We all love this time of year for college basketball, especially the first weekend when you get to discover all these players who are really good that you had four months to find out about them and didn’t.
Two weeks ago, you didn’t know Darius Acuff from Roy Acuff. Both are famous for various reasons in Nashville, but only one of them dropped 30 on Vanderbilt in the SEC Tournament.
You’re making coaching decisions from your La-Z-Boy as if you invented basketball, though you haven’t watched a college game in 11 months.
Suddenly, however, you find yourself watching too much basketball in a compressed period of time and the fear of hoop overdose becomes a real possibility. Suddenly you can’t tell the difference between Iowa and Purdue (same colors, same conference, though Purdue is the one with the obscenely small uniform numbers).
That allows you to dig up historical nuggets like this: The last time North Carolina, Kentucky, UCLA or Kansas didn’t make it to the Sweet 16 was 1954. Mainly because none of them even made it to the 24-team tournament.
But no matter who you are rooting for (bracket or no bracket), there some things we can all agree on that have overloaded our brains these last few weeks.
** Let’s start with the least important: The endless Capital One commercials. Nice try to get Jennifer Garner involved, but these ads have run their course. Once they were cute; now they border on non-sensical and tremendously unfunny. Tell the ad agency to come up with a new campaign.
** As long as we are talking about things that really don’t matter, let’s talk haberdashery. There’s no rule that says coaches must wear a coat and tie on the sideline, but there’s also no rule that says they must wear tailored quarter-zip sweatsuits either, but they do that anyway. Not all of them, but almost all.
Gotta tell you – that look doesn’t exactly scream “I’m in charge of this operation.”
This all changed after Covid-19 hit in 2020 and ever since then, hardly anybody plays dress-up anymore. As long as everybody else does it, they figure it’s OK. UCLA’s Mick Cronin, who probably doesn’t look all that great in a sweatsuit anyway, is one of the exceptions.
Rick Pitino, who is in the Basketball Hall of Fame, wears a suit. Famed UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian wore the short-sleeve shirt and tie combo – not exactly ripped from the cover of GQ – and Hubert Davis usually wore a suit at North Carolina and look what that got him.
Coaches will tell you that the comfort of the relaxed attire makes them more relaxed, but when you are a high-salaried, highly visible professional, you should look like it.
Maybe it’s because Nike and adidas don’t make custom suits that allow for their logos to be emblazoned on the front.
Pat Riley, another coach in the Hall of Fame (and probably a few fashion Halls of Fame), always wore a suit and has let it be known that he thinks NBA coaches should be instructed to get back to that look for one reason – it makes you look like a leader.
Instead, they look more like the ball boy.
** We all know that the call of traveling is a thing of past, but it’s now invaded more than just plays on the way to the rim. Is it just me or is everybody seeing a pass being made in the backcourt and the player catching the ball takes one, two, three and sometimes four steps after he catches it. Yes, he’s 30 feet from the basket but by anyone’s definition, that’s still travelling.
** Nate Burleson? Really?
** While you weren’t looking (or maybe you weren’t), the whole March Madness concept is starting to wear thin. There was hardly any madness at all in the first round and only a little bit in the second round. Been like that for a few years.
By the time we get to where we are now in the tournament, it’s basically a bunch of teams that most expected to be here in the first place. Some good games? Certainly, especially last night’s Purdue-Texas game. Madness? Hardly.
The dirty little secret is that fewer and fewer non-power conference schools are getting into the tournament to begin with. As conferences expand (and will continue expanding), there are fewer seats at the table for the little guys. Cinderella can’t seem to even find her shoes, much less wear them.
And when you get right down to it, that’s the Madness of the whole thing.
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarsll@yahoo.com