Running 2017 NCAA Tournament thread

Or a bowl game between two 6-5 teams.

 

I love how the NCAA is trying so hard to keep teams so close to home.......they do realize that Providence, Rhode Island is not right next door to Sacramento.

 

Michigan. Oregon is playing without its best defender and survived yesterday on a 9-for-10 performance from a 46 percent shooter.

 

Lake Tahoe. Just saying.

 

No prevailing wage law, probably doesn't have to have the high-cost earthquake resistantance protection that makes West Coast construction so expensive. Oregon built the 12,500-seat Taj Mahole for about $270 million.

 

Michigan.

 

As great as Wooden's UCLA teams were, they got a virtual hall pass to the Final Four each year because teams were strictly slotted by geography. So they were knocking over tomato cans like Santa Clara and Utah State (and didn't have to worry about PAC-8 runners up) while teams back east and in the middle of the country were in bar brawls.

Long story short, be careful what you wish for re: geography. It is good to have as many teams closer to home as possible, but it can't be a hard and fast rule and maintain a balanced field.

 

Once they began seeding and allowed multiple bids by conference, geographic sorting became impossible. Four of the five power conferences go no further west than Omaha. Two of them have most or all of their schools in the south.

 

When I went back and looked at Wooden's NCAA history, it struck me how right this is...

 

Between that and Sam Gilbert's largesse, UCLA's run of dominance is slightly less impressive and slightly more understandable.

 

Come on. Wooden didn't cheat. It's just a tribute to Larry Brown that he could quickly construct the booster base that led to UCLA being place on probation, and sugar daddies such as Sam Gilbert being disassociated with the program, despite having no West Coast/LA ties whatsoever.

In Seth Davis's bio of Wooden he all but concludes the NCAA put the kibosh on any investigation(s) of UCLA because it was more interested in shutting down Long Beach State and Tark and protecting Wooden's image.