Selection Sunday Primer

If you are like me, the invites for March Madness brackets are beginning to trickle in.  I have several favorites that I participate in each year, including one with the family. Our family bracket awards the winner with a week free of chores!  If you aren’t invited by a friend, just about every sports site has a contest complete with prizes.

How do you fill out your bracket? I usually identify the four teams I feel will make it to the Final Four and fill in the blanks all the way to the national semifinals.  Who will make it to Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas next month?  We won’t know for sure until the tournament Selection Show on Sunday night. Projecting top seeds in advance is tricky business as there is alot of  guess work trying to figure out  which team will end up in each of the four regions. Neverthelss, here are the four teams I like: Florida, Ohio State, Kansas and North Carolina. Defending National Champion Duke may prove me wrong, but repeating is tough  business. My “sleeper” pick for the Final Four is Notre Dame.

The tournament is different this year. There are four first round games, a change from the play in game from 65 team fields in tournament’s past.  Now, we have 68 teams and the tournament tips off with the “first four”.  Not the throwaway type matchup that didn’t even make many brackets in the past, some real meat! Yes, the last four “at large” teams will face off with the two winners advancing, probably against #4 or #5 seeds.  Who might be the “at large” teams? Probably from the group of Virginia Tech, Alabama, Georgia, Michigan State, USC and Colorado. The four lowest ranked automatic qualifiers of the 68 will also meet in the other “first four” games with the winners rewarded with #1 seeds next. The inaugural “first four” takes place Tuesday and Wednesday  in Dayton, Ohio.

When filling out brackets, many look for an “upset special”.  That’s great if you hit it, but when  you miss, you fall a pick below the rest of the pack. I usually fall victim to picking teams I like (Maryland) or from conferences I enjoy. Best news for me, the Terrapins won’t be participating unless they win the ACC tournament. Remember this, a #16 seed has NEVER beaten a #1 seed  since the  tournament expanded to 64 teams. Just how are the teams selected? The NCAA selection committee will be literally locked down in a hotel this weekend ranking the teams from 1-68. 30 bids will be awarded to conference tournament winners and another to the Ivy League regular season champion as they do not hold a tournament. The remaining 37 bids are “at large”, many of them going to conference regular season champions on down.

What to watch through the weekend?  By Thursday, all major conference tournaments will be underway. The automatic bids  rewarded to conference tournament winners this weekend, often time are taking away a spot from teams on the “bubble”, especially when there are upsets .  What is a “bubble team” you might ask? Those are the teams on the brink of making it… or not.  Who are some of these teams? Baylor, Nebraska, Memphis, Washington State and those mentioned as “first four” game candidates.

College basketball owns March and if you are going to fill out brackets next week, pay attention over the weekend.   Conference tournaments will be won and so will office  pool particpants who are taking notice.

Jeff Green As A Celtic

Just five games in to his stint with the Celtics, Jeff Green has been a fantasy disappointment.

Analysis: Jeff Green has played five games now with Boston and has yet to tally an assist, it’s mind boggling. Not that he was much help in the assist department in Oklahoma City but anything helps. Green’s minutes are down but he’s still getting over twenty minutes a game. He’s averaging a miserable ten points per game as a Celtic, down about five points from his season average. Green’s rebounds are extremely low as well. He’s averaging just 1.6 boards per game while his season average sits at 5.2 boards per game. His three pointers made are down one from his season average. These numbers don’t come as a huge surprise but slightly shocking nonetheless. To put in directly, Jeff Green has become an average fantasy forward. There really is only one positive in his move to Boston- his field goal percentage is over fifty-five percent in his five games as a Celtic but it means little when he’s not taking many shots.

Projection: Jeff Green isn’t at the point where you just drop him. He’s on an aging team and some more minutes down the stretch may be in order. Patience is key in this situation, you don’t want to drop Green only for him to land on a rival fantasy squad to kill you in the last few weeks of the season. Green won’t produce like he did in Oklahoma City but he’s not this bad either.

LeBron James is Terrible!

While my title might be the overstatement of the century, it emphasizes a very real issue: LeBron James is having a far worse fantasy season than his previous few.

Analysis: First of all, we all knew that a slight dip in points was going to result from the whole Taking My Talents… debacle, but nobody predicted James to not produce as well in other categories. Sports writers’ such as Bill Simmons thought he might even approach triple double status for the season. This has not been the case. LeBron is shooting a slightly worse FG%, a slightly worse FT%, and averaging 3 less points a game. With Dwayne Wade as his co-superstar and Chris Bosh as another star, I really thought that LeBron’s percentages would have gone up significantly, certainly not down. He should be getting easier looks resulting in higher percentages but this hasn’t been the case. More importantly are LeBron’s drop-off in assists, blocks, and steals. He is averaging 1.5 less assists, .4 blocks less, and a .1 decrease in steals. With LeBron finally having some decent help, I expected him to focus more on piling up his assist and block stats, but this has not happened.

Projection: For anybody else LeBron’s stats would look absolutely gorgeous, but coming after his MVP season they look pedestrian. Expect more of the same from LeBron as Miami struggles to find itself.

Al Montoya Is A Top 20 Netminder

In just eight games started former top ten pick Al Montoya has amassed some staggering numbers.

Analysis: A sub 2.00 goals against average will grab anyones attention but doing it on the Islanders is a different kind of animal and that is exactly what Montoya is doing. Montoya has a sub 2 goals against average with a save percentage north of .93 with 5 wins in just 8 starts. He really is one of the most athletic goalies in the game today and it’s ashame it took him so long in the AHL to hone his talents. Montoya will be getting the majority of the starts as the season winds down and his availability in most leagues leaves many with decisions to make at goaltender. At this point Montoya projects better than James Reimer and Craig Anderson going forward but lags slightly behind Cam Ward.

Projection: Al Montoya will win more than half of his starts the rest of the year. His GAA should bump up a bit into the 2.4 range and his save percentage should fall near 92%. Al Montoya will be a top 20 netminder the rest of the season and he can give your secondary goaltending numbers a real boost.

March Madness

Are you ready for some College basketball? Yes, its one of those signature times of year. March Madness along with exhibition baseball bridges us from Winter into Spring.

College basketball has been under fire of late. Does it have the same feel as it once did?  We get a peek back to what it once was on Sunday night as ESPN through its wonderful celebratory series 30 for 30,  will profile the Michigan “Fab Five”,  a group of freshman that helped shape the way things are today in the college game.  Even the younger fan will relate to Chris Webber and Jalen Rose who appear regularly on cable NBA coverage and analysis.

Much has changed since then, fortunately for college basketball fans, we at least get one season from high school super stars before they take their talents to the Association.  There are exceptions of course, like Brandon Jennings, who went to  Europe to serve his one year “waiting period” before entering the NBA draft. Many believe courts will eventually decide high schoolers may return to a direct entry to the NBA. Personally, I would prefer three years removed from high school, as is the case in NCAA football. How might Derek Rose, Eric Gordon, Michael Beasley,  Blake Griffin and Kevin Love spice things up? All would be in their senior seasons had they stayed in school

Selection Sunday is still a few days away. Another rite of Spring, spawning brackets across the land. Everyone does them, much like those random square pools for the Super Bowl that reward winners by quarter. Remember the trouble Rick Neuheisel got in by participating in a March Madness “office pool” while the head coach of the University Washington? Neuheisel, now the head coach at UCLA, was fired in 2003 for participating in a  tournament bracket.

Nothing beats the buzzer beaters in the NCAA tournament. Perhaps the most famous coming from Christian Laettner as Duke defeated Kentucky in the 1992 East Regionals. We will always remember NC State’s shocking win over the University of Houston in the 1983 finals. That particular classic will be remembered forever through the “V” foundation honoring the late NC State head coach Jim Valvano who died of cancer.

This year’s tournament will be presented in a different fashion.  Turner Sports has joined CBS to bring the tournament into our homes.  The new broadcast arrangement coincides with the tournament field expanding to 68 teams and for the first time all games will be carried live. Nothing compares to the round the clock “hoops”  on Thursday and  Friday as the tournament tips off with 1st and 2nd round coverage.  CBS will select feature games, with the remaining broadcast on TNT, TBS and truTV. OK, I had to look it up, truTV was formerly CourtTV, now featuring more “reality” TV programming. Might be where Charlie Sheen eventually ends up. #Winning  Check your local cable operator on that one.

Some schools have already had their tickets punched for the Big Dance. The Big East tournament is underway, historically the first of the power conferences to tip off the post season madness. Congrats are in order for the Big East, as a record shattering 11 teams are expected to participate.  In coming  days, leading up to the unveiling of the brackets on Sunday night, you will hear much about RPI’s, strength of schedule, bubble teams and the “eye ball” test. The Madness is almost here!