The Fan's Corner

with Greg Duff: 03/01/01

March Madness is almost here

Most of the world's population would think I just described the World Cup, but to many American sports fans it could only mean one thing: The NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. As we count the days to Selection Sunday, I thought I would offer these musings about the season thus far.

- A few weeks ago I declared in this space that Duke was the best team in the land. If I was in Las Vegas I might still be tempted to put a few down on the Blue Devils, but my conviction is not as strong as it was. Losses to Carolina and Virginia have pointed out two chinks in Duke's armor: (1) If Carlos Boozer gets in foul trouble against a team with a strong front line, the Dukies are in trouble; and (2) poor foul shooting in the clutch could be their Achilles heal in the later rounds of both the ACC and NCAA tournaments.

- Could the men's side of the Southern Conference be any worse? Only one of 12 teams has a ratings percentage index in the top half of the country (College of Charleston at number 77) and more than half the teams have records under .500. Should someone other than Charleston win this week's conference tournament, the league is looking at the very real possibility its representative will take part in the new play-in game held on Tuesday before the Big Dance in Dayton, Ohio, and might not be around when the real fun starts two days later.

- Given the state of the Southern Conference, one can only speculate what might have been if Western Carolina had retained Coach Phil Hopkins and the Hayes twins had stuck around. Instead of suffering its worst season in school history, the Catamounts would have had a legitimate shot to go to their second NCAA Tournament.

- For many years, I have been of the opinion the men's tournament was more competitive in the early rounds than the women's. The reason, I believed, was because in the women's bracket there were a few very good teams, many average ones, and a few bad ones causing the first-round games to be upset-proof. Boy was I wrong. In the last three years, the men's tournament has had only two more first-round upsets (defined as a loss by a team seeded fifth or higher) than the women's. In addition, the women have had something in their tournament the men haven't: a 16-seed beating a 1-seed (Harvard over Stanford in 1998).

- Speaking of the women's game, the injuries to Tennessee's Tamika Catchings and UConn's Svetlana Abrosimova lead me to believe that someone other than these two dynasties will be cutting down the nets in St. Louis this year.

- The saying goes that head coaches get too much credit when things are going right and too much blame when they are going wrong. In ACC country, it looks like there is going to be a lot of blame to go around in the conference cellar when the season ends. I imagine that the athletic directors at Florida State, Clemson and N.C. State are putting together their short lists for replacements of Steve Robinson (a friend of mine says Robinson has made Pat Kennedy look like a good coach), Larry Shyatt and Herb Sendek, respectively.

- Should Indiana decide not to give interim head coach Mike Davis permanent status, look for the Hoosier brass to give strong consideration to former Catamount assistant Thad Matta. Now the head coach at Butler, Matta has guided the Bulldogs to an 20-7 record, including a victory at Wisconsin.

March Madness is here. I hope you enjoy it as much as I know I will.

Back to Sports: 03/01/01.