Stomp The Lunatic

I get that people are emotional after a loss. When you are trending towards being a Hall of Fame coach, you have to put your emotions in check.

I was trying to open my browser to get to write more in my blog, and the browser opens to a MSN site with a whole bunch of links to look at. And of course, my attention got caught by the headline about Hurley sounding off after losing to Florida.

As the Huskies left the court and walked by the Baylor locker room, he was caught on video saying this about the refs. “Hope they don’t (redacted) you like they (redacted) us,”  said Hurley. “I hope they don’t do that to you, Baylor. I hope they don’t do that to you guys.”

As a person who did not have any rooting interest other than being a college basketball fan, I didn’t feel like the game was unfairly called for either team. There might have been some calls I think might have been wrong as there is in any game – but they certainly didn’t look biased, and certainly didn’t decide the game.

It is horribly unprofessional to be using profanities when talking about the referees – whether it is on the court or off the court. Just because he doesn’t have a microphone on him doesn’t mean someone is not listening. But it is a ridiculously horrible look.

The Huskies have won 13 straight tournament games, which is an amazing feat. And the second that things don’t go their way, Dan Hurley wants us to believe it was because the referees stole the game from them. It certainly has nothing to do with Walter Clayton Jr putting the #1 seed Gators on his back and carrying them to a victory, although in fairness, I believe in his press conference, he did mention Clayton was heroic.

I just hate the fact that on the court, Dan Hurley deserves tons of accolades for the historic run that the Connecticut Huskies have done under his leadership. And yet, every time I see him, I see a person that I would not want to be leading anything I am involved with. Being a leader is more about winning. It also is about doing it the right way. And screaming for 40 minutes at the referees, making ridiculous trash talking with fans (like he did at Creighton), and acting like a cry-baby when he loses are certainly not things that true leaders do.

In what was a highly competitive game, the UConn Huskies held a small lead through most of the second half. With 4 minutes left in the game, they held a 61-58 lead.

Florida’s Alex Condon hit one of two free throws, and on the next possession, Walter Clayton Jr. hit a three pointer, to give the Gators a 1 point lead. Then, Will Richard knocked the ball away from the Huskies to Condon, who immediately through the ball back down the field to Richard for a big dunk.

The Huskies would not back down as Solo Ball hit a three-pointer to tie the game with about 2 minutes to play. Florida tried to run a dribble hand-off between Condon and Clayton, but the Huskies fouled Condon trying to get the ball. Condon hit the first free-throw, and as the TV did a close-up on him at the line, all I could think was “He does not look like a player confident he will hit this shot – he looks like he would prefer if anyone else was shooting.”

Sure enough, he misses the second free-throw, but the Gators deflect the ball back out and Clayton dribbled hard to the basket and got fouled. Clayton hit both free throws and the Gators led by three. Liam McNeeley missed a three-pointer to tie the game for the Huskies, and then the dagger was struck.

This time, the Gators successfully ran their dribble hand-off to get the ball into the hands of Walter Clayton Jr. but the Huskies successfully stopped Clayton from heading to the hoop. They ended up regretting that, as Clayton dribbled to the wing and hit a fade-away three-pointer to extend the lead to 6 points.

After Tarris Reed Jr missed a three-pointer, the Huskies fouled Conton. And Conton missed both free-throws to give the Huskies hope, and that would be short-lived as Alijah Martin would get the offensive rebound and dunk the ball to extend the lead to 8. I would never advise missing free-throws to try to win a game, but in this case, the Gators scored 4 points off those misses.

The Huskies did try to come back. Liam McNeeley made a layup to make it a 6 point game, and UConn called time-out. Which leads me to say this. I really would have loved it if the referees have given Dan Hurley a technical foul when he immediately used the stoppage of play to go out and scream at one of the refs. Lets remember that in the play-in game between American and Mt. St. Mary’s, the refs called a technical foul on the American coach for falling to the ground in protest of a call. So why when Hurley does all of his antics and screams about every call that it doesn’t get a technical called. I have a ton of respect about how talented of a coach Dan Hurley is. But I hate how he conducts himself, and it makes it easy to root against him.

Well, it is probably good that the referees are better tempered than me – since they let it go and let the players decide the game. With about 12 seconds and after some Gators’ free throws, McNeeley made another layup to cut the lead again to 6, and then he got a steal and was fouled. After the free-throws, the Huskies were down 4. But Will Richard and Thomas Haugh would make 3 of 4 free throws to give the Gators a hard-fought victory.

There is a common saying – to be the best, you have to beat the best. The Gators managed to beat the two-time defending national champions. It certainly wasn’t pretty, but in March, sometimes, it is important to simply survive and advance.

The Lunatic crashed hard last night – it was so nice to get a full night of sleep, even if it meant almost sleeping through the entire morning. Although maybe I am still dreaming since I think I saw that I was 11th in the standings after Saturday’s games. It gives me hope, but you know what they saw about that. As the title of season-finale of the first season of Ted Lasso tells us, it’s the hope that kills you. Still, the Lunatic is having such a great weekend that he doesn’t care about the consequences for later.

I did wake up in time this morning to get my handicapping page done, and so I can spend the day just enjoying the basketball. And there are so many good games to be played.

In the early games, we get to see two of the favorites play in Florida and Duke (with dangerous 8/9 seeds of defending champions UConn and Baylor from the Big 12 that is 9-1 in the tournament).

The dinner games have a track meet against Kentucky and Illinois, and a clash of styles as offensive-minded Alabama takes on defensive-minded St. Mary’s.

The early evening games let us see if the last of the teams I consider to be allowed to be a Cinderella – Colorado State can upset Maryland to send one of the 12+ seeds to the Sweet 16, and an exciting matchup between Iowa State and Ole Miss.

And the nightcap finishes with New Mexico trying to upset the Big 10 regular season champion Michigan State, and what might be the best game of the night as Arizona and Oregon finish off the night (both the Wildcats and Ducks won their 28+ points).

By the end of the day, we will be down to the 16 remaining teams with a chance to win the National Championship. There should be so much great basketball today – don’t miss any of it!!!

Can’t go to bed without congratulating our leaders.

In our Standard Pool, Scott Grimes has taken the lead with 430 points, closely followed by Ashley Peterson in 2nd with 420 points and Debbe Evans in 3rd with 410 points. Daniel Kaufmann is 4th with 400 points. Then a couple of past upset pool winners, Matt Agin and David Zimmerman are only 40 points behind our leader in a tie for 5th along with Cooper Ams, Jim Sell, Robert Ahles, and Kennedy Urban.

In our Upset Pool, Ashley Peterson leads at 199 points. Scott Grimes is 2nd with 185 points, and Stacie Gilmore is 3rd with 174 points. Tied for 4th at 173 points is Debbe Evans and Cooper Ams.

The Lunatic and his son Charlie have both climbed into the tie at 11th place. That is crazy the Lunatic is so close. But don’t worry, there is still time for all of that to fall apart and help your brackets Stomp the Lunatic.

BYU was up 10 with about 3 minutes on Wisconsin when a strange play happened. The Badgers trapped BYU’s Dawson Baker in the corner, and as he tried to split the trap, he elbows Max Klesmit in the groin. After a review, the refs determined that Baker intentionally did it which led to a Flagrant 2 foul and an ejection.

You could clearly see that Baker dropped his shoulder to try to split the trap – which led to the contact. But in my opinion, it was a basketball play. The announcers mentioned that it wasn’t that simple – the way the rules are written, it doesn’t matter if it is a basketball play or not – it simply matters that it was intentional. If that is the case, the rule needs to be re-written. We can’t allow a player to get trapped in the corner (where he is also somewhat being mugged), and say that if there is accidental contact to the groin if the player tries to dribble out of the trap that it is an automatic ejection because they intentionally tried to dribble the ball.

Well, John Tonje would hit both free throws to cut the lead to 8, but it looked like it will be alright as BYU’s Egor Demin hit a deep three pointer to make the lead 11. But Wisconsin would chip away at the lead. It was 8 with 90 seconds to play. Tonje would hit a three-pointer and a layup while being fouled to cut the lead to just 2 points with a minute to play.

Demin dropped the clock down to 30 seconds before missing a three-pointer, but the rebound barely went off a Wisconsin player last to give BYU the ball back. The Badgers decided to simply defend and stopped Dailin Hall’s drive to the basket.

At this point, I had a horrible thought go through my head. What would happen if Wisconsin scored, and the game went to a couple overtimes. BYU is not allowed to play on Sundays. Would they have to stop the game, or just give the Cougars an exception since the game started on Saturday.

But with 10 seconds left, all the Badgers could get was Tonje shooting a well-defended fade-away jumper and the Cougars escaped with a 2 point victory. No need to play on Sunday, just need to book their trip to the Sweet 16.

Meanwhile, in Wichita, Gonzaga was trying to create a miracle comeback of their own on Houston. Houston led by double digits for most of the game, but Graham Ike would score 5 straight points to cut the lead to 76-72. Ike would cut the lead to 3 from the line and Khalif Battle would further cut the lead to 1. But that would be as close as the Bulldogs would get. LJ Cryer hit two free throws to make the lead 3 points, Gonzaga’s Battle would be forced to a desperation three pointer from the corner that would be blocked, and the rest of the time ran off allowing both Cougars to survive massive comeback bids.

BYU ended the Big 10s run of 10 straight wins, and then Tennessee made sure that a new run did not get started by knocking off UCLA. And the Lunatic is falling asleep as he types. Going to have to do Sunday’s handicapping before the games in the morning, because I am exhausted.

I don’t know that I will keep these picks but in case I get delayed, I will buy myself two more hours. The first game is Florida (-9.5) vs Connecticut (O/U 151) – if I had to at this point, I think the game will be exactly like the Auburn / Creighton game. That means take Florida (20) and the over (20).

I might change my mind once I get a chance to see some data. But that will be in the morning.

For a person who knows very little about college basketball, Katie has apparently decided that her goal if she can’t win the pool is to get as many references in the blog as possible. As I typed that, she said, “Because I am not going to win pool – I picked teams with pretty names.”

I do need to give her credit – she was able to name the three leading scorers for Purdue – so I have at least turned her into a Boilermakers fan.

When we got home, I said “I am not really sure but I think my handicapping might be doing badly.” Of which, Katie said – you should give me some handicapping. This turned into a conversation around explaining that I am not trying to give people advantage like a handicap in golf, but trying to pick all the games by the spread. She was not as happy about that.

Then, she said, “I am a fan favorite – that is why I keep making the blog.” Then she said, “Or it is because I say dumb things.” She is counting – she knows she is now in the blog 3 times – it might be actually a few more. I suspect that we all can enjoy some of Katie’s commentary on the tournament over the next couple of weeks.

This has made Katie smile with a grin from ear to ear. Well, I have had a great day, but there are still a few actual basketball games to be played – not to mention that I really do have to pick the 8 games for Sunday. I don’t even know what the lines are, so I guess I better get going. It would be best to not be up until 3 am.

So, I will apologize for the lack of blogging this evening. Tonight was Glen Allen’s Battle of the Classes, and since both Katie and Charlie were there, I decided to finally go and see what it is all about.

I did try to keep track of the tournament while I was there. Right before the event started, I noticed that Texas A&M was up 70-66. Then, I smiled as I watched as the Wolverines’ Vladislav Goldin and Roddy Gayle Jr score the games next 9 points. Over the last 8 minutes, Michigan would outscore the Aggies 25-9 to send the Big 10 conference tournament champion to the Sweet 16.

It looked like Texas Tech was handling Drake, which made me a little sad for the mid-major conferences, but it also let me spend more time enjoying the Battle of the Classes. I also noticed that Creighton was beating Auburn at halftime. We all know that the Tigers came out in the second half and ran away from the Bluejays – although I can’t tell you how. From the box score, I will assume that Chad Baker-Mazara’s 17 points and Denver Jones’ 15 points had something to do with it.

As for Battle of the Classes, Katie did a great job helping the Freshman class create all the art for the Art Competition (the gym looked amazing from all 4 classes). They had lots of relay races and games, where Charlie and a few other classmates won the “skeeball” game – where they had to get all the balls down a hole in the middle of the board by how they moved the board. And then, the senior class won the dance competition – which Charlie also participated in and did great.

So, Purdue advanced to the Sweet 16, I got a little bit of time to golf, and got to see both my kids have fun at Battle of the Classes. How could the day be any better?

Well I have apparently forgotten how to hit a golf ball – so I played my 6 holes at Belmont and came home. And came home to shock as the Razorbacks were up double digits.

The Razorbacks had to fight against foul trouble as Zvonimir Ivisic fouled out with around 12 minutes and Jonas Aidoo and Johnell Davis had 4 fouls each. The Red Storm got the lead all the way down to two, but could not finish the comeback.

Strangely, Big East player of the year RH Luis Jr didn’t play the last 5 minutes as he was 3-17 from the field and so Rick Pitino tried something else. Whatever that was didn’t work as Billy Richmond hit a jumper along the baseline and DJ Wagner made a layup to give the Razorbacks a 6 point lead, and the Red Storm simply had no one on the court who could hit a shot. Arkansas would finish on a 11-4 run lead over those 5 minutes as Luis helplessly watched from the bench.

Of course, the Razorbacks are ruining my narrative. One of the things that I argued is that I don’t like teams with losing conference records making the tournament as an at-large team. And it looked like the SEC was going to prove my point.

• 6-12 Texas lost by 6 in the play-in game to Xavier
• 6-12 Oklahoma got a 9 seed and lost by 8 to Connecticut
• 8-10 Vanderbilt got a 10 seed and lost to St. Mary’s by 3
• 8-10 Georgia got a 9 seed and lost by 21 points to Gonzaga
• 8-10 Mississippi State got an 8 seed and lost to Baylor by 3

So, that left the 8-10 Razorbacks- and for the second game in the tournament, they took a close game with about 5 minutes to play and beat Kansas and St. John’s. Because Arkansas can’t simply let me have this – they have to prove the Lunatic wrong. And to do it, they took out the first top 4 team of the tournament in 2nd seeded St. John’s (and two Hall of Fame coaches in Bill Self and Rick Pitino).

And as the Razorbacks have won 7 of 9 and gotten Boogie Fland back from an injury that kept him out half of the season, they might also get back leading scorer Adou Thiero – who hurt his knee in late February.

The Razorbacks might be one of the most dangerous 10 seeds that I have seen when they get to full health next week. Congrats to Arkansas in continuing to prove the Lunatic wrong.

So very happy!!!!! Purdue jumped out early on McNeese and coasted to a 76-62 victory. Trey Kaufman-Renn was unstoppable in the post as he scored 22 points, but Purdue had a pretty balanced attack as Fletcher Loyer, Braden Smith and CJ Cox all had double digits in points.

I do feel a little bad for McNeese – they seemed to enjoy all the attention, but it was ridiculous that their head coach Will Wade signed a contract to coach at NC State before they played their first tournament game against Clemson. So, if you are a Wolfpack fan, you probably should have watched as I would be surprised if a few of the Cowboys’ players won’t be playing at Raleigh next season as they follow their coach. NC State is getting a winning coach (even if I am not a fan of him for the recruiting scandal that got him fired from LSU). But it feels like we should be able to let those conversations not get finalized until after the team has left the tournament and their season is officially over.

Anyways, the Boilermakers victory makes the Big 10 9-0 so far in the tournament, which is an unprecedented start for a conference. Not sure that will translate into a title for one of the 8 Big 10 teams in the tournament, but still an amazing start.

And as Purdue waits to see who they will be playing between #1 Houston and #8 Gonzaga, they know that they will be playing them 1 hour from Mackey Arena down in Indianapolis. Indy is certainly going to be filled with a lot of black and gold shirts next week!!!

It creates a dangerous amount of hope for the Lunatic. Braden Smith and Trey Kaufman-Renn are playing incredible basketball and they will get to play for a chance to return to the Final 4 in what will basically be a home court for the Boilers. They certainly wouldn’t be favored against Houston, Tennessee or Kentucky – but with a home court behind them, anything is possible. Hope can be dangerous – because more hope can lead to more heartbreak.

For now, the Lunatic is simply going to be happy that Purdue is continuing to play into the second week of the tournament. I think I am going to celebrate with playing at the local par 3 – since it is gorgeous outside (and honestly, I am not as excited about St. John’s vs. Arkansas as the media is).

Congratulations to my Purdue Boilermakers – BOILER UP!!!!

The Friday late games started with some intrigue. UConn vs. Oklahoma was pretty close, Illinois hit a three pointer at the buzzer to go up 5 at half, and Bryant was only down 5 at half time as well. The only game that wasn’t competitive was Oregon vs. Liberty – where I think the Ducks started off with an 18-2 start.

Unfortunately, the games did not stay close. The only one that stayed interesting was the Huskies and Sooners. For the first time in 11 tournament games, the UConn Huskies found themselves behind as the Sooners came back in the middle of the second half to take a 1 point lead. The teams would go back and forth until about 4 1/2 minutes where the Huskies found themselves up 57-56. Alex Karaban would hit a deep three pointer to kick off a 10-3 run for the Huskies to help them survive and advance against the Sooners. Meanwhile, the three Big 10 schools, Illinois, Michigan State and Oregon ran away in the second half to advance.

I think I just heard on the post-game show that this is the first year since 2017 that all of the top 16 seeds managed to win. The top teams to lose over Thursday and Friday were 5 seeds Clemson and Memphis. While we all love the upsets, it should lead to some really exciting games later in the tournament with all the favorites advancing.

With a lot of the favorites winning, we have some really high scores. Our leaders are Debbe Evans, Jim Sell and Scott Grimes – who all successfully got an incredible 29 of 32 first round games right. They are chased closely by Stacie Gilmore and Ashley Peterson, who both got 28 of 32 games right. We then have 18 people tied for 6th place at 270 points.

In the Upset Pool, Stacie Gilmore is our leader with 148 points – as she correctly got our three biggest upsets in McNeese, Colorado State, and Drake. Ashley Peterson is only 5 points behind in 2nd place. And 3rd through 5th are also just separated by a point, as Gregg Farber is in 3rd at 142, Scott Grimes is 4th at 141, and Jim Sell is 5th at 140.

The Lunatic is lurking at 260 points – a tie for 24th is a pretty good start for our sleep-deprived blogger. With 165 of the entries getting 24 of the 32 games right, getting a single Sweet 16 or Elite 8 game correct could move people significantly in the standings. Good luck to everyone in the Second Round in Stomping the Lunatic!!!!