Eliminator

College basketball is really kicking ass right now. We are running full steam through conference play and it is awesome. I have started to think ahead towards the Tourney and as always, I have no idea who I think is going to take home the National Championship. So this year, starting right now, I thought it would be easier to try and think of all the teams that WON’T will the NCAA’s, and by the time March Madness rolls around the short list of teams will be reasonable and I will make my selection from that group. So here goes. These are Oceanliner stamped teams that will not be cutting down the nets in Houston on April 4th.

Memphis

The Tigers are fun to watch and have a multitude of uber talented athletic freaks. But there is no way in hell the worst free throw shooting team in the entire country will take home the national title. Everyone saw how badly it cost them against the Vols on Saturday. They were 8-17 from the line and lost by 4. Do the math. This terrible showing at the charity stripe dropped them to 341st in the country out of 341 teams. There is not a single team in the nation worse at shooting free throws than Memphis. They only hit freebies at a 58.6% rate as a team. That’s despicable. What’s got to be so frustrating to Tiger fans is that not only does their team suck at free throw shooing; they compound it by actually getting to the line more than almost every team in the country! Calipari’s team gets to the line the 16th most frequently in the country, but is 341st in free throw percentage. Egads. This cannot be a part of a championship team’s resume. You can’t win 6 straight Tourney games shooting the rock like that on the line. They may make a run to the Elite 8 or Final 4, but there’s no way Memphis win’s the title.

Duke

The Blue Devils are loaded, but rely way too much on the 3-point shot to cut down the nets. When they are shooting well, they can beat anyone in the country. But when they shoot poorly, they can lose 2 in a row to pedestrian ACC teams like Wake Forest and Miami. Duke’s lack of an interior is really hurting them. Their starting “power forward” is Kyle Singler, who plays more like a 2 guard. He would rather jack threes than crash the boards and bang inside. Again, the Dookies may make an Elite 8 or Final 4 run with their style of play, but they ain’t takin home the prom queen with their trigger happy style of play. In their two losses to Wake and Miami, the Devils attempted 65 threes. They hit 35% of them and still lost. For the season Duke has hit 38% of its treys, 48th best in the country. For a team that takes that many triples, they would need to be in the top 20 to contend for the title. At some point the 3’s will stop falling, and that’s when the Devils will lose.

Any Mid Major

There are 31 automatic bids to the Tournament that go to teams that have won their conference. The overall winner is going to come from one of the six major conferences, so we can rule out the 25 mid majors that automatically make the Dance, and any others that get in with an at large. A small school team simply will not win the title this year. The last mid major to win it all was UNLV in 1990, and that was one of the best teams college basketball has ever seen. They came in as a 1 seed and beat Duke by 30 in the title game. There isn’t a mid major in the country that can even sniff how good those Rebels were. So you can eliminate those 25 odd teams from winning it all. That means you Drake, Butler, St. Mary’s Gonzaga and the like. Sorry.

Well, that’s the preliminary list. You can cross off at least 27 teams from your title game winner pick. Hey, that’s 40% of the whole field, not bad. So between now and the start of the Big Dance I will update the Eliminator with teams that won’t win it all. It will be in no particular order, just when I feel like I have a conclusive feeling. Your welcome.

A layup. A single layup was all that separated Oceanliner posterboy Ryan Pettinella from chipping into his fouls to points deficit for the season instead of falling in a bigger whole. But alas, Pett blew a first half layup against the Wolfpack on Sunday and finished the game with 3 points and 4 fouls. He now stands at 64 fouls to 58 points, minus 6 with at minimum 5 games left. You can almost hear his boat sailing over the river Styx, being so close now to losing the season battle.

Pett’s 3 points both came in hilarious ways. His only bucket was an awkward dunk, which somehow was the cover photo for UVA’s website recap of the game.

That just looks like a train wreck. The other point came on a free throw that Pett banked in. I shit you not. He banked in a free throw and if you were watching the game on TV, you saw one of the assistant coaches hiding his face in his hands and shaking his head with Singletary laughing next to him. Now that’s great theatre.

Well, that’s it for this week folks. The Oceanliner is going to get hippie as hell tonight, as moe. is coming to the 9:30 club and yours truly will be in attendance. Should be good times had by all. Last week’s post generated the most comments ever on the Oceanliner, but it was in response to a comment I had on fashion. I don’t know what to make of that. Who knows. But I do know one thing, and that is to stay safe, keep it real and protect your blindside.

One for the Money, Two of deez nuts

So I’ve finally decided what I want to do with my life. Surprisingly, I came across this realization while walking through Bloomingdale’s with Austin. She was browsingthe trendy clothing section and complained about how she couldn’t afford any of it. I thought nay, it couldn’t be THAT expensive. So I started looking at a couple of price tags and was blown away by how bad these designers were ripping people off. Shirts with less material than a wifebeater were going for $400, tiny bags for $700 and hideous jackets for a grand. It hit me that I need to get in on this brainwashing. How hard can it be to design something normal, slap a fancy name on it, convince women that they have to have it and charge 348% too much for it? This is the business for me. Sure I don’t know anything about fashion, but other people do. I’ll hire them to design the clothes and use my people skills (?) to get deals with all the major department stores. The one thing I need to perfect is the brand name that I will sell by. John Oelschlager sounds like a brand of miner’s overalls, not a luxury women’s fashion. But by a simple twist, I believe I could have the market covered. J. Oelschlager would be my brand name. Simple, elegant and effective. An instant classic. I would even have a men’s line. The first launch would be Rugged Luxury by J. Oelschlager. It would be so easy. Now all I have to do is implement this…GUTIE! Manage my wealth so I can start J. Oelschlager. Do it.

So it’s the dog days of late February, and just like Duke at the moment, I don’t have much of my legs left, so here are my quick hit thoughts.

Has anyone taken a look at the Looney Tunes NBA standings lately? It’s comical. In the East, there are only five teams with winning records. In the West, there are nine teams that are at least 12 games over .500. Golden State, the 9^th best team in the West and looking up at the playoffs, would be the 4 seed in the East with home court advantage in the first round. Joke city.

Speaking of the NBA, I watched my first regular season game in a very long time. It was a slow night, so I decided to watch the Lakers-Suns game on Wednesday evening, pitting Shaq against his old team for the first time as a Sun. And I’ll tell you what, it was actually enjoyable. The crowd felt like a college crowd; they were living and dying with each possession and going bonkers. The players were also giving it their all, showing true effort in these current days of isos and glamour. It was very entertaining, and it might has even convinced me to tune in to the NBA playoffs come spring, at least in the West that is.

The Suns-Lakers game also provided yet another hilarious announcer unheard of analogy. Hubie “Cardiac” Brown was trying to explain how Lamar Odom is more comfortable now that he is the third best player on the team behind Kobe and Gasol instead of the pressure packed 2^nd best behind Mr. Bryant. But instead of literally saying exactly that, Brown gave this gem:

Odom is a lot more comfortable now being the third banana.

Third banana? Bananas come in twos? Or threes? I thought they came in bunches? Or single? Who knows. If anyone can explain this analogy, please let the Oceanliner know immediately.

The NBA dunk contest was this weekend, and if you didn’t watch it, you need to spend an hour watching the whole thing on YouTube. The things that these guys keep coming up with is nutso. All I know is that I want a poster of Superman Dwight Howard on my wall doing this as soon as I can get it:

Lastly, it looks like the clock is quickly approaching midnight for our friend Mr. Pettinella. He continues to be minus 5 after his puzzling0 point, 0 foul, 2 rebound game against Boston College. He only has at most 6 games left heading into tonights game against Georgia Tech, depending on how we do in the ACC Tournament. Amazingly, he only has 7 games on the season where he has more points than fouls. And he has played in 21 games. So unless he increases his abysmal rate of only 33% of games having more points than fouls, or he explodes for a 20 point night, he is pretty much doomed. Pay close attention folks, this is getting gritty.

Well, that’s it for this week folks. Like I said, it’s the doldrums of February and I just don’t have it. Plus there’s not much going on in the world of sports right now, so that’s another thing. No excuses though, play like a champion. I hope everyone out there is doing well. Until next time, stay safe, keep it real and roll the dice.

A Comedy of Cavaliers

It has not been a good week for the University of Virginia. We have managed to embarrass ourselves in both football and basketball in a period of less than 7 days. Hard to do? Yes. But the Cavs were up for a challenge.

First of all, lets start with the more subtle humiliation. As we all know, National Signing Day was last Wednesday, where high school seniors let the country know where they would be playing football in the fall. According to Scout.com, UVA pulled in the 62^nd best class in the country. At first I felt like that was about right. In no way are we a perennial power or a recruiting juggernaut. Charlottesville doesn’t exactly have the buzz of a hot town that will lure top talent by itself, and Al Groh simply isn’t a silky smooth Saban-like schmoozer. Needless to say, I was not expecting a top 25 class. But then I started realizing how bad the 62^nd best recruiting class in the country really was.

First I wanted to see how we did compared to the other teams in the ACC. This was depressing to say the least. Five teams in our conference landed classes in the top 25: Miami (3), Florida State (5), Clemson (11), Virginia Tech (20), and Boston College (22). Great. Almost half the teams in the league have classes that kick the shit out of ours. But hey, I wasn’t expecting a top 25 class, so what can you do. The next four teams fell between 25-50. To be honest, this is where I felt UVA belonged, along side NC State, Carolina, Georgia Tech and Maryland. But no, UVA had the 10^th best class in the ACC, a full 10 spots behind the 9^th place Terps who came in at 52. The only two ACC teams that fared worse that UVA were Wake Forest and Dook. But we only beat Wake by 3 spots and the Devils by 8. Pathetic. Wake is one of the smallest schools in D1 with just over 3500 kids. We should be able to crush them on the recruiting path. And then there’s Dook, who was an astounding 6-45 under the recently fired Ted Roof, and somehow UVA managed to fall to their level. I don’t know what I would have done if the Dookies had pulled in a better class than us. But it is a fair statement that UVA and Duke have a similar level of talent coming in this fall. That’s a scary thought.

Taking this one step further, I thought about if we did this poorly in the ACC, how badly did we do compared against the rest of the BCS conference teams? There are 65 teams in the 6 BCS conferences (ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Big East, Pac 10 and SEC). There were four teams ahead of UVA in the recruiting class rankings who aren’t in these conferences (Notre Dame, Southern Miss, BYU and Fresno State). That means that UVA ranked 58^th out of the 65 teams in BCS conferences. Think about that for a minute. Only seven teams, (seven!) had worse BCS classes than the Cavaliers. Only the traditional powerhouses of Indiana, Wake, Northwestern, Uconn, Duke, Vandy and Washington State had worse BCS classes than the Cavaliers. Cincinnati, Baylor, Iowa State, Syracuse and Stanford all did much better than UVA. Those teams suck nuts and we went 9-4 last year. To be out classed by those losers is ridiculous. It makes you wonder what the hell Groh and his staff are even doing on the road. You almost have to try and be that bad to be in the 12^th percentile (sorry 12.3 to be exact) of BCS recruiting classes.

To recap, UVA got the 62^nd best recruiting class in the nation. That is 10^th in the ACC. 58^th out of 65 BCS conference teams. 12.3 percentile. No recruits in the Top 150. No 5 star players. Only one 4 star player (Torrey Mack, a RB from CT). Horrendous.

One of the biggest problems the Cavaliers have had since I have been following the program is keeping Virginia talent in state and away from Tech. This simply isn’t happening and its killing Virginia football. Out of the 18 players UVA signed, only 4 were from the Commonwealth. Compare that to the Hokies, who got 24 of their 31 players from inside Virginia state lines. Tech signed five, count em five 4 star players from within Virginia while the Cavs got none. The Carolinas were an additional source of servature. Both North and South Cakalacky took three 4 star recruits each away from the Commonwealth and indirectly the Cavaliers. On top of all that, the only 5 star player in the whole state, QB E.J. Manuel (the 2^nd ranked QB nationally behind Terrelle Pryor) chose to head south to Florida State instead of staying home. UVA will never be a respectable football program when we get served so bad in our own back yard. It’s not like the talent isn’t there, it’s that we just can’t get any of it.

Shifting over to basketball, UVA managed to embarrass itself the very next night after National Singing Day, losing by 31 to Clemson at home in one of the most uninspired performances I have ever seen by the Cavaliers. Good thing it was televised nationally on ESPN2. It was absolutely pathetic. There was no hustle, no defense and no passion. It looked like nobody on the court with a UVA jersey gave a shit at all. I don’t care if a team loses games, but if a team gives up on a game or season and quits trying then I will stop watching. You can have no regrets if you play hard and lose. If you play half assed and lose it is one of the most infuriating things imaginable. The Clemson game epitomized this quitting attitude. We were out rebounded 35-27, committed 18 turnovers and allowed Clemson to shoot 16-26 from 3-point range. Most of those 3’s were uncontested. In short it became a massacre. Mike “Game Ruiner” Patrick was on the call, and even he was subdued because it was such an ass whooping. Soon the texts were flying into the Oceanliner decrying the awful state of play. This from Eroder:

This is horrendous

Next from Gutie:

I just turned to the Cavs game and within 30 seconds of me watching pett picks up a foul

Of course he did. What else would he do? And finally, these three barrages from Armstrong that epitomized the night.

Newsflash. We fucking blow

Really glad I turned down tickets to tonight’s game. I’m pretty sure I would have driven off the road on the way home.

I mean I’d rather have watched American Idol.

The Oceanliner would definitely rather have watched American Idol than watch my favorite team give up on a game and not try. The only worthwhile part of the game was a comment from crazy Bucky Waters, who was trying to explain that you can’t teach talent, but his analogy came out horribly wrong:

You know, a leopard can’t teach a house cat how to kill an antelope

Stunned silence. Even Mike Patrick was at a loss for a hyperbole at that one.

UVA continued its national embarrassment in losing to a terrible Wake team by 16 on Saturday on ABC. I did not watch this game, but the recap did not lend us any compliments.

All of these factors combined make it so crazy then at the performance the Hoos gave last night against Carolina. They played their absolute hearts out. Players diving for loose balls, jumping on the floor to force a jump ball, playing hard-nosed defense and never giving up against the 5^th ranked team in the country. It was truly a 180 in terms of effort level. I can only assume Leitao pushed the right buttons in practice and got the players to play with a little pride and nuts for once, and it showed. ESPN caught the mood exactly right in their recap:

The Tar Heels got all they could handle from the Cavaliers, who have lost 9 of 10 but played nothing like a team in a hopeless freefall.

That is pinpoint. We are in a hopeless freefall, but we damn sure didn’t play like it. If UVA had shown the same lackluster effort against Carolina that they did against Clemson, I probably wouldn’t have watched another Hoos game all season. It would be too frustrating. But they played with heart, and even though they dropped another close one, I believe they have a chance to win any game they play, however small that chance is. They had a 0% chance to win with the effort they showed against Clemson.

This 1-point loss was surprising on so many levels. It offered perhaps the most lopsided match up of the season in all of college basketball: Ryan Pettinella vs. Tyler Hansbrough. Again I go to texter nation to analyze this mismatch. From Gutie:

Pett will be fouled out in as many possessions as he is in the game

Eroder weighs in again:

Might see a quadruple double

Yawkdawg down in Colatown had this to say:

There should be a rule against it

Tyler was very blatant in his assessment:

0 points, 0 rebs and 5 fouls

Armstrong evoked a biblical analogy:

Goliath will win

So what proceeded to occur can only be described as a miracle. While guarding Hansbrough (who leads the ACC in free throw attempts per game at around 10), Pettinella only picked up 3 fouls in 22 minutes. This is astonishing. Pett made it to the 2:24 mark in the first half with no fouls, while starting the game and playing significant minutes. Truly hard to believe. Eminent Oceanliner friend and huge Carolina fan Carrington had an interesting prediction before the game. He mused that since the Tar Heels had racked up suck a huge discrepancy in free throw attempts against Clemson on Sunday (36-7), that the refs would curb fouls called against UVA in an attempt to show that they don’t bias Carolina on the charity stripe. I think its part of the reason, but certainly not the whole reason, that UNC only went to the line 12 times against the Hoos. This certainly helped out Pett’s performance, and I’m happy for the big man.

And of course, this segways perfectly into an update of the original Oceanliner feature on Pett’s season long battle between points and fouls. And let me tell you what, Pett was in trouble after the Clemson game. He managed a 4 foul, no point performance that left him at minus 10 for the season. Minus 10. That is really embarrassing. But as we all know, in the universe there is a yin and a yang. A balance if you will. That can only account for the 12 point, 11 rebound explosion Pettinella had against Wake on Saturday (with 4 fouls of course). That brought him back to minus 2 for the season. Of course against UNC he promptly added no points to his 3 foul performance, but at least he had 6 boards. So as we stand now, Pett is at 60 fouls and 55 points with 6 games left before the ACC tourney. This is going to be great folks. Godspeed Ryan, Godspeed.

Well, that’s it for this week folks. I hope everyone out there is doing well. The Oceanliner is going to enjoy this fabulous three-day weekend by doing absolutely nothing and loving every minute of it. If you have a date for Valentine’s Day, enjoy. If not, way to be such a loser. Until next time then, stay safe, keep it real and zip it up, and zip it out.

Teradactyl

Happy February everybody. I don’t have much to say about the Super Bowl that hasn’t been beaten to death already, so let’s just move on. Although it’s definitely sad that Load Football is done for the next seven months, there is still a wide range of sporting events to keep us from getting too lost in the routine of every day life. And when sports doesn’t do it anymore, there are still plenty of hilarious parts of life to roll on. So don’t despair because football is over and we are in the doldrums of early February. March Madness is just around the corner, and then we swing into golf major season and then the glory of summer is upon us. So keep your chin up, and happy February.

And although I don’t have anything to say about XLII, I doneed to point readers to the hilarious Michael Strahan. This one clip didn’t make the rounds nearly as much as the “Stomp You Out” video, but is infinitely more hilarious. All of you Chappelle Show/”Black Bush” fans out there will know what I’m talking about. Gutie, this one’s especially for you.

http://video.wnbc.com/player/?id=214308

Now that football is over, we can focus our attention back to the freakish athletic nature of professional basketball players. Watching a regular season basketball game is still very painful, but some of the highlights that surface remind us how gifted these guys really are. I was watching the recap of the Celtics-Cavs game from Tuesday night, and King James put on a freaking show. The coolest highlight was when Tyrone Biggums crack head look-alike Rajon Rondo drove to the basket and tried to throw up a weak layup off the glass. LBJ seemingly came from across the lane and blovked the hell out of the shot, almost palming the ball against the backboard with one hand. Simply amazing. The local Cavs play-by-play man put it best with:

A terodactyl couldn’t have blocked that shot any better!

A superb image to put in the viewers head. I wish I were that clever. I personally think Terodactyl is a sweet nickname for an NBA player, especially one with insane leaping ability. But LeBron already has a significant stable of nicknames (LBJ, King, Chosen One, Bron Bron). He also has the ability to go by one name, simply LeBron. No one will confuse that with somebody else. So it would be a shame to waste Teradactyl on a player with so many other monikers. So my goal was to find a freakish leaper that was semi under the radar who did not already have a badass nickname. Shawn Marion came to mind, but he is already The Matrix. And Kobe is one of those single named entites. Then it hit me. The NBA player that should be called Teradactyl is Josh Smith of the Atlanta Hawks. Kid is an absolute freak. 6’9’’ with a 35 inch vertical leap and a 7’4” wingspan. The guy throws down the most thunderous dunks you have ever seen, and is equally adept on the defensive side of the ball, where he is second in the NBA in blocks and comes out of nowhere to swat the ever-living shit out of people. If you have not seen highlights, go to You Tube immediately. Better yet, here’s his Top 10 plays of last season, and they are insane:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ocaatPvI90k

I’ve heard that some people call Smith Jsmooth. Well that shit is stupid as hell. So let’s spread the word Oceanliner nation: whenever you talk about Josh Smith, christen him the Teradactyl. I think we can do it.

Now, here at the Oceanliner, we (I?) can’t stand it when people can’t own up to mistakes that they have made. And unfortunately in my case, I have to admit to one right now. After watching continued highlights over the last couple of months of lame duck biotch Tracy McGrady contrasted against the brilliance of the Teradactyl, I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that I erred when picking my All NBA Volleyball All Star Team back in December. It’s the one pick I wish I could have back. There’s just no way T-Mac deserves to be on the team more than Smith. At one point maybe, but it’s not even close right now. I’m happy with all of my other picks, and I’m certain they will last the test of time. But that’s one I really screwed up on, and I have no excuses. Tyler, your inclusion of Smith in the starting lineup is the right call. I am humble in the wake of this error.

When you check the NBA standings, you realize how stupid their playoff format is. There are 30 teams in the Association. Over half of them make the playoffs, which is astounding. If you are in the bottom half of the league, theres no way you deserve a chance to compete for the title. Yet a full 16 teams make the post season. This becomes especially nuts when there is a large disparity in talent between the conferences, as there is this year. The West as a whole Is so much better than the East it’s not even funny. If the season ended today, both the Atlanta Hawks and New Jersey Nets would make the playoffs. They are a combined 12 games under .500. Meanwhile, in the West, the Houston Rockets are on the outside looking in with a 28-20 record, good for 9^th in the conference. They would be the 4^th seed in the Eastern Conference. What a joke. There are only 5 teams in the West with losing records. Over half the squads in the East are below .500. Pathetic. The NBA should make the playoffs the best teams in the league, regardless of conference. Note I didn’t say the top 16 teams in the league, because that number is ludicrous. One of the reasons people can’t stand the NBA is that their playoffs last two and a half months. That’s what happens when there are 16 teams and every series is best of 7. They should cut the eligible teams to 8, and then people might actually care about the matchups and watch them in a reasonable time frame.

Speaking of ludicrous, what the hell is Steve Kerr thinking trading The Matrix for Shaq. This honestly is such a stupid move that it would be justifiable to fire Kerr on the spot. I’m not going to go into why it was a bad trade, good writers have done a better job doing that. It’s just a sad day for NBA fans in general. I was talking to my friend on the phone today who is a huge Suns fan and he made a good point. The Suns are a lot of people’s second or third favorite team because they are just so damn fun to watch. Many fans who don’t even have a team enjoy watching the fun and gun that the Suns display night in and night out. The Shaq trade completely ruins this style, and people will lose interest in the team. This obviously hurts the NBA and casual fans. It’s like in football where you have your loyal team to the death (49ers for me) but enjoy seeing other teams play because they are exciting to watch (Chargers, Colts). Then either or Indy or the Chargers completely screws things up and you stop caring because they aren’t flashy anymore. This is what the Suns have done, and it sucks for the NBA and its fans.

Completely switching gears here, but hey, what’s new, did yall see what Tig did in Dubai this weekend? Many people probably saw that he won, but did you see how? On Sunday, Woods shot a 7 under 65, including birdying 6 of the final 9 holes for a single shot victory. What a badass. This might be the year he just refuses to lose. This might be the year where you will come out ahead betting on Tiger over the field, for the entire year. Tigerbot is en fuego, and if I’d be terrified if I had to face him in ’08.

Last, and unfortunately least, is our good friend Ryan “Pett” Pettinella. Pett, Pett, Pett, you just can’t kept your body off the opposition. When we last left our hero, he had fallen into a hole, increasing his deficit for the season by having 5 more fouls than points. When I first checked the box score against Va Tech (we will not speak of that blasphemous result), it looked promising, as the big man miraculously made two shots and had 4 points. Surely he could at least tie for the night in 15 minutes of work? Not so my friends. Pett fouled out to continue this now tragic Oceanliner original feature, and has fallen to minus 6 for the season. This is becoming a Shakepsearean play, where you know it’s going to turn out terribly, but you watch it until the very end anyway.

Well, that’s it for this week folks. The Super Bowl party was a resounding success and I thank everyone that made it. I hope everyone out there had a super Sunday as well, it was an amazing game to watch. One of the reasons I love sports so much is because no matter how many times I see it, David Tyree’s catch will always, and I mean always, be absorutery, unberievabry amazingry awesome. It, like all other crazy plays like it, never ever get old. It just cannot be duplicated in real life. If it happened in a movie, it would suck because no one would believe it. But it’s real and it will always be awesome. Anyway, I’m getting pumped about Dook-Carolina tonight, where I hope something as nuts happens to add to the best rivalry in sports. Until next time friends, as always, stay safe, keep it real and don’t resemble life too much.