BuffOrange

That was clearly (or so I thought) the gist of my post.

There's no question Cuse underachieved in the tourney from 86-91 (they were a 2 or 3 seed every year). The problem IMO, was that he stopped getting stud players after that and the players who previously went to Cuse/G'town started going to Connecticut (meanwhile it took Calhoun about a decade to get over the Elite 8 hump). I mean, it's a one and done format and you can take every great coach ever and point to a 5-6 year sample where they had good players and bombed in the Big Dance. But if you keep getting players over a 10-20 year period, math and probability will usually eventually lead to a ring or two. As for the Coleman/Owens era - I never understood how them not playing as well under others was a big negative. Besides it being hard to be a star in the NBA, not many coaches have churned out a lots of stars at the next level - not coach K - D. Smith I guess - (and both of his rings were aided by bonehead plays by their opponents). Anyway, I'll stop sounding like a JB apologist because I'm totally not.

You're just wrong, imo. Pitino likes to press & shoot 3's, just like Roy's teams always run the floor, like Howland likes halfcourt defense, like Boeheim likes zone. Coaches are going to have their styles that they prefer; but if you think Williams is better at adapting & making adjustments during a game, I don't know what to tell you. While it is easy to to scoff at Boeheim in comparison off of the most recent season, that was not the case when John Wallace and 4 ordinary teammates beat a line-up of all-NBA players led by Paul Pierce in front of a pro-Jayhawk crowd in Denver. But again, recruiting >>> everything else, in the long run. Ask Illinois fans to compare Bill Self to Lon Kruger or Bruce Weber....every one of them will tell you Self isn't half the coach of the other two, but more importantly his recruiting is great.

This is a legendary thread on a prominent forum elsewhere.

Well Williams is a better recruiter. To be fair, recruiting is 90%+ of college coaching, so that alone makes him a fine coach. As for the actual "coaching" part though, he's on par with Boeheim; not really on Pitino's level.

CBS will be ok with any combonation of UNC/Kansas/UCLA. I got L'ville in my bracket; anytime you got the better defense & coach you have a puncher's chance. Can't turn the ball over 20 times though.

Please don't. You shouldn't have gotten started on basketball.

I was surprised Nova was a bigger favorite than G'town in the last round. As usual, Vegas knows best. I can't pretend to have watched a lot of Wash. St. this year, though I did pick them over Notre Dame on the basis of being a very solid road team this year. Won @Gonzaga, @Baylor, @Wash, @USC, @ASU , @Oregon, @Cal....Stanford & UCLA losses were 7 points each. As for how they run with UNC, the idea is to not do that. Should be an interesting 'tempo' game.

Meh, Marquette is like a poor man's Texas and likely would've beaten them outside of California.

Yah I saw that too. They also got away with a fairly blatant moving screen on the game winner... I was shocked A&M didn't go for 3 though....I wouldn't have liked their chances in OT.

I've seen the version with comments from Reich/Levy/Killdrive/Jeffries several times.... Nice to see the actual NBC broadcast.

OMG Pitt went out early & UCLA got ridiculous calls down the stretch at home.... In other news, the Bills have no QB.

If Baltimore starts showing some interest I'm all over that

No question. I used to have a man crush on Mike Gansey - one of my favorite players/teams to watch.

Had WVU in the bracket (Duke obviously a fraud)... ND should be a good game tonight; I got the Cougars because they've played better than the Irish on the road this year.

It really sounds like you're just hoping Swede/Kelly are that good because that's what the Bills need.... He was pretty clear in saying that WR/TE is our biggest need. A lot of non-Bills fans agree #11 is too high for those guys.

Bracket buster for sure; but if Henderson is on crutches 5 minutes into their game and Price is not, the result of those two nailbiters flip-flop pretty easily. Uconn - who isn't an offensive team to begin with - is going to have problems without their best playmaker. I'm not sure how WV will match up (I got them winning). They don't really have the bigs to exploit Duke's interior, but they will have the best player on the floor; which means they'll at least keep it close imo.

Jinx...good time to take a T Jay.

I have to say watching the 3rd best ACC team lose to the 8th best Big East team trumps my bracket.... Wonder if Vitale & Mike Patrick still want to investigate Va Tech's omission.

My rule is to not pick Gonzaga unless they're wearing the road uniforms.

I admit to being a former Sports Guy addict 4-6 years ago. Don't really care that he likes the teams I hate. To me, part of his appeal was that he came off as a normal sports nut and wasn't too ashamed to admit he watched the Real World or 90210. Since he moved to Hollywood, worked on Kimmel's show, and held a lame intern contest (in which every contestant tried to copy his writing style by using phrases like "prominently involved") - yeah - the novelty has sort of worn off now.

I would think the scoring system comes into play there. I've won some pools picking the favorite under the standard "1pt for 1st round, 6 pts for champion" rules.... This year my office has this ridiculous escalating point system where the championship is 25 points. I figured if I took UCLA or UNC to win it all there's a good chance I'd be mathematically eliminated after the 1st weekend.

Agree w/ ofiba. Even if you're Dale Carnegie I can't imagine that conversation going well.

Before opening this thread I thought for sure the author would be Jason Whitlcok.

So Akron or Umass up next.... Nothing like 3 home games vs. mediocre teams en route to a Final 4. On a serious note, F- the haters. Yah, so it's the NIT. Just like Spring Training & preseason football though, you either like the game or you don't.