meetings between Hoosiers and Huskers.

 Once again, Kesei Tominaga -- who is either the Big Ten men's version of Caitlin Clark, or she's the women's version of Tominaga -- toasted Indiana's perimeter D like a marshmallow over a bonfire, dropping four threes and 23 points. Brice Williams joined in with four threes and 23 points of his own.

All told, the Huskers made 14 threes in 23 tries, a 43.8 percent clip. They were an even 50 percent from everywhere, 30 of 60. And they ended whatever suspense there was going to be by scoring the last 17 points of the first half, ballooning a six-point lead to 23.

Tore the heart right out of Woodson's Hoosiers, who'd won five straight coming into Friday with mostly heart and grit. The second half was just marking time until the end -- or, for Woodson, until he just couldn't watch anymore.

This will happen when you see your team getting wadded up like scrap paper. It will happen when you see the opponent's lead climb to 33 points before settling in to a 27-point scalding, 93-66.

A lot was made in the postmortem about Kel'el Ware and Malik Reneau not showing up and the Hoosiers, without Trey Galloway and then Anthony Leal after the latter twisted his ankle, once again being helpless defensively at the arc. But this was less about what Indiana didn't do than what Nebraska did, especially during that 17-0 rip that ended the half and, effectively, the game.

On the defensive end, the Huskers got into Indiana's preferred passing lanes, stealing or disrupting its entries to Ware and Reneau time and again. And on the offensive end, it was lightning ball movement more than lazy defense that got Tominaga, Williams and the rest open looks from Threeville.

And they knocked 'em down. Hell, they even knocked down looks that were only semi-open, and what are you gonna do about that?

As for Woodson ... well, sometimes optics matter, and the optic of his receding back was as bad as it gets. It suggested (or really more) a commander abandoning his troops. It suggested, or more, that he was simply done with this season -- and maybe done with this team.

Now we get to see if this team is done with him.

All that's certain at this point is Leal and Galloway have signed on for another hitch, and beyond that, no one knows nuttin'. The Hoosiers only recruit, 6-7 stud Liam McNeeley, bailed on his tentative commitment a week ago, and Woodson's got no other recruits on the hook anyone knows about. Ware will go to the NBA, and maybe co-Big Ten Freshman of the Year Mackenzie Mgbako, and God knows what Malik Reneau will decide to do in the era of the transfer portal.

Which seems to be the only thing Woodson's banking on right now.

It's gonna be a hell of an offseason, in other words. To state the obvious.

Friday, March 15, 2024

Survivin', advancin'

 Time to come clean this a.m., you citizens of Candy-Stripe Nation. When it got to halftime up there in Minneapolis last night, did you lapse into Scooby-Doo mode?

As in: Ruh-roh.

Because here was Penn State just five points adrift of Your Hoosiers, and the Nittany Lions had just spent 20 minutes sending out search planes for their missing shooting eye. The Nittanies were 7 of 33 from the floor in those 20 minutes. They missed 13 layups in 14 tries. They almost literally couldn't have shot any worse if you'd blindfolded them and spun them around five times.

And they were only down five.

Which meant Your Hoosiers had mostly wasted a glorious chance to blow this second-round Big Ten tournament game into the stratosphere and moon-walk into the quarterfinals. And without Trey Galloway, who was in streets on the bench with a bum knee.

Instead ...

Instead, it turned into the usual grind in the second half, with the good news being Indiana suddenly has an appetite for grinding. And so down to the end it went, and here came Anthony Leal to play the hero again, and Indiana survived and advanced, 61-59.

Kel'el Ware, again playing as if Indiana coach Mike Woodson was holding a family member hostage, put up another double-double (18 points, 14 rebounds), blocked three shots and caused a lot of those missed Penn State layups by altering a pile of others. Malik Reneau added 12 points and eight boards; Mackenzie Mgbako scored 11 points, took five rebounds, blocked two shots and dished a couple of assists: and Xavier Johnson put up a four-point, six-rebound, five-assist stat line while turning it over just three times.

And then there was Leal, the Hoosiers' Swiss Army knife, who got 17 minutes thanks to Galloway's absence and turned them into eight points, four rebounds, a steal and the tip-in with five seconds to play that got the Hoosiers the win.

After which he successfully kept the ball out of Penn State standout Ace Baldwin's hands on the ensuing inbounds pass.

And so on Indiana goes to the quarters today, lugging a five-game winning streak mostly notable for its scruffiness. If Woodson's crew has spent most of the winter looking for a definable brand, they seem to have at last found one: Winning ugly.

Which, of course, is better than losing ugly.

Today?

Today the Hoosiers get Nebraska, who has handled them easily in two previous meetings. Logic says the Cornhuskers should do so again, especially if Galloway can't go and the depleted Indiana backcourt has to deal with Huskers star Keisei Tominaga, who's already mulched the Hoosiers twice this season.

In other words, this could get ugly. Or it could get, you know, ugly.

The latter being what Indiana does these days. And for which, consequently, Candy-Stripe Nation should have its fingers crossed.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Greed's revenge

Nick Saban wants to save college athletics, but Nick Saban is not the guy to do it. Neither is Dabo Sweeney or Kirby Smart or any other marquee college football or basketball coach, for one simple reason.

It's because they're a big part of what college athletics needs saving from. 

Saban took part in a Congressional roundtable the other day on What To Do About College Sports, and he lamented that one of the reasons he walked away from Alabama was that "all the things I believed in for all these years, 50 years of coaching, no longer exist in college athletics."

Then he said it was his wife, Terry, who opened his eyes to this one day, asking him why they were still doing this when all these kids today cared about was money.

Made Nick Saban sad.

Nick Saban, whose last contract with Alabama paid him $11.4 million a year to coach football.

Nick Saban, who coached in a conference which negotiated with ESPN to create its own TV network as a fresh revenue stream, and which regularly raids other conferences to add more big-money schools to that stream, and which seems intent on turning high-end college athletics into a Gilded Age monopoly with room only for itself, the Big Ten and perhaps one or two other conferences.

But, OK, sure. It's these damn kids whose greed has ruined college athletics.

Truth is they're just young people doing what young people have always done, which is follow the example of their elders. If they're now saying "Where's mine?", it's because all the grownups around them were saying "Where's mine?"

What Nick Saban and others like him wring their hands over they created themselves, see, and it didn't start the first time a school paid a coach like a CEO instead of an educator.  It started the first time that school took a pile of dough to outfit its athletes in Nike swooshes or Adidas stripes, all the while cutting them out of the deal because, after all, they were student-athletes, not employees.

The astronomic TV money and CEO contracts and gutting fellow conferences because enough just wasn't enough swiftly followed, as night follows day. And suddenly the "student-athletes" were demanding to be paid like employees because that's how their schools had come to see them.

Oh, nobody said that out loud, mind you. They all kept up the fiction about education and what-not, even as it got more vaudevillian with every year. Truth is, the "student-athletes" were a workforce like any workforce, generators of massive wealth for what had become a purely corporate entity. Was it really a shock they would eventually begin to think of themselves as a workforce?

And that the corporate entity would be forced to tacitly admit as much, which is how the whole Name, Likeness and Image kerfuffle came into being?

NIL was a half-measure hurriedly conceived and sloppily applied by the NCAA, and it was widely regarded as a sop to keep the full-on professionalism its member schools have courted for decades from overwhelming a shared delusion. Little wonder, then, that it's devolved into a virtually lawless hellscape, with the delusion gone and the NCAA as an enforcing entity thoroughly neutered.

And they've all got no one to blame but themselves. Greed's revenge, you might call it. 

Give Nick Saban this much: He at least recognizes the barn door is open and the horse has fled, which is why the other day he said he has no problem with athletes making bank on their name, likeness and image. But he doesn't want to see college athletics become an all-out professional model in which athletes play for pay.

Perhaps someone should tell him that horse is long gone, too. And that it's Nick Saban, former CEO of Alabama Football Inc., who along with his peers turned it loose.