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.