Congratulations to Michael Swinson – thanks to Kris Jenkins’ buzzer beater, Michael has pulled off a feat last accomplished in 2009 by John Homan – a complete sweep of both the Standard and Upset Pools.   Michael correctly picked Villanova to beat North Carolina in the championship – leading to a 50 point victory over Jason Lacks in the Standard Pool and a 13 point victory over Gregg Farber in the Upset Pool.

That also means congratulations to both Jason and Gregg – since Michael plays the pool for fun, they are the winners of the 1st place prizes in the pool.

John Bachmann also had a very successful pool this year, as not only did he finish behind Gregg in the Upset pool, but his 880 points was the winner of the Second Chance Pool.  John only missed 3 of the 15 games in the last 4 rounds, two thanks to Syracuse and one thanks to Notre Dame’s last minute comeback against Wisconsin.  This gave him an 80 point victory over Taylor Early.

Also want to give a special congratulations to Sharon Thornton.   Sharon would have pulled into the lead had North Carolina to come back to win, but thanks to some great picks still finished in 4th place, just 100 points behind 3rd place finisher Tanmay Gautam.  I have heard through the rumor mill that this was Sharon’s first ever basketball pool – so I think congratulations are due!!!!

Finally, congratulations to all our prize winners!!!!!

STANDARD POOL
1	Michael Swinson (FUN)	1290
2	Jason Lacks	1240
3	Tanmay Gautam	1200
4	Sharon Thornton	1100
5	Patrick Sykes	1040
6 tie	Tim Flanagan (FUN)	1050
6 tie	Tanmay Gautam	1050
8 tie	Michael Yuen (FUN)	1030
8 tie	Jennie Bursch	1030
10 tie	Audra Lifson	1020
10 tie	Nathan Standley	1020
10 tie	Andrew Braslow	1020
10 tie	Joel Lander (FUN)	1020
10 tie	Michael Wark	1020
10 tie	Jim Carini	1020
10 tie	Ann Hawkins	1020
LAST	Mary-Rian Bradley	240
UPSET POOL
1	Michael Swinson (FUN)	291
2	Gregg Farber	278
3	John Bachmann	275
4	Doug Crowe	273
5	Kelli Shonts	269
6	Rick Flynn	267
SECOND CHANCE POOL
1	John Bachmann	880
2	Taylor Early	800
3 tie	Lowell Isaacs	760
3 tie	Andrew Murphy	760
3 tie	Dan Miller	760
3 tie	Will Caldwell	760

 

As for the Lunatic, after having his fun in the first week, the Lunatic Curse and the great basketball picks of the field stomped him all the way down to a tie for 104th place.   He will cling to the fact that he finished 7th in the Upset Pool as some kind of consolation, but the truth is that this year, there were plenty of people who STOMPED THE LUNATIC!!!!

Thank you again to everyone for another great Stomp the Lunatic contest, and providing me my forum to rant and rave about my favorite sporting event, the NCAA Basketball Tournament.  I had a tremendous amount of fun – even if Purdue went out in the last round, and the Lunatic Curse waited until under a second to knock off my pick for the championship.  How could you not enjoy watching all the upsets and amazing comebacks.

Congratulations one last time to Michael Swinson, the 2016 Stomp the Lunatic Champion!!!!!   And congratulations again to the Villanova Wildcats, who provided us with one of the most memorable finishes to become the 2016 NCAA Men’s Basketball National Champion.

The Tar Heels found themselves up 5 points at half time, but the early part of the second half was all Villanova.   And so, with just 5 minutes left, North Carolina was down 10 points.    Then, as has happened so many times in this tournament, the comeback began.   Marcus Paige kept making basket after basket, including a remarkable three pointer with 4.7 seconds left to tie the game at 74.

And then it happened, Ryan Arcidiacono drives the ball up the court and to the three point line, passes the ball to a trailing Kris Jenkins, and with a few split seconds left on the clock, Jenkins calmly nails the three point shot to give the Villanova Wildcats a 77-74 victory, in what might be one of the best finishes that I have ever seen in a National Championship game!!!!!

Congratulations to the Villanova Wildcats, the 2016 men’s national champions!!!

So excited that we are only about 30 minutes from game time!!!!!!   Can not wait to see whether Villanova can continue their amazing run in the tournament, or if North Carolina will back up their pre-season #1 ranking with a national championship.

Hopefully, we will have a really exciting final game (since quite frankly, watching UNC win by 17 points or Villanova win by 44 points might be great for Tar Heels and Wildcats fans, but is horrible TV for the rest of us college basketball fans).

Many know about the Lunatic’s feelings around allowing more mid-major teams (especially regular season champions) into the NCAA tournament.  But the reality is the cards are so stacked against them.   This year, the NIT was wonderful enough to prove my point.

For those who noticed, the NIT semi-finalists were George Washington, Valparaiso, San Diego St and BYU.   Which made me wonder about some things.

Home court advantage is everything in college basketball.    In the NIT, the mid-major schools got some rare chances to play the game at their home court thanks to seedings.   In those games, the mid-majors went 7 for 8 against teams from the top 6, and the only one that lost was North Florida – a mid-major that would not have received a home game if it wasn’t for Florida having planned renovations on their arena.

In the regular season, there were 380 games where mid-major teams played the top 6 conference teams.    237 of those games were true road games – which the mid-majors only won 21 of them.   91 games were on a neutral court thanks to early season tournaments, where the mid-majors won 27 times.   Only 54 times did the mid-major team get a chance at home – which they won 21 times.

You might look at that and realize that the home winning percentage doesn’t match.   Well, lets remember this doesn’t look at anything around handicapping for ranking.   All it points out is that there are 277 teams in mid-major conferences, and in the regular season, they only get 380 chances to prove themselves against the top conferences – and when they do get that chance, it is typically on the road.

Lets look back at the 5 teams that won home games in the NIT.

• George Washington was the outlier – somehow getting 4 home games (against Virginia, Seton Hall, Penn St and Rutgers).  They won all 4 of those games.
• BYU only got Utah and Colorado to schedule them in true road games – they lost to both those tourney teams by single digits on the road
• Valparaiso only got Oregon and Oregon St to schedule them – also in true road games.  They only lost by 6 to #1 seed Oregon, and then beat Oregon St.
• St. Mary’s received a chance to play at home against Stanford – wich they won by 17.  Then they lost their other chance on the road to California by only 4 points
• San Diego St got 4 games – partially thanks to a tournament.  They lost their home game against #1 Kansas (there are not a lot of teams who were able to beat Kansas).  They lost by 5 to Utah on the road.  And they were able to beat California before losing to West Virginia in their tournament neutral site games.

So, these teams could only get 16 games in the regular season – and thanks to George Washington being an outlier, 6 of them were at home.  The mid-majors won 5 of them.  But they could only win 1 of the 7 true road games (which is typically more likely what a mid-major will get).  On a neutral court, they went 2 for 3.

Basically, the NIT allowed these 5 teams to get 1 more home game than the entire regular season against the top 6 conferences – simply because they were forced to play.  And almost every time they got the chance to play at home, they took advantage of that chance and won (which likely makes it even more unlikely for them to get another chance in future years).

I constantly hear the comment that a mid-major champion that is like Valparaiso that went 26-6 in the regular season wouldn’t be able to survive in a major conference.   Well, in two road games, they split against Oregon and Oregon St, and then they beat Florida State at home in the NIT.   To put into perspective, 8 Pac 12 teams played both Oregon and Oregon St on the road.  Only Stanford and UCLA were able to get a split (both by also beating Oregon St).  Tournament teams California, Colorado, USC, and Utah all failed to get one road victory against those two schools (both Washington schools also failed).   So, tell me, Valparaiso was able to get a split that 2 of 8 Pac 12 teams did not get, and they also were able to beat Florida State at home.  Tell me why again that I should not believe if I gave Valparaiso 9 home games in an 18 game conference season, that I should not expect the Crusaders to go 10-8.  They went 1-1 on the road against tournament teams, why should I not expect them to protect their home court and win a couple more road games.

While I know it is unlikely to happen, I hope the Selection Committee looks at the numbers and starts to realize that if you are a small conference team, you get only a few chances to prove yourself against a big conference team.   So, when you then go 26-6 for the season, if you have a victory against a top 50 RPI team from a big 6 conference, that should tell you this team can play and probably should be in the field.  It is unfair to say that they should schedule more, the major conferences are not likely going to take the bait of playing one of these top teams – it too often ends in a loss that you are not supposed to lose.   When choosing between a team that got 18 chances to win these games, and couldn’t win enough to make them comfortable locks in the field – and a team that won almost everything in their conference and have a top 50 RPI, lets give the mid-major the chance they can’t get.    It won’t happen, but this year’s NIT is great evidence that it should.

 

 

 

There were moments where Syracuse brought back memories of the Virginia game.  Syracuse cut the Tar Heels lead from 17 all the way down to 7.   When they started that press, they forced a few turnovers.   And then, North Carolina answered – and answered.   Ironically, they answered with three pointers – since they couldn’t hit from three in the first half.  I would say that the real difference was just too much talent.   UNC had the big men who could settle into the middle of that 2-3 zone and do some damage.   Normally, the zone will converge on that player and force either a bad shot, a turnover, or the ball being passed back outside.  But the Tar Heels big men just turned into the pressure and shot over them.

So, it will be the Big East regular season champion Villanova Wildcats against the ACC regular season and tournament champions North Carolina Tar Heels.  And both teams have done this in pretty impressive fashion.  The Tar Heels have won all their games by double digits (16 vs FGCU, 19 vs Providence, 15 vs Indiana, 14 vs Notre Dame and 17 tonight vs Syracuse).  Villanova can only claim 4 of their 5 victories were double digits.  But the one that was close was against the #1 seed in the entire tournament.  And even with that, Villanova’s margin of victory is higher than the Tar Heels (30 vs UNC-Asheville, 19 vs Iowa, 23 vs Miami FL, 5 vs Kansas, and 44 tonight vs Oklahoma).  So, – should be an interesting game between two amazing teams.

At this point, congratulations are in order for both Michael Swinson and Gregg Farber.  While it is technically un-official until Monday night, Michael has locked up the Upset Pool with 279 points.   Michael is the only one of the Upset leaders who has picked Villanova, and the top person in the Upset Pool who has North Carolina is the Lunatic – who would not be able to catch Michael with the 6 extra points from a Tar Heel victory.  The person who is also very happy about this is Gregg Farber – he finds himself 1 point behind Michael Swinson.   But as Michael has done for years, he is one of my good friends who always does the pool just for fun.   And so that means Gregg would take the Upset Pool prize.   John Bachmann, Doug Crowe and Kelli Shonts are also probably happy, since their Upset totals should lock them into the Upset prizes as well.  That leaves Rick Flynn in the precarious 5th place prize – hoping that North Carolina doesn’t allow the Lunatic to sneak into the prize list at his expense.

In the Standard Pool, it is a three person race.   Currently, Michael Swinson also is leading the Standard Pool with 1130 points.  So, a Wildcats victory will give Michael the rare sweep of both pools (believe it was only done in 2009 by John Homan).   That will also reward Jason Lacks – our current 3rd place challenger, who also has Villanova.  Our second place challenger is Sharon Thornton, who will take the Stomp the Lunatic championship with a Tar Heels victory.   There are enough people who have picked Villanova and North Carolina to make the standings move more than the Upset pool – but I imagine there are many who will be rooting more heavily for Villanova and UNC based on their standings in the pool.

The two person race in the Second Chance Pool is between our leader Andrew Murphy, who will be rooting for UNC, and our second place contestant, John Bachmann, who will be rooting for Villanova.    Will give Kristian Schmidt a call out as well for being tied for second – he will get second with a Tar Heel victory.

Good luck to our leaders – as well as the Wildcats and Tar Heels.  Should be a fun championship game!!!!

 

OK – so there is still 4 minutes left.   But at 86-47, I think the Wildcats can hang on to this one.

Josh Hart, Kris Jenkins and Ryan Arcidiacono just could not miss.  The Wildcats are shooting over 70% from the field for the entire game – and over 50% from three-point range.  Villanova could do nothing wrong.    Even if Oklahoma hadn’t gone as cold as it did, I don’t think they could have kept up with the insane shooting from the Wildcats.

So, the Big East Champion will wait to see which ACC team they will face.  Will the Wildcats get a reunion with old-time Big East Syracuse – or will it be the ACC champions UNC Tar Heels.   We will all know in a few hours!!!

Despite my complaints about violations and scandals, it is pretty obvious how important coaching is to the college basketball game, and this Final 4 has an amazing list of coaches.   Here are the career wins (along with their ranking in the coaching elite) – thanks to Sports Reference.

• Jim Boeheim – Syracuse (989 wins – 2nd all-time, 2nd active)
• Roy Williams – North Carolina (782 wins – 9th all-time, 3rd active)
• Lon Kruger – Oklahoma (590 wins – 38th all-time, 10th active)
• Jay Wright – Villanova (474 wins – 74th all-time, 21st active)

It gets even more impressive if you keep going.   You have to have won 427 games to be one of the top 100 coaches of all-time (at least in career wins).  Only 30 of the 351 NCAA Division-I teams can boast having that talented of a coach.    11 of those 30 were coaching teams that made the Sweet 16.   And the other 5 aren’t slouches – only Billy Kennedy at 310-249 has a winning percentage under 60% (although to be fair, Greg Garb from Wisconsin has only coached this season).  Considering that Kennedy, Tom Crean from Indiana, Mark Turgeon from Maryland and Tony Bennett from Virginia have a lot of coaching probably left, I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them eventually finish their careers in the top 100.

But just think about this, the Final 4 coaches this year combined have a record of 2,835 wins and 1,156 losses – for a winning percentage of just over 71%.  There were only 61 coaches (63 if we include Boeheim and Williams) who can claim a higher winning percentage.   And to put into perspective how hard that is, here are a few pretty famous coaches who didn’t win 71% of their games.

• Bob Knight – 70.6% (899 wins – 3rd all-time)
• Jim Calhoun – 69.7% (877 wins – 5th all-time)
• Lefty Driesell – 66.6% (786 wins – 8th all-time)
• Lou Henson – 64.9% (776 wins – 11th all-time)
• Hank Iba – 69.3% (752 wins – 14th all-time)
• Ray Meyer – 67.2% (724 wins – 16th all-time)
• Don Haskins – 67.1% (719 wins – 17th all-time)

Anyways, that is a long-winded way of saying that these 4 coaches are pretty amazing.

Just 15 minutes to tip-off of Villanova vs Oklahoma!!!!!     Get your favorite snack and drink ready – the Final Four is about to begin!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

 

There has been a lot of fantastic basketball this March.   But there is still a question that goes through my head – and apparently, I am not the only one who had this thought because I saw articles on it from both USA Today and CBS, and I would not be surprised if even the announcers on TBS say something during the game.

But the ACC portion of the Final 4 between UNC and Syracuse bring to the forefront the scandals of college basketball.   On one side, you have Syracuse.   Syracuse was brought in front of the NCAA Committee of Infractions with multiple issues ranging from not following their drug testing policies, academic fraud, and extra benefits.   And so Syracuse did what a team about to be smashed by the NCAA – they “self-imposed” a 1 year post-season ban.   But lets be honest, everyone knew exactly what they were doing.  The Orange were 15-7 at that moment of the 2015 season and struggling with injuries – they were a long-shot to make the NCAA tournament as it was.  So, they basically self-imposed a ban on going to the NIT in an attempt to get leniency.   The NCAA slapped another 9 game suspension on Syracuse – which he was allowed to take in December while they were playing the likes of Colgate, Cornell, Montana State and Texas Southern.   And now here they are now playing for a national championship.  Seems like a fair punishment for years of breaking the rules.

At least they were punished.  Because on the other hand, you have the Tar Heels.   Everyone has known about the academic fraud that has embarrassed the University of North Carolina.  And it is totally unclear about how bad the punishment is going to be – because the investigation has dragged on forever.   As was reported by USA Today, in August just 4 days before the deadline to respond to the allegations against them, UNC conveniently announced that they had discovered more violations involving their women’s basketball and men’s soccer team.  This meant that the NCAA would have to revise their charges against UNC and the 90 day clock for UNC to respond to those charges would start all over.  And of course, this meant that by the time all of that finished, the 2016 men’s college basketball season featuring the pre-season #1 North Carolina Tar Heels, would also be completed.

So, the schools cheat against the rules, and then use the horrible NCAA infraction process to their advantage to figure out when they will take their penalty – likely at a time they probably weren’t going to be competitive anyways.    Actually, it really makes me wonder how bad the NCAA is going to come down on Louisville for the stripper scandal – they self-imposed a 1 year ban at a time when they were a contender.  You have to imagine they feel they are looking at something much longer than 1 year if they made that choice.

And while the ACC scandals are obviously the larger elephant in the room, it made me wonder about the other two Final Four teams.  At Villanova, Jay Wright’s program was put on a 2 year probationary period because they had enough secondary infractions that it accumulated into a major infraction.  It seemed like the biggest issue was around a phone code scandal that might have been purely the players doing things they shouldn’t have – but it still put a bad spotlight on the Villanova program.   At Oklahoma, Lon Kruger was brought to the university in 2011 because of his reputation of cleaning up programs and still being successful at winning after the Sooners were dealing with issues from Kelvin Sampson and Jeff Capel.    So, it looks like Villanova’s and Oklahoma’s programs are cleaner (or being cleaned up), but they have had to deal with their own problems.

If everything I have read about Lon Kruger is true, it makes me want to root more for the Sooners.  In an era of win at any cost, it sounds like Kruger runs his program the right way – and so there would be something awesome about seeing him win.   And when the tip off happens, no one will be thinking about any of this.   There will be just be 4 really talented teams playing for the National Championship.  And over in the shadows of Houston’s NRG Stadium will be the elephant – most likely standing close to NCAA President Mark Emmert, who will be wondering if he will be handing the trophy to a school he just recently punished or one that he is about to punish.

 

 

It has been a fun tournament so far, so hopefully, we will have a fun Final 4.      I will probably do my ranting and raving throughout the afternoon as I get myself excited about the games.

It will be interesting since this Final Four features matchups that happened in the regular season.   Oklahoma crushed Villanova in December in Hawaii, and North Carolina won both of their ACC regular season games against Syracuse.

But familiarity also sometimes creates interesting results, and all 4 of these teams are too talented to not leverage their experience from the past games to try to get the advantage tonight.   So excited that the Final 4 is about to begin!!!!!!!!!!!!

As I watch Nevada try to hold on to force the CBI final to a third winner-takes-all championship against Morehead State, I realize two things.

1. It is after 11 pm, and I am watching Nevada play Morehead State.   And I am debating about turning the channel over to the Vegas 16 Final between Old Dominion and Oakland.    I might have a serious problem……  Oh wait, I am crazy.  OK – I feel better now.
2. Many of you might not want to go through all the scenario files, and just want to know if you have a chance to win

Well – here are the potential winners (realizing that these are un-official, and that it is after 11 pm and the person doing the editing is a crazy insane person watching the CBI final).  Good luck to our leaders

	STANDARD	UPSET	SECOND CHANCE
UNC beats Oklahoma	Ann Hawkins	Gregg Farber	Pam Ciejek
UNC beats Villanova	Sharon Thornton	Michael Swinson (FUN) Gregg Farber (MONEY)	Andrew Murphy
Oklahoma beats UNC	Mike Wassmer	Gregg Farber	Mary-Rian Bradley Jerry Caldwell
Oklahoma beats Syracuse	Mike Wassmer	John Bachmann	Mary-Rian Bradley Jerry Caldwell Jim Wambach
Syracuse beats Oklahoma	Mike Wassmer	John Bachmann	Sara Murphy
Syracuse beats Villanova	Tanmay Gautam	John Bachmann	Sara Murphy
Villanova beats UNC	Michael Swinson (FUN) Jason Lacks (MONEY)	Michael Swinson (FUN) Gregg Farber (MONEY)	John Bachmann
Villanova beats Syracuse	Michael Swinson (FUN) Jason Lacks (MONEY)	Michael Swinson (FUN) John Bachmann (MONEY)	Will Caldwell Dan Miller Lowell Isaacs John Bachmann