bierce

Donovan also stated in the last couple of days that he is interested in being part of a rebuilding program, something he ran away from in OKC. Of course, it might remain an open question about whether that rebuilding program needs to be in the NBA. But there aren't many guys who had successful NBA coaching careers that went back to college coaching. Pitino, Calipari, Kruger, et al., pretty much crapped out in the NBA.

McCollum is only 43, btw. If he gets hired and makes it, then the school hiring him could be set for nearly 30 years.

My only concern there is whether UVa might want to get away from slow it down style and might fear him being another slow it down coach. Some of his DII teams lit up the scoreboard, but his last title team never scored more than 70 in the entire tournament, and Drake is playing slower than any other team in the country this year. Small sample size and credit to a coach for fitting playing style to the players, but I suspect UVa wants a lot of wins but also wants to avoid another decade of games in the 50s. I'd accept the latter if it will gain me the former, and maybe McCollum won't play that way with P5 talent, but it's something to consider.

I get that part of it. But for Vinson to not get a single minute after we took a 30 point lead over LSU with 3 minutes to go? When he has already played a smattering of minutes early in the year? Odd.

I'm wondering if a P5 school will take a gamble on Ben McCollum. Might be a bit too early, because bringing your entire DII championship roster with you and using them to win the MVC (and beat Vandy and Kansas State along the way) might prove coaching chops, but it doesn't say anything about ability to recruit at a high level.

At what point do we start mentioning guys likely to move up or just want to leave their current digs? Cronin to Miami was mentioned as a possibility. I guess if you want to escape So Cal fires and cross country trips, then I guess it makes sense to go to a place at risk of hurricanes and with a threatened water supply and flights to places in close proximity like Boston, Syracuse, Berkeley, Palo Alto, and Dallas. 1) Richard Pitino. He's only 42. He didn't have a lot of success at Minnesota, but neither did several predecessors, and when he finally got a decent practice facility, he made the tournament, had the next year cancelled by Covid, and had the one after that ruined by losing two starters for the season in February. New Mexico could run away with the MWC regular season if it keeps it up (5-0 against other teams with winning record in conference, 17.6 average margin of victory). There are coaches who didn't do well in their first chance coaching in a power conference but who later went on to strong careers at other schools. Leonard Hamilton and Greg McDermott come to mind. Shaka Smart may join that group. 2) Will Wade. Also only 42. He of the "strong-ass offer." Show cause order expires in June. Show cause carried a 10 game suspension (already served), restrictions concerning recruiting. Hey, you guys really changed the rules about paying players since then. That show you enough cause? I suspect a lot of schools will show interest. Louisville will probably throw a lot of money at Pat Kelsey to keep him. Missouri already has thrown it at Dennis Gates.

Shedrick: 131 minutes, 53 points on 18/26 fg (2/3 3pt), 15/23 ft, 37 rebounds, 5/7 1/t, 6 blocks, 5 steals. That translates to 16.2 points, 11.3 rebounds per 40 minutes, with an effective fg% of 73.1%. Kent: 66 minutes, 17 points on 8/19 fg (0/2 3pt), 1/2 ft, 8 rebounds, 2/4 a/t, 1 block, 3 steals Onyema: 63 minutes, 11 points on 5/13 fg (0/0 3pt), 15 rebounds, 3/5 a/5, 3 blocks, 1 steal. Shedrick has put in some really good minutes recently. The others? Not so much. Onyema gets some rebounds, but that's about it. So once again I am left wondering why we never, ever see Vinson enter a game.

Maryland (15) @ tOSU (26) You'd think tOSU would be pretty safe at this point, but it not well loved by bracketistas. Ten seed and even left off a pair of brackets updated since the weekend. Well, there's no accounting for taste. This isn't exactly a must win for tOSU, but it is getting near the point of needing another big win at some point, or to avoid any more q2 losses. It will host Michigan and go to UCLA, so it has a couple of more chances for a win against conference top 4 after tonight. Maryland is on a roll since the Willard-Evans spat. Four straight wins, including a 21 point beatdown of Illinois in Champaign and coming back from down 5 with under 3 to go at Indiana, and someone just chucked $10 million at the basketball program.

Oregon came close, but it couldn't stop the bleeding. 80-76 Michigan. Cincy won 93-83. Mitchell had 19. Pity he can't make a ft. TCU beat WVU 65-60. Hard to believe a team with wins over Kansas, ISU, Arizona, and Gonzaga could miss the tournament, but that is beginning to look likely. SMU 81 Va Tech 75. Still not a believer Georgia 81 LSU 62 New Mexico 87 Colorado State 65. Pitino marches on. CSU is still in third in the MWC, but it doesn't have any good OOC wins. Nebraska won 86-72, needing a huge second half to win it. Wake 79 Stanford 73.

And there was the shhh, get very quiet now, very quiet. Get so quiet that you have to put your lips right next to the next person's ears to be heard by him and him alone. The input from Ro Russell. Uh. I need to scrub myself now.

Kelly denies having cut off contact. I guess he has been sitting at Brooks's bedside with Lennay Kekua

13th in the country. 8th in the conference.

Colorado State (76) @ New Mexico (46) NM with a chance to pretty much wrap up at least a tie for the conference title by winning the next 5 games (this one, breathers against Air Force and Wyoming, and home against Utah State). It will still have to go to Boise State and SDSU, but it has already beaten them in Albuquerque by double digits. Richard Pitino is starting to receive attention for the P5 spots opening up. Hard to believe, but he's still only 42, and I think most ADs will understand Minnesota has been at a severe disadvantage in recruiting for decades, so they probably won't hold his lack of success there against him. I still think if Dan Monson could do it all over again, he would have stayed at Gonzaga. Wake Forest (68) @ Stanford (72) Wake Forest is positioned to get the benefit of the doubt despite a terrible NET ranking by finishing in the top 4 in the ACC, much the way UVa did last year, and it has a very good OOC win over Michigan on a neutral(ish) floor, much like UVa over Florida last year. Of course, UVa proved to be totally undeserving by losing a play-in game by 25. Nebraska (50) @ UDub (93) Nebraska with a chance to make it three in a row, heading into a pair of home games against tournament bound tOSU and Maryland.

Most interesting OOC game to me is Oregon (36) @ Michigan (17). Oregon had the great series in Vegas in which it beat A&M, SDSU, and Alabama, but it is on a terrible three game stretch with losses @ Minnesota, @ UCLA (by36!), and home against Nebraska. Remaining games against top 25 teams are all on the road (tonight, @ MSU, and @ Wisconsin). It should still be a safe bet to make the field, but it probably already pissed away its chance for a high seed. Cincy (53) @ UCF (63) Pretty much do or die for both at this point. Conceivably, any team can go on a 8 game winning streak, but that's about what these teams would have to do if they lose tonight. Louisville (29) @ BC (roughly 200 or so) A game that can't move the needle up but could move it down for Louisville, which was last seen losing at Georgia Tech, which stings less today since GT won @ Clemson last night. Even so, that loss knocked Louisville down to 7 seed range, and it has no q1 games left on its schedule, so climbing much higher will be next to impossible short of winning out. A pair of losses in the remaining games will hurt as much as the combined strength of wins. WVU (38) @ TCU (76) WVU finally announced DeVries will have surgery and miss the rest of the year. It won @ Cincy to get the ship righted over the weekend with a kind of cheap q1 win. the other four q1 wins were anything but cheap (Gonzaga, Arizona on a neutral floor, @ KU, and home against ISU). SMU (40) @ VT (163) Still not a believer. SMU's best showing against a likely tournament team was a 4 point loss at home to Mississippi State. Its other three games against tournament teams resulted in 3 losses by a combined 67 points, and UNC is hardly a lock to make the tournament, and losses to Duke and Louisville were at home by 52 points.

Boise State, Utah State, Xavier, Drake, and VCU won last night, btw. VCU by something like 40. The biggest game of course is our game against Arky. Win that and we're probably starting to get a lot of votes for a 7 seed or better. We already have a few. But what we do in the following 3 games will have a lot more to say about our eventual seed. Or even if we make the tournament. Lose all three, and we're no longer sitting pretty. Other SEC games Missouri @ Tennessee Tennessee has both Zeigler and Milicic back. Missouri has won 6 of its last 7, including road wins over Florida and Mississippi State, and it averaged 82.5 points in those 6 wins. And to think we held it to 53 in Missouri's only loss in that stretch. If Missouri can win here, it would be perfectly set up to earn a double bye. It's remaining games against the top third of the conference will be at home, and it has only bubble teams remaining on the road. LSU @ Georgia (32) Georgia looked great about three weeks ago after beating UK and OU by double digits in consecutive home games. Lose tonight and fall out of the matrix with the second really tough stretch coming up (MSU, @ A&M, Missouri, @ Auburn, Florida, @ Texas). That looks like a 1-5 stretch to me.

Watching the end of Clemson-GT. Maybe. It's in the 3rd OT. Clemson had saved a timeout just for this moment. Down three with 3.5 seconds left, it could throw an inbound pass beyond midcourt and immediately call timeout. Now the whole playbook is open. Can inbound to anyone who can take a shot. Well done.Of course, they missed, but it was still a good coaching job in those last seconds. But it was a terrible game by Clemson. GT came into the game NET 130, so this was a q3 loss for Clemson, and GT should have won this by a lot more, but it shot 50% from the line and had guards inexplicably lose balance twice in the OTs while setting up to shoot. Clemson has two wins over top 50 teams, an OT win @ Pitt and a 4 point home win over Kentucky, which lost mightily again tonight. OU lost by 28, so it lost whatever it had gained by torching Vandy. Vandy lost by 11. Mississippi put 98 on Kentucky to win by 14. That is one terrible defensive team coming to town in 11 days. Iowa and Indiana lost. Twin forks.

I wonder when the day will come that an NFL kicker's kid gets offered as an EDGE.

I hate it when I divide by 8 instead of by 7. Iowa lost the 7 q1 games by an average of 14.4 points.

I wasn't trying to knock Goff, and I wasn't trying to knock Ewers, either. It's just what GMs saw this year. They can sometimes be a reactive bunch, and draft prognosticators even more so.

Gee, I wonder if Kiper probably thinks NFL GMs just saw the recent playoff results. Teams that made it to the conference championship games had mobile qbs (Mahomes, Allen, Hurts, Daniels). The one seemingly great team that failed to win a playoff game had Goff. The next most disappointing team in the playoffs had Darnold. VY entered the NFL 15 years too early.

Oh, I know. That was an obvious move by Patterson to try to justify the firing.

Look at her the way Beard did through the lens of being in his mid 40s and goofy looking.

Barnes's unfortunate comment about not being obsessed with titles didn't do him any favors. I think it was poorly phrased, but it was much more poorly received.

Purdue (10) @ Iowa (64) Iowa has 3 problems. It is 0-7 in q1 games. It has lost those games by an average of 12.6 points. It lost a q3 game at home to Minnesota. Eight q1 games remaining starting tonight. Indiana (65) @ Wisconsin (17) Cue Bob in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . La Salle (182) @ VCU (42) If VCU sweeps Dayton and beats George Mason but loses in the A-10 tournament, I think I can see it getting an at large bid. If it loses a game like this tonight, then I probably can't. Drake (52) @ Murray State (165) See comment about VCU above, but substitute Bradley and No. Iowa for Dayton and George Mason. This is also a redemption game for Drake. Its q4 loss was at home to Murray State. Utah State (38) @ Wyoming (169) Utah State has a very strong OOC record and is probably deserving of a better ranking, but it was last seen losing at home by 19 to New Mexico. Georgetown (84) @ Xavier (52) Xavier is in a really tough spot. While it it 5-6 in one of the three strongest conferences, it is just 1-7 in q1 games, and 8 of its nine remaining games are against the bottom 6 teams in the conference. The other is a home game against Creighton, and if Creighton doesn't improve, that will mean Xavier has only one q1 game left (@ Villanova) while playing 9 more times in the Big East. Some conferences are loaded all the way to the bottom. The Big East is not. Boise State (49) @ UNLV (105) If Boise State, New Mexico, Utah State, and San Diego State can beat the rest of the MWC, that will make the job of the committee easy. Put them all in, provided they each win a game or two against each other. Boise State is 0-3 against the other three, so it better not lose to the rest of the conference while waiting for the rematches.

Let's start with tonight in the SEC Vandy (43) @ Florida (5) Vandy is coming off a loss that was so bad that most of the bracketoids who had it 8 going into the weekend dropped it to a play-in game. But those were outlier brackets. They tend to be over-reactive to single games. Even so, Vandy needs to do something at this point to avoid falling out completely, but it has played progressively worse on the road with each game (+8 @ LSU, -9 @ Missouri, -16 @ Alabama, -30 @ OU). Vandy now enters the most murderous part of its schedule--8 straight games against teams currently projected to make the tournament and an average Pomeroy ranking of 15. Florida is probably pretty mad about being pasted in Knoxville by a Zeigler-less Tennesssee team. OU (37) @ Auburn (1) Well, beating a mediocre team by a bajillion at home is one thing. Beating the top team in the country on the road is quite another. Kentucky (19) @ Mississippi (23) High powered offense against stingy defense. Kentucky lost to Arky because it couldn't make Arky miss from the arc. Mississippi lost to Auburn because it got its brains beat in on the boards as usual. Fortunately for Beard, Kentucky is not a strong offensive rebounding team. Then again, Mississippi State, Missouri, and Texas aren't particularly good at it and they combined for 15 offensive rebounds against Mississippi. But what Mississippi gives up in rebounding, it regains in turnover margin, and Kentucky is terrible at that.