Column: Once again, unpredictability of Final Four reigns supreme
Most of the fun is over. We have just three games left in this year’s NCAA tournament, and then I can’t write another college hoops column for... well, until next week.
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Most of the fun is over. We have just three games left in this year’s NCAA tournament, and then I can’t write another college hoops column for... well, until next week.
With the calendar finally turning the page into April, NFL fans everywhere know that the draft is fast approaching, and if there is an overabundance of one thing on the Internet, it is certainly prognosticators telling us which player will go where and why they will succeed or flop in the pros.
As many college basketball fanatics expected, the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament was indeed filled with “madness.” While it was highlighted by the unexpected Sweet 16 berths of many double-digit seeds like Florida Gulf Coast University, Oregon and LaSalle, the pageantry, excitement and passion of the games was somewhat negated in nature by the bone-headed comments and overall arrogance of Ole Miss guard Marshall Henderson.
As the Wisconsin Football Twitter and Facebook accounts hyped a “big” announcement Wednesday, endless possibilities roamed through my head. Would the program unveil a new alternative Adidas jersey to be worn next year? Would it officially be announcing the new realignment of the divisions, distinctly playing to UW’s advantage? While my estimations were not even close in stature, the announcement to fans should be much more monumental in value than the football program initially alluded to. Per a UWBadgers.com press release—the “big” announcement—Wisconsin will kick off the 2015 college football season against the powerful Alabama Crimson Tide in the state-of-the-art Cowboy Stadium in Arlington, Texas. What was my first impression of the announcement? It’s about time. Badgers fans have been accustomed to seeing the red and white take the field—either at Camp Randall Stadium or an away stadium—against the cupcakes of the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) or marginal Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams year-in and year-out. Dating back to former head coach Bret Bielema’s arrival in 2006, Wisconsin has been anything but challenged in its non-conference schedule. The program has a combined record of 27-1 in such games over the last seven seasons, with the lone loss coming on the road against Oregon State this past season. Moreover, the Badgers outscored their lackluster opponents by an average of three touchdowns (35.8 to 14.6) and scored over 35 points 17 times, including against all of their non-conference opponents during the 2011 season. I really never understood the essence of scheduling opponents well below a team’s caliber of play, except for the fact teams can pat themselves on the back after bullying up on a less-than-superior opponent. Sure, they walk off the field feeling high and mighty after dismantling teams like Marshall, Cal Poly, San Jose State or UTEP, but does it really prepare them for the rigors of the conference schedule? This past year, Minnesota took the route of scheduling its fair share of lowly non-conference teams, and it paid off for the Gophers in the short-term, as they owned a 4-0 record heading into the Big Ten season. Want to know how that turned out? They went 2-7 the rest of the way, including a 34-31 loss to Texas Tech in the Meineke Care Bowl. On the contrary, I completely understand the notion of Southeastern Conference teams scheduling “cupcakes” mixed-in throughout the season, especially toward the end of the season, because of the depth of their grueling conference schedule. However, they still challenged themselves to a certain extent throughout their non-conference slate. Alabama played preseason Big Ten favorite Michigan this past year in Cowboy Stadium. LSU kicked off their 2011-’12 season with Oregon and Georgia played Boise State in the Georgia Dome in the same season. While I’m sure Wisconsin fans are giddy about making travel arrangements to Arlington and finally seeing UW challenged on the field during its non-conference slate, they should be more giddy about the explicit meaning behind the Alabama-Wisconsin announcement: Things are changing for the better under head coach Gary Andersen’s regime, specifically in terms of scheduling. Planning games against superior BCS-level programs like Alabama in 2015 and Virginia Tech in 2016 will provide a respectable body of work for the playoff selection committee to refer to, should the Badgers be in contention for college football’s playoff in the coming years. Moreover, the message Andersen and athletic director Barry Alvarez are sending aligns with the common sports saying, “In order to be the best, you have to beat the best.” By in large, Alabama is currently the face of college football, having won three of the last four national titles, and it is the closest thing fans have witnessed to a football dynasty since the days of Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart at Southern California. Yet with the announcement, the Crimson Tide’s prestige did not phase Andersen and Alvarez. Both of them have made it known they want to compete at the highest level, and this 2015 matchup will serve as a golden opportunity to do just that. Finally. What do you think of UW scheduling a non-conference game against Alabama? Send Rex your thoughts in an email to sports@dailycardinal.com.
One of my regrets from the summer was not finishing “Annals of the Former World” by John McPhee. Besides the fact he is one of the most terrific writers of the past 60 years, “Annals of the Former World” concerns itself with geology and geologic history, a subject of renewed interest for me. My interest is semi-facetious—although as an environmental studies major, rocks are generally always relevant—insofar as I don’t care so much for the names of eras and what they entail (I also have less of a memory for such things). But what really gets me about it is the geochronology aspect. The time part.
Wisconsin certainly didn’t enter the Big Ten tournament hitting on all cylinders. The Badgers lost two of three games before Friday’s matchup with Michigan, and their only ‘W’ came on the shoulders of a last-second 3-pointer from sophomore guard Traevon Jackson.
After four months of ups and downs, buzzer beaters and heartbreaking defeats, we are finally here. March Madness has finally arrived. But before you toss yet another tear-soaked bracket into the trash following Thursdays opening round of games (yes I still call them opening round games because that’s what they are; Tuesday’s play-in games do not constitute a “first round”), take a step back and look at just how wide open this year’s tournament is.
The Steubenville rape trial, and Sunday’s verdict, has shed some light on the out-of-control direction which athletics in this country seem to be heading.
As the second-coming of college football’s signing day (also known as the start of the National Football League’s free agency period) clogged up Twitter feeds nationwide the last couple days, I could not help myself but to keep constant tabs on where the big names in this year’s free agent’s class would end up. While I scrolled through the constant updates courtesy of ESPN’s Adam Schefter and Chris Mortenson, or NBC’s Pro Football Talk, teams like the Seattle Seahawks, Miami Dolphins and San Francisco 49ers made the biggest moves while the rest of the league, including the Green Bay Packers, tried to play catch-up.
While Wisconsin hockey fans have grown accustomed to the comfortable seating and the rowdy Crease Creatures at the Kohl Center since its existence in late 90s, the program started the makings of their dynasty elsewhere in Madison—Veterans Memorial Coliseum. The current Wisconsin hockey team will relive the Wisconsin glory days at the building former head coach Bob Johnson built this weekend, where they will look to add another WCHA championship banner against St. Cloud State. With the Badgers closing their season at the Coliseum this weekend, it is only appropriate to revisit the once-great spectrum in college hockey.
Soccer is known as “the beautiful game” by many across the globe. Watching the elite players of the world gracefully glide over the pitch, waiting to make that one deadly strike to the cheers of tens of thousands of fans, it is easy to get caught up in the suspense and excitement of the most popular sport worldwide.
Can you be an author of serious work and still have a personal life to boot? What kind of a question is that?
The term “March Madness” may be colloquially tied to college basketball, but heading into the last weekend of the regular season, it feels like that phrase was tailor made for college hockey, especially in the WCHA.
As the news of junior guard Josh Gasser tearing his ACL in an October Saturday morning practice filtered around the Twitter world, the hearts of Badger nation sank. As both someone who follows the UW hoops program and a journalist, I wrote off this Badgers squad. While much had been endorsed about the development of redshirt freshman guard George Marshall during his redshirt season and the drastic improvement of sophomore guard Traevon Jackson, they simply could not duplicate the experience and talent of Gasser—a two-year starter and one of three freshman to start in the Bo Ryan era.
With all the conference realignment in college athletics, the last couple seasons in college hoops have felt incomplete. That’s not to suggest I’ve lost interest in the sport, but the destruction of deep-seeded rivalries and the slow crumbling of the Big East conference have at least watered down college basketball’s appeal.
Talking to my friend Marina last week, I confessed to her that just an hour before I had checked out a staggering 13 books from the library. I had rushed out after an exam to return a few and then schlep the new load back to my dorm room in a Trader Joe’s bag. They were piled up requests, some of which I had forgotten I requested, all various sizes and styles, and now they were lovingly stacked alongside some of the other books I had checked out from the library before.
When it comes to overhyped sporting events, nothing takes the cake quite like the NFL scouting combine. What began as simply a series of physical tests for NFL-bound athletes has been transformed by the 24-hour news cycle of the sports media world and their talking heads, desperate for a discussion point.
Two weeks ago, I subtly made the statement that the German Bundesliga is “the most competitive league in Europe over the past couple of years” in my column. This statement is more than just my opinion; there is some concrete evidence to support this notion.
I hear it time after time: “College basketball’s regular season is irrelevant” or “Nothing matters until March”. Though I am usually successful in restraining myself from the onslaught of dispute I would like to unleash in response, the assertion continues to bother me. Sure, March Madness is fun, but such fun takes nothing away from the importance of the conference schedule. So please don’t change the tournament, because it is great as it is. As any coach or player would tell you, those advocating for such a change on the grounds that it renders the regular season irrelevant are completely off base.
It would be the ultimate dream of a sports fan to become a professional athlete and make an absurd amount of money. Fancy cars. Big house. Life could not get any better, right? Well, as Lee Corso famously says, not so fast, my friend.