Eliminated

I’m so glad the NCAA title game was close and entertaining. After a tournament chock full of mediocre contests, it’s so fulfilling that the last game of the season was so memorable and not a dud that would leave a bad taste of a blowout or bad basketball in your mouth. It’s definitely sad that we won’t have college rock for another 7-8 months, but at least it ended with a thrilling finish that will leave us a positive memory of the 2007-2008 season while we endure the cruel dog days of late summer regular season baseball. It’s definitely better than the way the college football season ended; with a blowout game featuring two teams many people doubted even deserved to be playing for the national championship anyway.

I’m not going to do much title game analysis, because better writers than I have already done so at great length. I will pat myself on the back however for the enormous success of the first ever edition of the Eliminator. Obviously, I’m not the only one that said poor free throw shooting could doom Memphis in the Tournament, but I did say it way back in February. In fact, Memphis was the first team I Eliminated, and one of the reasons I came up with the idea in the first place. If you will walk with me down memory lane, this is what I said about the Tigers on February 29^th:

You can’t win 6 straight Tourney games shooting the rock like that at the line. They may make a run to the Elite 8 or Final 4, but there’s no way Memphis win’s the title.

Thank you, thank you very much. Obviously the Eliminator wasn’t perfect though, as I only narrowed it down to four teams (Kansas, Carolina, Tennessee and Texas) and I was way off on my title pick (the Longhorns). But it was helpful in narrowing down which teams I would eventually pick to win it all, and I will definitely continue to do so in the future.

Some brief thoughts on the two Final Four games…

Concerning the Memphis-UCLA game, the Oceanliner would like to give credit to Billy Packer for his post-game analysis. I realize he can be a moron on occasion/often, but there are times when he is very astute and it comes through that he may actually be earning some of his pay. As the clock was winding down on the Memphis victory, Vanilla Nance asked Packer why the Tigers had pulled away. Billy responded with something along the lines of:

Well Jim, I thought the whole key to the game was UCLA not taking advantage of the foul trouble of the Memphis big men in the second half. Right after halftime, both Dorsey and Taggert had 3 fouls apiece and UCLA should have fed the ball to Love every chance they got. The Bruins missed a golden opportunity to feed the ball to their best post player and further the Memphis bigs’ foul trouble.

In my opinion, this was absolutely spot on. I even remember throughout the second half, whenever UCLA was bringing the ball up the floor, Packer would say “They need to feed the ball to Love in the post if they want to get back into this game”. This strategy error by UCLA is especially glaring when you look at what Kansas did to Memphis in the championship game, when they scored 44 of their 75 points from the paint.

Concerning the Carolina-Kansas game, for the first 15 minutes it looked like the basketball gods were tea bagging Gutie right in the face in emphatic style, laying a 40-12 smack down on his Tar Heels in response to the Wealth Manager’s inexplicable arrogance and stupidity. Then, to give Gutie a little hope, they let Carolina back within 4, but then promptly shoved their nuts in his face again for an easy 18-point win. I think a lesson has been learned here my friends.

One thing puzzled me while looking at the Carolina-Kansas box score, and that was the stat line for Marcus Ginyard:

32 minutes, 0-3 FG, 0 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 foul, 1 turnover, 0 blocks, 0 steals

It begs the question of what he was actually doing when he was on the court. I mean literally, what was he doing. I did a double take when I saw he had played for 32 minutes, because I hadn’t remembered hearing his name or seeing him the entire game, and I watched the whole thing. He only did 10 things all game, and he was in for 32 freakin minutes. Generously assuming that it takes 1 minute to do “something” in a basketball game, that still means Ginyard was a ghost for 22 minutes. He neither helped (no points, 3 boards, 2 assists, 0 blocks, 0 steals) nor hurt (1 foul, 1 turnover) the Tar Heels at all. So I’m still wondering, what (literally) did Marcus Ginyard do when he was on the floor against Kansas?

Well that’s it for this week folks. I am very excited about this weekend, as the Oceanliner is making his debut at the brand spanking new Nationals Park. Eminent roommate Schlingbaum got tickets from his pops and the Ribrary Courts triumvirate will be watching the Nats take on the Bravos on Sunday afternoon. I can’t wait. Until next time friends, same Oceanliner time, same Oceanliner channel.