Grady Gallagher | Blogger
¡Buenos días amigos!
Whew! What a couple weeks it’s been, eh? It’s amazing to me how we’ve come to expect total madness when March comes around, yet after the second day of games, no perfect brackets remain. Astounding. Cut to 5 things I’ll always remember about this tournament:
1) Mercer beating Duke.
2) The Cyclones finally getting over the hump and overcoming all misfortunes (without Georges Niang, their most important player) from the past while beating UNC and Roy Williams on a DeAndre Kane buzzer beater that my friend, Adam, predicted on the money, exact score and all, earlier in the day only to run into an improbable buzz saw making an unforeseeable run to the Natty and winning under a coach making his first appearance in the dance after losing to Louisville earlier in the same month by 30 and sparking all ISU fans to continuously rant about their misfortunes. (That sentence tho…..)
3) The unbelievable opportunity Iowa completely, utterly, terribly, stupidly, lavishly, “tebowingly,” pointlessly, frustratingly, enragingly, selfishly missed. I’m not even sure what some of the words I just used even mean.
4) Baylor absolutely handling Creighton to put as abrupt of an end to one of the greatest seasons any college basketball player has ever had.
5) And lastly, I still just cannot figure out why the two Final Four games were shown on TBS instead of CBS. I’m trying to understand if CBS is trying to help out Turner Sports and encourage people to buy cable or what? It just didn’t make sense to me. Plus, we don’t get TBS HD at school. Can a brother watch some Final Four college basketball games in high definition, is that too much to ask?
What I’ve learned from this year’s tournament? 1. You can’t beat great guard play. This was in full effect the last four games UCONN played. Napier and Boatright were lights out and believed they were the best players on BOTH ends of the floor. 2. Go with your gut feeling and don’t second guess yourself when filling out your bracket. This year was my best in a while when it comes to picks and I definitely owe it to never second guessing. 3. You have to distinguish your bracket in some totally absurd college basketball knowledge second-guessing-wow-factor kind of way. We all looked at Scuffed Ham’s bracket the first day and saw UCONN in the final and laughed. Now he’s up there, laughing at us. (Nobody got it?) (Blades of glory quote tweaked.) But seriously, in order to have a shot at winning it all, you have to pick someone that could literally make you throw your bracket in the garbage after their first game. High risk, high reward. Just remember that next time in Vegas.
Well, now that college basketball is over, everyone knows the next big thing is the NBA Playoffs. Even if you can’t stand watching an NBA regular season game, the playoffs crank it up to another level. The West this year will be nuts. Heck, this playoff jam to end the regular season will be nuts! Thankfully, as long as the Warriors don’t totally pee their pants, they should be at least the six seed. That leaves two spots for Phoenix, Dallas, and Memphis. Here’s what I think will happen: The Suns are the odd man out. They are the only team lacking that “face” or trademark player (a go to guy recognized by the rest of the league), while Memphis has Gasol and Conley and the Mavs have Dirk. Both Dallas and the Grizz have playoff experience and savy vets just aching for a shot at the title. While that’s what I think will happen, here’s what I WANT to happen: I’ve never been a huge fan of Memphis (not enough flash) so I’d love to see Dallas vs. OKC and Phoenix vs. Los Spurs. These would be the first round matchups if the Mavs get the seven seed and Suns get the eighth. I mean, I have a Dirk “sherzy”, (a combination of a t-shirt and jersey, for all you people that live under a rock), and he’s a top five all-time favorite for me. (Plus Monta Ellis has totally transformed his game.) Time is of the essence for both of them so I know they would put it all on the line. On the other side, Phoenix is probably the second hardest playing team in the league right now (Bulls, duh). I gotta pull for Tommy’s Suns! If they make the playoffs, Jeff Hornacek is a lock for Coach of the Year. I actually get to watch Goran Dragic on cable, and it would create a historic rematch of the “new kids on the block” Suns with Steve Nash’s understudy trying to do what Steve never could: Take down the Spurs. Oh yeah, if history repeats itself, it features the exact same Spurs team as before. Nutty.
Before wrapping up, two more things: First, shout-out to the Beaver baseball and softball teams who have been feelin’ it lately. Coach Eddie and the squad have been on fire all year and softball just swept the Duhawks at their place. Keep it up! And, secondly, bringing up the NBA playoffs got my wheels turning. If you enjoy watching the competitive fire of professional athletes at its finest, then take my advice and tune into a couple games from the NHL playoffs that are coming up. (No, nobody is paying me to advertise this, this comes from me directly). Trust me on this one. I’m not a hockey fan at all, but if you love watching athletes put everything they have on the line during a fast-paced, well commentated, and basically commercial free telecast, then this is for you. Don’t knock it until you try it.
Gracias por leer amigos.
