Enjoy it. Just enjoy it. Tug McGraw approves.

Gooberism has reached a new level. Yesterday, I was inspecting organic apples in the grocery store. The overhead speakers suddenly started up this song, and I laughed out loud. By myself. *** The first place we go to take a look at things, for any game, is kenpom.com. Pomeroy’s site breaks things down in the [...]

Numbers and minutiae coming later today and early tomorrow… I sent a text to a friend, a guy who knows things about college basketball, at the half of the Mason/Villanova game yesterday. “Mason is terrible and down six? I’m encouraged.” The point was that I didn’t think the Patriots could play any worse, and they [...]

While you focus on the Mason/Villanova matchup, I’m going to focus on my corned beef sandwich and VCU/Georgetown. As mentioned, Blaine Taylor taught me all about compartmentalization, and we need to get preview stuff out of the way before the Mason tipoff. I want to sit back and enjoy that one. First, I had a [...]

Repeating earlier thoughts worked for VCU/USC, so we’re going to do it again for Mason/Villanova. This game gets more intriguing the deeper you delve. As we mentioned and have supplemented with more evidence, the stats bear out two teams that play very similar styles of basketball, and have a similar success rate with what they’re [...]

Per Melinda Waldrop. You saw it. Helluva game. More to come. Per David Teel: “How close? Try 10 ties, 21 lead changes and no margin above six points. As it should have been. These two “mid-majors” are that good, that similar, that fearless. “It was a man’s game,” Taylor said. *** We turn Thursday afternoon [...]

You look at these teams statistically, and you learn bupky. They are nearly identical in every critical category: Points per possession: Mason 1.13; Nova 1.10 Field goal percent defense: Mason 40.7%; Nova 40.5% Turnovers: Mason 10.9; Nova 11.8 Big three: both teams have them. Mason (Long, Pearson, Hancock); Nova (Stokes, Fisher, Wayns) The major difference, [...]

“You guys think Jay Bilas watched that game?” If Shaka Smart opens his presser that way, we open the blog post that way. To me, it’s the necessary barb but the hoopla unnecessary. Last night’s 59-46 victory over USC wasn’t an upset. Nothing was justified nor proven. There is no surprise. It’s nothing like that. [...]

Here’s where we’ll start: there’s no way Old Dominion is a nine seed. That aside, I’ll also be very clear to say Old Dominion will win this game, but NCAA officials are going to need to bring in a dumptruck full of gravel after this rock fight. If you go here to my fine friends [...]

Some expectation setting, because time management this week has reached an alltime high (or low, depending upon your point of view). There’s the regular pace of life–I refuse to call it a grind because my life is a great life–and then there’s the tournament(s). Five links are below my jibber-jabber to very good pieces you [...]