Dick Vitale and I Are Mad As Hell, And We’re Not Gonna Take It Anymore!
Posted by Johnny Goodtimes on March 16th, 2009
Editor’s note: We cover primarily Philly sports, but the NCAA tourney is just so damn entertaining, we can’t help but write about it. All of it.
Dickie V. was downright indignant when Jay Bilas said that Arizona deserved to get in over Saint Mary’s, and then when Digger “Sharpie” Phelps got involved, he really lost it. Pretty much the most angry I’ve ever seen Vitale (with the exception of every single time a ref calls a foul on Duke.) I’m not a huge Dickie V fan, but I wholeheartedly agree with him on this. The NCAA Selection committee just looks clueless on this one, as do Bilas and Phelps. Here’s the thing: Neither Arizona or Mount Saint Mary’s has a chance in hell of winning this thing. Not a chance in hell. The lowest seed to ever win was a #8 (‘Nova, incidentally), and these two teams were fighting over a #12 seed. So here’s why the selection committee is filled with boneheads: Nobody cares about Arizona, and nobody outside of Tucson will care if they pull off a couple of upsets. However, if Saint Mary’s had pulled off two upsets, every single office in America would be talking about Saint Mary’s. Where’s it located? What’s a Gael? Why didn’t their best player get a scholarship to a bigger school? Think about last year, and Stephon Curry at Davidson. That could have been playmaker Patrick Mills this year. The NCAA tourney is not about seeing how many teams we can squeeze in from each power conference. It’s about Weber State and Davidson and George Mason. The committee, however, is made of guys from the power conferences, and they’ve made a concerted effort to reduce the amount of at-large teams from small conferences that make the tournament, from 12 in 2004 to 4 this year. It’s like the NBA keeping Nate Robinson out of next year’s slam dunk competition because nobody wants to see little guys dunk.
March 16th, 2009 at 11:38 am
“…over Mount Saint Mary’s…”
That should be St. Mary’s. Mount St. Mary’s is a small Catholic college in my hometown, Emmitsburg, Md., that lost to Robert Morris in the NEC final. Damn those Colonials.
March 16th, 2009 at 11:44 am
You gotta love it when you write an incensed post about how people are clueless about a certain school and then you get the name of that school wrong. I’m a genius.
March 16th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Vitale is 100% right about this. The argument that the bigger conference schools automatically have tougher schedules is the same wool-over-the-eyes argument that the clowns in the BCS make about football. The assumption in this case is that the PAC-10 is automatically better because of the name recognition of those schools. Look at the damned conference tournament, it was a joke. And where the hell was Arizona in it? If you’re a spurious bubble team like Arizona and you can’t even show-up for your conference tournament finals, you have no business being in the big dance. None at all.
The only conference this year that gets the big name assumption pass is the Big East. Just like the SEC in football this year, the teams coming out of that conference have beaten each other up all year. But please don’t tell me about strength of schedule when you’re Arizona. How can you sit there and try and make the argument that they belong when St. Mary’s doesn’t? It’s the same bullshit you got with respect to Utah this year and the BCS. Apologists for the big conferences (read: more money) will always fall back on the “they played a tougher schedule” argument simply because of the name recognition of other schools in the conference.
At the end of the day, why should schools like St. Mary’s even play their season if their schedules are so weak? Like Utah this year going undefeated and not making the title game, St. Mary’s (26-fucking-2!) really never had a chance because of establishment stooges like Bilas and Phelps.
March 16th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
St. Mary’s RPI=47
Arizona RPI=62
Too bad the numbers don’t support Bilas and Phelps. The RPI factors in strength of schedule. The NCAA simply hates small schools. The BCS computer system keeps Utah out of the picture, and the NCAA selection committee just ignores the RPI computer system when it’s convenient to dismiss small schools. The big guys win either way.
March 17th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
What the hell is Digger doing with his finger in the last few seconds?