Expansion would leave Big Dance overcrowded

If you want to know why the NCAA Tournament should never expand beyond 65 teams, look no further than the 2010 Connecticut Huskies.

We forget now, after watching the team win its third national title in 12 years just how poorly it played a year ago. We knew the season was a lost cause long before a late season three game skid sealed the deal. In fact, it was clear long before Jim Calhoun left the team for health reasons. As soon as Stanley Robinson became the focal point of the offense and people started calling the ultra-athletic swingman a potential lottery pick, things fell apart.

Look, it’s not that I have anything against Robinson. Every Husky fan knows how far he’s come. But anyone who has watched him play over the past four seasons knows he is the last guy you want taking a big shot. You know how most teams rally around their star player when he nails a long three or catches an alley-oop? Well the Huskies go in the tank. And it’s because as soon as Robinson makes a jumper, he suddenly thinks he’s Ray Allen and as soon as he slashes to the basket, he thinks he’s LeBron James. He’s not close to either.

He’s just the best player on a flawed, young team that seems destined for the NIT.

But it now appears that in the not-too-distant future, possibly as soon as next year, weak teams with rich basketball histories will never have to worry about settling for the Not Invited Tournament again. That’s the message the NCAA is sending if, as Sports By Brooks first reported, it increases the number of teams playing in March to 96.

It’s not a done deal yet, but NCAA senior vice president Greg Shaheen told Fox Sports’ college basketball writer Jeff Goodman that the organization is considering expansion.

“It’s part of our due diligence,” Shaheen said. “We have to look at what our membership wants. We have to assess everything. Have we talked to people in our membership about expanding? Absolutely.”

Expanding the tournament would just mean adding second and third-rate teams from the major conferences while doing very little for anyone else. Does anyone really think the MAAC sends an extra team dancing if the tournament grows? It would just reward mediocrity and make the regular season even less relevant than it is now.

The only one who stands to benefit from this is the NCAA itself. An extra weekend of March Madness means millions of dollars in additional television revenue and ticket sales.

But at what cost?

College basketball is already considered a diluted product. The NBA’s one year requirement is partially to blame for this. With the exception of the very best teams, most people can’t name more than one or two starters on any team in America. And because there are very few upper classmen, the players tend to be a lot rougher around the edges, meaning the average game can be summed up like this: Dribble, dribble, dribble, three pointer. Dribble, dribble, dribble, three pointer.

Going to 96 teams would just expose the sport even more. Yes the additional games will provide us with more upsets and buzzer beaters. But they’ll also give us more air balls from the Stanley Robinson’s of the world as well as the poor, undisciplined play of teams similar to this year’s Connecticut team.

The NCAA tournament is supposed to feature the very best college basketball has to offer.

Expansion would just leave the dance floor overcrowded.

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If Calhoun retires, Geno should step in

Win or lose in tomorrow's national championship, there is a growing feeling that legendary head coach Jim Calhoun could call it quits following the game. He's a guy who has had nothing left to prove for years and now, with the Nate Miles situation not going away, who could blame him for stepping away?

To be clear, I’m not pushing him out the door. The man deserves to have carte blanche when it comes to his decision to call it quits and I’d be completely content with him pulling a Joe Paterno on us and staying as long as he’s breathing and swearing. But I also recognize that he’s a three-time cancer survivor who turns 68 in May and has nothing left to prove in college basketball. If he does decide to retire, all we can do is throw a parade and thank him for what he did in Storrs.

So how do you replace a legend?

There are two schools of thought when it comes to picking a new coach: 1) Make a splash. Do a national search and throw a lot of money at the hottest young coach out there. 2) Hire from within. Or at least someone with direct ties to the program. Provide continuity.

I say do both.

Hire Geno Auriemma.

There isn’t another coach in the country with the perfect combination of fame, credentials and a built-in knowledge of Connecticut basketball than Auriemma. He’s the John Wooden of women’s basketball, architect of arguably the single most dominant team in the history of American sports. That’s not a stretch either. His team is about to win another national championship and virtually none of their wins have come by less than ten points over the last three years.

Why would he bother risking his legacy, you ask? Ego. Auriemma is like the best athlete from your hometown who never made it to the pros. Everyone has respect for him, but at the end of the day he’s still looked at as the best from a very small sample size. It’s not so much about coaching women as it is coaching in a sport that only has a handful of great programs. Either Connecticut or Tennessee (or both) appeared in all but one Final Four over the last decade.

Auriemma would never admit it, but for someone as competitive as he is, it has to bother him to know that historians will always place “women’s” in between “best” and “coach ever” when they refer to him. We could say that doesn’t necessarily imply that he couldn’t get it done on the men’s side, but if we’re being honest, it kind of does.

The thing is I think Auriemma could make a seamless transition to coaching men’s basketball. Above all else, recruiting is about selling yourself to players. That’s why we compare coaches today to used car salesmen and not generals. What works for him when he’s recruiting 18 year old girls will work when he’s recruiting 18 year old guys. He’s charming, good-looking and he’s got that same slick New Yorker attitude that made his has friend John Calipari so successful.

Some might say that he wouldn’t be able to coach men the way he coach women. But that’s assuming that he would want run the same offense he has Maya Moore running now. Of course he’d have to adapt, but how could anyone question his ability as a talent evaluator? I’m pretty sure he would know that he can’t go after 6’4 forwards who can’t grab the rim.

Ironically, the person most opposed to this idea might be Calhoun himself. For years, we’ve heard rumors about the intense rivalry between the two. But is there anyone more capable of matching his famous intensity than Auriemma?

The truth is there’s only one way to replace Calhoun whenever he decides to go.

By hiring another legend.

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When being too athletic becomes a problem...

The title of this post identifies a problem which I most definitely have never faced. My own basketball career reached its apex my freshman year of high school when I was picked to play in the full court game with the black kids in gym class. This was an accomplishment for a number of reasons, among them the fact that I was 14, my last name was McGowan and I still referred to myself as “Danny.” Oh boy was I white.

This was back at the start of the decade, when a new brand was threatening to change the way the game was played entirely. Remember how the XFL thought it could make football more exciting by altering a few rules, adding more cameras and asking cheerleaders to wear less? Well for a few years, AND1 actually accomplished this in basketball. They produced mixtapes that taught impressionable young ballers how to carry, travel and double dribble in style and almost everyone I knew sported their cutoff shirts, which had pithy phrases on them like, “Your girl handles the double team much better than you.”

Most importantly, everyone had a “move” and everyone wanted to use their “move” to embarrass their opponent. This probably explains the main reason I was allowed to play in the full court game in gym class. I was athletic enough to not disrupt the game, but I looked like the type of kid who would be fooled by some older, more talented player’s snazzy ballhandling. Basically, I was the perfect candidate to get a ball bounced off my forehead or put through my legs.

I remember being very frustrated by all of this. Not because I played with a target on my back, but because I was 14 and winning in gym class was still a goal of mine (A year later, that goal became trying not to break a sweat.). For the others, the score was secondary. They were fine with bricking a layup or making a bad pass so long as they did it in a flashy way, but winning was the only thing keeping me on the court.

So why I am I writing about some silly high school basketball memory? Because the only way to describe the one team I actively root for is insanely athletic, which, because it’s the only way to describe them, is code for having the ability to win in Rucker Park, but lacking the basketball IQ to win in the college ranks.

Anybody who knows me or reads this website knows that I’ve found a way to pick UConn to win every NCAA basketball tournament since 1994. I love Connecticut basketball. But watching them this season (yes it’s still early) brings me right back to my freshman year of high school. The Huskies have a bunch of guys who want to block your shot fifteen rows into the crowd and tear down the backboard with every dunk and break your ankles with slick crossovers.

They can do these things to just about anyone they play. What they can’t do is shoot the three or make a free throw, which just happens to be the two most important elements of college basketball. Playing against Duke in Madison Square Garden on Friday night, the Huskies missed every three point attempt they took and shot just 53 percent from the foul line. The result? UConn was down 20 with ten minutes to play and although the final score was much closer, the game was never seriously in doubt for the Blue Devils.

After the game, athleticism was all anyone wanted to talk about. This was because some ESPN radio host called Duke “alarmingly unathletic” prior to tipoff, predicting the Blue Devils would have major problems with the Huskies. There still aren’t many who would disagree with those thoughts now.
Use any cliché you want –they wanted it more, they had more heart – but the bottom line is Duke did all the little things right in order to win that game. They outrebounded Connectcut, outhustled them, made their free throws and knocked down open jumpers. In other words, Duke played like a young Danny McGowan while the Huskies played like the AND1 mixtape all stars.

This all begs the question: At what point does being too athletic hinder the rest of your game? In his bestselling book, “Outliers,” Malcolm Gladwell suggests that a person’s IQ stops mattering around 120, at which point their chances of intellectual achievement depends on a variety of other factors. I wonder if this theory applies to athleticism in basketball. When does a player’s ability to jump and run because less important than their ability to find an open man in the corner or knock down a three pointer?

Of course, the ideal player would be able combine his athleticism with a high basketball IQ. But those kinds of guys are few and far between. Their names are Kobe and LeBron and Carmelo. Not Stanley Robinson. It seems to me Duke has recognized this and is willing to sacrifice the guy who can jump out of the gym for a someone like Jon Scheyer, who has turned the ball over just four times all season.

Give Robinson credit for one thing though. He did offer the most intelligent post game comment of all.

"They're not very athletic," he said. "We're more athletic than they are. They were just smarter than we were."

Got that right.

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Random Rumblings: On Celts/Bulls, the Kentucky Derby and more...

First some thoughts on what some called the greatest playoff series in NBA history, which concluded in Boston last night with a Celtics victory in game seven.

• Let’s dispel that notion right away. For me to consider a series the greatest of all time, I need two things: 1) Both teams should be playing at their highest level, which the Celtics were not. They were missing Kevin Garnett, which would be like the Bulls missing Ben Gordon if Gordon could rebound, play defense and make his teammates better. 2) The series has to mean more than just a victory in one round of the playoffs. Chances are the Celtics will get bounced in the second round, just as the Bulls would have and this incredible first round series will have no effect on the outcome of this year’s NBA Finals.
  
  Now that being said, it was just that, an incredible first round series. I can’t think of a time in recent memory when any of the NBA playoffs became must-see TV, let alone the opening round, but that’s what this was. At least for the finals six minutes of regulation and however many overtimes the game went to.
  
  We learned a lot from this series. Ray Allen cemented his legacy as one of the great shooters in the history of the league. Derrick Rose and Rajon Rondo proved they’re the future of the point guard position. And Gordon probably earned himself a max contract.
  
  Chances are it was the most exciting series we’ll see throughout the playoffs, even if the Lakers and Cavs end up in the Finals.
  
  But that doesn’t make it the best ever, does it?
  
  
• Call me evil, but I consider horse racing is the ultimate meritocracy. A winning horse, even a 50-1 stunner, will spend the rest of his/her life being treated like a royalty while it’s off the glue factory with many of the losers.
  
  Maybe that’s why it’s called the sports of kings.
  
  
• Hey, what ever happened to the Jim Calhoun scandal? Maybe the Yahoo! guys will wait until the next time UConn has a shot at a national title.
  
  
• It’s nice to see the Yankees cut ticket prices in half (in some cases) but it will be interesting to see where those tickets end up. I realize the team needs to take care of its biggest customers, but if those guys weren’t attending games at the prices they paid, what makes anyone think they are going to make the effort to sell their tickets or even give ‘em away?
  
  Hopefully, they’ll donate them to charity and use the tickets as a write-off.
  
  
• What a slap in the face to Americans it would be if London was allowed to a host a Super Bowl. In the reverse case, if the United States was granted the right to host a Champions League Final that had an English team in it, we’d be entering a war with our closest ally.
  
  
• The Dodgers went a month without losing at home and even though it’s only May, it’s hard not to think about a Manny Ramirez return to Boston in October. And early November. Thanks WBC.

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Random Rumblings: UConn edition

• What do the years 1997, 2001 and 2007 have in common for the UConn men’s basketball team? Those are the seasons Jim Calhoun’s Huskies failed to qualify for the NCAA tournament. It’s kind of strange to think that one of the nation’s premier basketball programs has missed the tournament just as many times as it has reached the final four in the past 12 years. But what’s most interesting is that each of those teams had one or more freshmen who would ultimately lead their team to the final weekend of the season.
  
  The difference is that while ’97 and ’01 Huskies showed tons of promise, the ’07 version looked overmatched. The ’97 team was led by a teenager nicknamed Rip, who never stopped scoring and wound up winning a ring. The ’01 team had the combination of Ben Gordon and Emeka Okafor, two kids who looked like lottery picks mid way through their freshman seasons.
  
  But in 2007, the team was a disaster. A.J. Price, who Calhoun called the most talented player he had ever coached before the kid ever stepped on the court, was an average player and Hasheem Thabeet still looked as though he hadn’t quite learned the rules of basketball yet. That team’s best player was Jerome Dyson, who you can now find wearing snappy outfits on the UConn bench thanks to season-ending knee surgery.
  
  That’s what makes the fact that UConn is back in the final four the most impressive coaching job of Calhoun’s long career. Even with the recent allegations that he may have committed recruitment violations, what Calhoun has managed to do this season is nothing short of remarkable.
  
  
• With that being said, I still think the NCAA should throw the book at UConn if an investigation proves that Calhoun and his staff were cheating.
  
  
• Staying on topic, the fact that Quinnipiac Coach Tom Moore’s named is linked to Josh Nochimson might be a blessing in disguise for the Connecticut program. There’s no way I ever wanted him to replace Calhoun.
  
  
• One last thing on UConn basketball – I promise. Learning that Nochimson may have paid for Nate Miles’ surgery because the kid didn’t have health insurance would normally make the NCAA look bad if it were to punish Connecticut for such a thing. No teenager should ever go without insurance. But in this case, the surgery made it possible for Miles to ultimately attend UConn, where he ended up getting expelled for beating up a woman.

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Say it ain't so, coach

So this is what it feels like. A fan’s doomsday scenario. This is the Pete Rose supporter finding out about the gambling. It’s the Sonics diehard learning his favorite team is leaving Seattle. If suddenly Derek Jeter’s name replaced ARod’s in all the recent headlines, this is what a Yankees fan would be going through.

I like sports a little less today.

By now, recruitment violations by any coach or any program should come as no surprise. We all realize that the movie Blue Chips could very well have been a work of nonfiction. But yesterday when Yahoo! Sports reported that UConn broke NCAA rules in its courting of Nate Miles, I didn’t want to believe the story. And when I learned that the guys who broke the news, Adrian Wojnarowski and Dan Wetzel, had covered the program in the past (Wajnarowski for the Waterbury Republican and Wetzel for Husky Blue & White) I figured they were just reporters with an agenda.

That’s called denial. UConn fans have been living in it for years.

When Jim Calhoun recruits a kid with a questionable background, like Miles and Caron Butler before him, we call him the father those kids never had. When outsiders start to complain about his recruiting style, like the University of Maryland did with Rudy Gay, we call it sour grapes. And when the media labels him a bully, we call him a bulldog.

Now it appears we’ve been had.

As I see it, there are only two possible explanations for what Calhoun and his staff have done. One is that in 2006, when UConn allegedly began to contact Miles illegally, the program was at a crossroads. The most talented team Calhoun had ever coached was shocked by George Mason in the regional final the season before, and the current team was about to miss the postseason entirely for the first time in 20 years.

Maybe Calhoun got nervous. Maybe he was worried that his program was about to fall off the national radar. Maybe he saw Miles as the next Butler, Ray Allen or Rip Hamilton. Maybe he was desperate.

Or maybe, and this makes me sick just thinking about it, Calhoun has been cheating all along.

That’s the second explanation and it’s completely plausible. It’s hard to believe a guy who had done it right for over 30 years needed to break the rules now. After all, could Calhoun really be that desperate? That same team who struggled in 2006/07 has a chance to reach the final four this weekend. It’s not like he was suddenly coaching St. John’s.

Was Miles, a kid who got expelled about five minutes into college, worth risking a legacy over? Of course not. But if this is how Calhoun had been doing it forever, then it was just business as usual.

Either way, even the most loyal Husky apologist shouldn’t forgive Calhoun if the allegations prove true.

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