NCAA Basketball

All 4 teams in the Final Four are #1 seeds.

I’d love to see a ranking by team of NIL money paid and the details of how many players were recruited out of high school vs recruited from the portal.
 
Chris said:
All 4 teams in the Final Four are #1 seeds.

I’d love to see a ranking by team of NIL money paid and the details of how many players were recruited out of high school vs recruited from the portal.
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If I had a guess, they would be near the top. Of course Flagg is going to throw that number off because by all accounts he’s the top player by a lot. But I would also bet some teams that lost this past weekend were collectively pretty high as well. The SEC clearly used a ton of money to build up their teams. It wasn’t that long ago in 2016 they only got 3 teams in the NCAA tournament. Now they have set records with 14 teams in the tournament. A lot of those I’m sure had big budgets and some may have been bigger than teams that went further.
 
What a good basketball game that was last night. I'm just really sorry Houston won. My #1 pet peeve today is how players, particularly in college, pass up a short shot and kick it out. The worst offender of the Final Four was Alex Condon from Florida. The entire weekend he passed up a 5 footer and immediately looked to pass out, not to an open shooter but in a panic move to get rid of the ball. His play can best be described as being a pussy. And he walks away as a champion, that sucked. I really wanted Sampson to win a Natty.
 
I was really hoping Samson could get that championship. What’s crazy to me is that the last 3 Houston possessions, they didn’t even take a shot. Three turnovers the last minute of the game. Just a brutal way to end the game.

I also agree on Condon as he wasn’t even looking for a shot in so many instances. He would catch and have a good shot, but just look to pass. I see a lot of guards doing it too on the drive. I know the big guys are looking to swat shots of the guards, but a lot pass up good shots in close for contested shots outside.
 
This was a pic I posted on Facebook to show what is wrong with the game today. This guy had a wide open layup, #4 was Fats Russell who stood about 5'9", He was never contesting this layup. Instead he kicked it out to the corner where the player missed the 20 footer and Maryland grabbed the rebound.


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Bert Smith is assigned to an inordinately high percentage of Duke games, and especially high profile ones. When I saw him at the tipoff against Michigan State, I didn't bother watching the game because I knew how things were gonna sway. He's the new Tony Greene for Duke basketball, and I'm really disappointed in the league for allowing this to continue. It's like seeing Lenny Wirtz back in UNC's Dean Smith era. Opposing coaches knew they were in for it.
 
Well, what a surprise. Bert Smith was assigned as the lead official for the Duke-Texas Tech matchup at Madison Square Garden yesterday. Kudos to the Red Raiders for maintaining composure and playing through it. Great game. I stil think Duke will be a Final 4 team, and might win it all. Great coaching and lots of talented young men on that squad.
 
Congrats to Duke on their ACC tourney title. Talented team, great young coach. They'll be tough to beat in the big dance.

Also congrats to Bert Smith on his selection to officiate the championship game.
 
I’m with you
 
Chris said:
No matter how many years go by I still get a kick out of Duke getting bitchslapped. 🤣🖕
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Some great games in the tournament so far. I was surprised at how Duke pulled away in the first half. UConn really fought back.

Maryland fans everywhere are cheering. They still feel cheated by what happened in that final four against Duke. Man, Ted Hilary and David Libbey hosed the Terrapins in that game. Mark Reischling wasn't as bad, but that crew was God awful from an impartiality standpoint. I still marvel that Gary Williams didn't spontaneously combust.
 
Ol' Geno was pretty intense last night. They were simply outplayed and outcoached in that one.
 
DUKE!!!
 
Chris said:
No matter how many years go by I still get a kick out of Duke getting bitchslapped. 🤣🖕
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I grew up a Duke basketball fan.

When I was a kid and played tennis, at the end of every summer session, they would put stuff all over the court, and if you hit it with a tennis ball, you got to keep it.

One of the coaches was a member's daughter who played tennis for Duke. She was dating a dude on the Duke basketball team. (Looking back on it, she was a complete smoke show. Though at 9 years old, I didn't really notice.) This was probably around 1985. So before Duke was the program it would become in the 90's and beyond.

Anyway, one day he showed up at the last day of camp with a duffel bag full of duke stuff. t-shirts, hats, sweat bands, water bottles, you name it. If they made it, he had it. And they laid it all out of the court.

I hit (at a minimum) a hat and a shirt. And probably a few more things. This isn't because of some level of talent, you couldn't NOT hit something there was so much stuff.

I had no idea what Duke was. I didn't know it was a university. But I wore a blue devil's hat and shirt (and some other stuff) proudly for years. And then I started to buy it myself. Then they started winning ACC and NCAA championships. And that was that.

Was I brainwashed? Absolutely. They get you young.

But I take some solace that I was a Duke fan BEFORE they became good, rather than a whole bunch of fair weather fans. We don't talk about the fact I had no idea what Duke was for a couple of years.... :p

My fandom waned through the years. I no longer really care that much anymore. And some of that is due to the fact the NCAA college basketball game just doesn't hold my interest anymore.

However, it was the only team I rooted for for most of my adult life that won anything. Didn't have a baseball team (until the nats showed up), Caps couldn't get out of the first round, Bullets/Wizards just stink, and the Redskins started to suck just as Duke got good.
 
Duke was in the Final Four 8 times between 1960 and 1990 brother. The Mike Krzyzewksi era started in 1980. They didn't win a National Championship until 1991, but he was hardly the start of Duke Basketball relevance. Just saying...
 
Boone said:
Duke was in the Final Four 8 times between 1960 and 1990 brother. The Mike Krzyzewksi era started in 1980. They didn't win a National Championship until 1991, but he was hardly the start of Duke Basketball relevance. Just saying...
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No disagreement, but I wasn't alive for most of that. :p

I'm just saying, I was brainwashed BEFORE I could become a fair weather fan.

K also had 3 losing seasons before he had a winning season. His first really good team was the 85/86 team, which lost in the NCAA Final game to Louisville. Then they were kindof off to the races, and the success they had from that point on for the next 30 years was pretty incredible.

But yeah, they were a good program up until that point, but I don't think they had the same level of reputation as they had from 85 on. But again, I wasn't alive for most of that, so maybe I'm wrong.
 
I guess my point is - Duke basketball was legit before Coach K arrived. Bill Foster almost had a national championship in 1978. I'm just saying, people act like there wasn't even a Duke basketball program prior to the Coach K era.

I've never hated Duke. I think most of the hate (like you saw with Belichick and Brady Patriots teams) was because they were a fairly dominant team for so long. But their fans are pretty obnoxious and I find many, many of them also seem to be Dallas fans :)
 
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