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a wide range of something; a variety.“the album is a smorgasbord of different musical style”1. Go to the head of the class if you thought Baylor, Gonzaga, San Diego St., and Dayton would occupy four of the top five spots in the AP basketball poll with less than a week to go in February. It could be March Madness indeed. In fact, it will be.2. Where are the blue bloods? Well, Kansas likely will ascend to number one this week thanks to their big Saturday win over previous number one Baylor. Duke was six and might break into the top 5. Kentucky and Louisville are 10 and 11. The blue bloods are there, but so are the upstarts.3. Along with Duke are Maryland, Florida St., and Louisville repping the ACC in or very near the top 10. West Virginia will check in at roughly 15 as well.4. Where is North Carolina? Losers of seven in a row the Tar Heels are 10-17 overall. This might be Roy Williams first losing college basketball coaching season EVER. Is Roy done? Hardly. Seeded number one just a year ago, this blip reverts back to the norm next year. Williams has four McDonald’s All Americans headed in.5. Auburn joins Kentucky in the top 25 from the SEC. The SEC is weak in roundball this year. At least it is perceived to be. Mississippi St. and South Carolina are bubble type teams. Florida, baring a big collapse will get in as will LSU. Four tourney teams, if that is all that gets in, is indeed weak.
6. In a recent episode of the No Laying Up podcast longtime CBS on-course announcer(but no more) Peter Kostis said, “I’ve seen Patrick Reed improve his lie, up close and personal, four times now.” Reed must have felt like he took a sand wedge to the cranium.
7. Speaking of sand, in a town hall interview this week on SiriusXM PGA Tour radio, Brooks Koepka was asked about Kostas’ comments and Reed’s penalty for improving his lie in a bunker last year in the Bahamas. “Yeah. I don’t know what he was doing, building sandcastles in the sand,” he said. “But you know where your club is.” Ouch again.
8. After his opening round at the WGC-Mexico Championship, Reed was asked to respond to criticism from world No. 2 Brooks Koepka and former CBS analyst Peter Kostis. “I said what I have to say about what happened in the Bahamas, and at the end of the day, all I’m trying to do is go out and play good golf and trying to win a golf championship,” Reed said following a first-round 69 that left him tied for eighth place in Mexico. And win it he did.
9. What would sports be without villains (er, umm, cheaters) like Reed? The Red Sox don’t like the Yankees very much and vice versa. Outside of Houston everyone now has the Astros. Reed calls Houston home if you need another reason to boo the Astros when they come to your town this spring.
10. Reed won $1.8 million for the four days of work in Mexico. It was his ninth win on tour including the 2018 Masters. He has an uncanny ability to shut out the naysayers in big moments. Reed credited a hot putter down the stretch with three straight birdies to chase down Bryson DeChambeau. His putter was hot. But it wasn’t as hot as 84-year-old Mary Ann Wakefield’s putter. Take a 30-second look.
You’ve been served.
marchmadness
Ten Piece Nuggets-Smorgasboard
Ten Piece Nuggets-March Madness and MLB
Fridays are great. Springtime Fridays are greater. Weather improves. Days are longer. Flowers bloom. And, multiple sports become more interesting. Oh, and there is this thing called March Madness. What is it about us knowing so little about so many teams and for a weekend or two we fixate on their stories. Everybody and every team has a story. The weekend is near. And, the tasty morsels below will help fuel your run to the weekday finish line.
- It’s a rather small sample size of exactly one game. But, if Murray St. plays as well as they did yesterday, the 12th seed could run deep in this tourney. One of our astute readers is a basketball junkie. He points out that when you have the second best player in America you always have a shot at winning. Ja Morant did not disappoint. He crossed over and then nailed a step back three one minute, and then a bit later he threw down a statement jam. His triple double led the Racers to a 19 point shelling of fifth seeded Marquette. But, we found his supporting cast more than up to the task as well.
- Florida St. beat a balanced Vermont team by seven. Florida St. might be ten deep. They can play big or small and fast or half court. Yesterday they did both and advanced over a determined Vermont club that drained a strong 16 three pointers.
- Which brings us to a Saturday late afternoon showdown between Murray St and Florida St. Madness indeed. Today’s play will uncover another surprise or two, but for BBR’s money this upcoming tussle to get to the Sweet Sixteen should be sweet to watch onto itself.
- The opposite of this success was Alabama’s lethargic NIT loss at home to Norfolk State. Former NBA player and two team NBA coach Avery Johnson couldn’t turn the Tide around on the hardwood. When you have an office in the same athletic department as Nick Saban going to the knitting tournament doesn’t promote job security. Losing at home to Norfolk St. is the final ball of yarn. A buyout conversation is underway.
- Which brings us to Alabama’s basketball future. Shouldn’t we expect them to try to shoot for the moon with their next hire? The football program was, is, and will continue to be a cash cow. Why can’t a football powerhouse also be a basketball powerhouse? LSU made a run at just that. The problem is they paid for the coach who
might havelikely paid for the players too. - Which brings us to baseball. The LA Angels made some noise. They hooked Mike Trout with 430 million George Washington’s for a dozen years to effectively ensure that he puts it on the line for his one and only team for the entirety of his career. If you project his career totals, as analytic geeks do every day, his stat pile will put him onto a very short list of the best baseball players ever. Ever. Like Willie Mays ever.
- In this same noisy window of time the Seattle Mariners and the entire country of Japan said goodbye to a hitting machine named Ichiro Suzuki who spoke softly and carried a lethal wooden stick. Ichiro was a 10-time All-Star in the majors. He had 3,089 hits over a 19-year career in the big leagues after having 1,278 while starring in Japan. His combined total of 4,367 is a professional record. His hit stat pile puts him onto a very short list of best hitters ever. Ever. Like Pete Rose ever.
- ESPN, who we like to bash for a variety of reasons, put out a cool “untold stories” article on Ichiro. You can read it here. There are six parts to the quick read, and his exchange with the impatient Lou Pinella is the first one. Ichiro was a rookie, and Pinella wanted more out of him. Turns out, all Sweet Lou had to do was ask.
- Meanwhile the Houston Astros decided to get ahead of the Alex Bregman train before it left the station. The confident 3rd baseman hinted that the Astros should be willing to pay a bit more for his services after just two and a half years in the bigs. His performance last year both at the plate and in the field put him right into the MVP conversation for the American League. The Astros own him for the 2019, 2020, and 2011 seasons for cheap. Rather than slow play it, they put 100 million on the table for six years. His agent decided to not look a gift horse in the mouth. Bregman could possibly fetch more elsewhere for years 4-6 of the deal offered. Or, he could get hurt and never live up to his end. In the end the deal sounded good to both parties.
- Which brings us back to basketball for our last tasty nugget. Today’s NCAA action will bring upsets. In a one and done scenario the longer the dog stays in the game the more they feel free to bark. Ducks don’t bark, but watch out for Oregon as a very spry 12th seed facing the Badgers of Wisconsin. We’re going to watch carefully and if Charles Bark(ley) picks Wisconsin to win, we are putting at least three wooden nickels on Oregon.
Enjoy the weekend and the Madness.
Can Lightning Strike Your March Madness Picks?
The national Powerball Lottery jackpot hit $560 million last evening. Did you win it? The odds were long. If not, you have another chance at fame and fortune starting today. Did you fill out your NCAA March Madness Tournament Challenge bracket?
Warren Buffet, who is of some fame and fortune himself, is offering his 400k employees a chance at a million bucks a year for life if they “just” correctly predict the Sweet Sixteen this year. The calculated chances of that are roughly one in a million. So you’re saying there is a chance!
That chance is far better than his recent years of bracket challenges when everyone was invited to play for the same payout. But, then you had to have an entry that stayed clean for all 63 games of the 64 team tourney field. The chance of that was a not so reasonable 1 in 9.2 quintillion. How much is a quintillion? It’s one billion billions, or a one followed by 18 zeros. Or, if you are a visual person it’s 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000. Makes the nation’s debt look pretty manageable, doesn’t it?
Need inspiration, do you? Early March madness occurred on March 8th when what may be the greatest parlay wager ever to hit at a U.S. sportsbook was placed. A bettor at a Vicksburg, MS casino placed a $25, 20-leg bet that paid $104,412.44. The parlay featured point spreads, money lines and over/unders on a mix of Friday night NBA and college basketball games. The bettor backed 14 favorites, three underdogs, and three overs. Every single one hit. So you’re saying there is a chance!
If you haven’t filled out your bracket yet, you still have a few hours before the first jump ball is tossed up. March Madness actually ends when one team cuts down the nets in early April. You know what April brings don’t you? Showers. April showers bring, of course, May flowers.
Oh, and if your bracket is still holding up then, you should stay indoors. One of those showers could bring lightning. The chances of getting struck by lightning are about 1 in 300,000. So you’re saying there is a chance!
It’s March Madness and SWA is Flying
Southwest Airlines ran the popular ad campaign “Need to Get Away for a While?” for several successful years. In the ads paid actors would say or do something, usually in a business, meeting, or social environment that would cause the room to collectively pause and wonder “did that just happen?”
Yesterday we learned that an often paid actor, Felicity Huffman, paid her way around the college entrance process to get one of her children into a school of higher education that they otherwise would not have qualified for. Huffman, one of the housewife character actors of Desperate Housewives fame, was a desperate mom it seems. She wasn’t alone in this scheme that was exposed, not by a long shot. SWA has non stops from LAX to nearly anywhere.
It amazes us how often big time personalities, either by hook or crook, fall flat on their face. Did that just happen?
Totally unrelated, it was only Monday when the NFL network had a get away moment. Charley Casserly, former longtime NFL GM for the Redskins and the Texans, is a “front office/GM expert” for the network. The NFL Network rolls old Charley out when they need the “why” answered after the “what” has occurred. Charley was asked why the Cowboys didn’t get the ball to effective wide receiver Cole Beasley more last year. His answer is right here. “The Cowboys threw the ball to Dez Bryant too much last year.” The only problem with the answer is that Dez Bryant didn’t play one snap for Dallas in 2018, not one. The former star was cut last summer. Southwest has some great fares to The Bahamas right now.
A few years back during the TBS portion of the NCAA March Madness telecast Charles Barkley called Duke star Justise Winslow’s name just a bit wrong. He called him Winston Justice and knew no differently. But to one up himself a couple of years later he was asked why a certain NCAA Final 64 team (the name escapes us) trailed another at halftime. He noted that team’s star player needed to pick up his game in the second half. The only problem was that said star player had missed this game and the prior two months due to injury. What might Sir Charles have in store for us this year?
Barkley is paid to be Barkley. He is quite good at it. Casserly is paid to be an expert. He is quite bad at it. And Huffman illegally paid and/or bribed and/or cheated to get her child in college. That’s the worst of it.
Given the Madness, it must be March. Southwest Airlines flight 123 now boarding.