VCU proves experts wrong; Final Four: underdog/good guy divisions vs. not-so-good-guy/overdog division

I know it has been a while and I apologize to those who look for this blog on a regular basis. I went underground last week, retreating at the suggestion of my remarkably patient wife to Shelter Island to dig in and try to finish a book. The good news is I got a remarkable amount of work done in six days. The bad news is I still haven’t quite reached the finish line.

Choosing not to go to a regional site was a mixed blessing. Not having to try to file at ridiculous hours of the night thanks to the NCAA’s selling of its soul to TV was something I didn’t miss. Not dealing with the constant feeling that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that you are in a police state when you are in the arena also wasn’t missed. And not having to deal with more internet problems—the NCAA is the only major organization that CHARGES for internet and then most of the time it doesn’t work—was also a very good thing.

So, I stretched out in front of the TV in the evenings and watched the games. Let me begin by patting myself on the back (something I’m pretty good at as most people know) for saying—and writing—on Selection Sunday that VCU belonged in the field. I advocated all season for the CAA getting three bids because I believed the quality of play in the league merited three bids. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve read in recent days that include the phrase, “all the experts said VCU didn’t merit a bid.”

Okay, I’m happy not to be lumped in with the talking heads, especially those on ESPN. My friend Jay Bilas needs to swallow hard, drop the lawyer-line about, “just because they got a chance and played well doesn’t mean they deserved the chance.”

YES THEY DID. They have proven more than definitively that they deserved the chance and you Jay—and others—just had it wrong. How about saying this: “You know I probably didn’t see VCU play enough to fairly judge them. They’re better than I thought they were.”

Heck, they’re certainly better than I thought they were. Did I believe they should be in the field? Absolutely. Did I think they’d be in The Final Four? Of course not. Beating USC didn’t surprise me nor did beating Georgetown—because the Hoyas did their collapse act again. I’ve said before and I will say again, I think John Thompson III is a good coach and a good guy. But in the last four years—or since Jeff Green and Roy Hibbert, both recruited by Craig Esherick—left the program (actually Hibbert was still there in ’08) Georgetown has won ONE NCAA Tournament game, against a No. 15 seed UMBC back in ’08. Since then: NIT; first round blowout loss to Ohio University; first round blowout loss to VCU. (The round of 64 is still the first round no matter what the NCAA euphemists call it).

Something’s wrong inside that locker room. Georgetown is the most secret society this side of The CIA so we may never know exactly what went wrong but if you read body language you know those kids weren’t very excited about being together on the court against VCU.

I thought the Rams run would probably end against Purdue. They crushed the Boilermakers too. I thought the Florida State game was a tossup and it was: teams of destiny win those games. And Kansas? No way was Kansas going to lose to another mid-major after the Northern Iowa debacle a year ago, right? Wrong. The Jayhawks played as if they thought this was a pre-season game. Then when they realized how good VCU was they panicked and started firing bricks that could have rebuilt The Berlin Wall.

Wow. Good for Shaka Smart and good for those kids and for that school and, by the way, for the CAA. I might have been wrong: maybe the league deserved four bids: Hofstra was pretty damn good too.

The committee got it right with VCU. For the most part it got just about everything else wrong. I’m not going to go the Charles Barkley route and declare The Big East overrated. It wasn’t—it was very good with a lot of good to very good teams. But Villanova should have played its way out of the field with its monumental February-March collapse. The committee—as always—just looked at numbers. Hey, anyone WATCH the South Florida game? Talk about a team in disarray. Did we need seven Big Ten teams? No. UAB got in for one reason: Steve Orsini, committee member from SMU, got his conference an extra bid. The tournament would have been fine without USC. Oh, and one more nitpick: Clearly if you were seeding the last four No. 16 seeds based on records and RPI and perhaps even—God Forbid—watching them play, UNC-Asheville and Arkansas-Little Rock would have been 1-2 and clearly ahead of UT-San Antonio and Alabama State, by far the lowest ranked team in the field. And yet, the first two played one another while UT-San Antonio got to play Alabama State. Hmmm, how could that have happened? Does the name Lynn Hickey ring a bell? Committee member; AD at….you guessed it…UT-San Antonio.

You know what? I may be wrong when I say the committee isn’t transparent. In truth, it is VERY transparent. If you’re paying attention.

But, fine, whatever. As I’ve said before it doesn’t bother me that much that the committee gets it wrong because it is made up of people who don’t know much about basketball. (okay, it bothers me). But what REALLY bothers me is the sanctimony and the self-righteousness. They get everything wrong and sit there and claim they got everything right. My cats could seed the tournament better than these guys and do it for a lot less and with a lot less self-congratulations or discussions of ‘student-athletes.’

Anyway, The Final Four has two clear divisions: There is the underdog/good guy division: Butler-VCU. What Butler has done is completely amazing. Honestly, if I was starting a college basketball program tomorrow and could hire one coach it would be Brad Stevens. He is very much the real deal. He’s smart, he understands the game and he understands life. His kids trust him implicitly and he NEVER panics. So, they never panic. That’s why they keep winning close games. Back-to-back Final Fours at Butler? My God. Put that guy in the Hall of Fame NOW.

Then there is the not-so-good-guy/overdog division: U-Conn and Kentucky. As it happens, I like both Jim Calhoun and John Calipari. I think they’re both superb coaches. They get kids who have one eye on the doorway to the NBA—if not two—to play hard all the time. But the fact is Calhoun and Connecticut have just been convicted by the NCAA of major recruiting violations and got off with a wrist-slap because they’re a big-time TV program. That’s how it works and we all know it.

The other fact is this—although you will never hear it mentioned on CBS or ESPN— Calipari has overseen two programs that have had Final Four appearances vacated.

PLEASE don’t give me the morning pitchmen line from today: “Well, um, Calipari had two programs that, um, had some problems, HE didn’t have problems, the programs did…” Right, he was an innocent bystander. COME ON! And we all know Kentucky’s history. (Go ahead Kentucky fans, explain how your program has NEVER done anything wrong and this is all about me not liking Kentucky.).

So, the final will match a true Cinderella—and Butler is STILL Cinderella no matter how good it has become—against one school on probation and one that’s been there before coached by a guy who has twice been vacated. Talk about good vs. evil.

Anyway, regardless of the outcome you can be sure of two things: the game won’t be over until close to midnight and the committee blowhards will be patting themselves on the back for great job the minute that buzzer finally goes off.

Yeah, great job. Sort of like the Mets owners have done the past few years.

Tiger carefully charting a controlled return; Responding to question about journalists, TV guys, cheering at games

Okay, so I was wrong about Tiger Woods.

Don’t get carried away Tiger-apologists. I didn’t wake up this morning and become George Stephanopoulos or Robin Roberts.

Back when he held his Tiger-and-pony show on February 19th I found one thing about the whole circus act encouraging: the fact that he said this was not the time for him to think about when he would return to The PGA Tour; that he needed to get his personal life in order before even giving any thought to his golf career.

I had been predicting all along that Tiger would come out of hiding in time to play at least once before The Masters, perhaps twice. My thinking was that his so-called hiatus was little more than a PR move, that in the end he would do what was best for his golf game and wouldn’t miss the chance to add a major championship trophy to his collection.

On that morning in February I thought I’d misjudged him a little, that maybe there was some sincerity when he said the most important thing in his life was to repair his marriage and his personal life. My new guess became that he would come back in time to play a warm-up tournament or two before the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.

Well, I got it wrong.

I should have been alerted by the fact that someone told me on the day of the Tiger-and-pony performance that he’d been hitting balls on the driving range at Isleworth the day before. I wasn’t.

Now though, it seems to be pretty clear he’s going to play The Masters. He spent some time with fellow Isleworth member Charles Howell last Monday and Howell was more than willing to tell people at last week’s Honda Classic how good Tiger looked. Then, Hank Haney, his swing coach, was spotted working with him on the Isleworth range this past weekend. And Monday, Mark O’Meara, his closest friend in golf, told The Golf Channel that he “wouldn’t be surprised,” if Woods tees it up on March 22nd in the Tavistock Cup, an exhibition staged for rich people and TV between the pros who belong to Isleworth and the pros who belong to nearby Lake Nona.

This is a perfect place for Woods to make his first public appearance with a golf club in his hands. To begin with, the event is “invitation only,”—members and guests from the two clubs and The Golf Channel, which pays a rights fee to televise the “tournament.” You can bet there won’t be any media, except perhaps a hand-picked apologist or two, on that guest list. If The Golf Channel is granted an interview you can also bet it will be under the “golf-questions only,” rule.

In fact, here’s an advance text on Tiger’s answers: “I felt good. It felt good to be competing again, to be with the guys. My game is a long way away from where I know it needs to be but this is a nice way to start.”

Question: “How’s it look for Augusta?”

“We’ll see how it goes. But I love playing in The Masters.” Pause to smile. “You know it’s been a while (2005) since I’ve won there so if my game’s up to it and I feel up to it, I’d like to play.”

From The Tavistock Cup you can expect Tiger to go down the road to Bay Hill. The tournament is run by IMG and the golf club is owned by Arnold Palmer. Again, control. They won’t be able to keep all the media out but they can probably keep the gossip media out. It will be a little more of a step from the cocoon but nothing that major. Then, two weeks later, Augusta, where you can bet the green jackets will protect Tiger with the zeal of a college president chasing money.

So, unless I’m wrong AGAIN, we’re back where we started: Tiger carefully charting a controlled return, making sure he doesn’t miss a major along the way.

All of which is fine. He’ll certainly be welcomed back by the golf world with open arms and about 90 percent of golf fans just want to see him play again. I’m all for that. Just please—please—don’t try to tell me he’s a different person. The Tiger-and-pony show was a clear indication that he’s still a control freak who thinks (correctly) that he can pretty much do whatever he wants and most people will just nod their head and thank him for existing.

That’s certainly what PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem did, not only sitting in the room like one of the acolytes, but then coming up with some ridiculous statistic about how many press conferences Woods has held as a defense for his refusal to answer questions. This wasn’t about birdies-and-bogeys commish and you know that as well, if not better, than anyone.

It will actually be amusing to witness the breathlessness around Tiger when he returns. If you think people walked on eggshells around him in the past, wait until you see the ballet moves people make now. What do you think the over-under is on people talking about what Tiger has “overcome,” when he comes back.

For the record, I have no axe to grind with Tiger. He’s never done anything to me. He’s actually given me more access over the years than he’s given to most writers—which is still very little—and I’m fine with that. He’s been great for golf right up until the morning of November 27th and, to be honest, that’s been great for me as someone who covers golf.

I just don’t buy the act. I know others do. And they’re certainly entitled to do so.

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Someone raised a question in yesterday’s posts about something I said on a radio show last week. Apparently there was a comment on some Maryland message board about the fact that I had said that if Jay Bilas and I (both Duke graduates) sat behind the Duke bench at Cameron Indoor Stadium and screamed at the officials all night the way Scott Van Pelt often does at Maryland games, we’d both be (justifiably) crucified. The Maryland person referred to Van Pelt as, “SVP.” To be honest it took me a minute to figure out who he was talking about.

Did I say it? Yes. Have I said it before? Yes. Look, I know TV guys are different than real journalists. They do commercials for one thing, which we don’t. Often they’re nothing more than teleprompter readers although the ESPN guys like to point out that they write their own stuff. (Stuart Scott once said this to me and I suggested he stick with the story that he was just reading what someone else wrote for him).

All that said, they are allegedly covering sports. Van Pelt has a radio show in which he interviews people and expresses opinions. Everyone knows he’s a Maryland grad, which is fine, we all went somewhere. He’s out-of-the-closet that he’s a rabid fan and that he hates Duke. If he wants to sit in the stands and berate the officials, that’s fine. Just don’t EVER talk about college basketball. As discussed here before, we ALL have opinions and we all have biases. But there needs to be a line you don’t cross if you are a public figure who is paid to express opinions and dispense news on sports.

As I said, if Bilas and I behaved that way at a Duke game—not likely since we’ve both outgrown that sort of thing a while ago—we’d get nailed for it. Maybe the fact that people just laugh and say, “Hey, that’s just Scott,” means that people don’t take him that seriously.

By the way, I get along fine with him, I’ve known him for years. I just don’t talk Maryland basketball with him because he’s completely insane on the subject. Gary Williams is a more objective observer. Now if HE wants to rant at the officials, that’s okay.