Will the No.1 seeds please step forward?
March 9th, 2007, 8:06 am · 1 Comment · posted by jotto001
………..NOT SO FAST UCLA
Considered by many to be a number 1 seed going into the start of conference tournaments, UCLA squandered what credibility they had with a bad loss to Cal last night in the Pac-10 quarterfinals.
I’m certainly guilty of East Coast bias. The Pac-10, both football and basketball, are on way too late for me and I watch the league on probably a dozen occasions in both sports each other. (NCAA tournament and bowl games notwithstanding).
About halfway through January, the buzz started. The Pac-10 is, top to bottom, the best league in college basketball. It was tough to argue with that. UCLA was a powerhouse once more. Washington State was the surprise of the year. Aaron Brooks had Oregon looking really tough and Arizona was a sleeping giant.
With UCLA’s loss to a Cal team that is not even NIT-bound, you have to assume that the league took a serious hit in the eyes of the basketball watching public and, more importantly, the NCAA’s selection committee.
The only way that UCLA gets a number one seed is if Wisconsin, Ohio State, Kansas or UNC fall early in their conference tournaments — and I don’t see that happening.
Based on last night’s performance, or lack thereof (Aaron Afflalo), you’d almost have to believe that the best team in the Pac-10 is Oregon, who manhandled a pretty decent Arizona team.
The Pac-10 is like the sexy girl at the bar that you walk up to only to find out that she’s from Staten Island and has the accent to prove it.
March 10th, 2007 at 7:34 am
It’s just mind blowing lately on some teams that have been having the wierdest season. Virginia Tech, sweeps North Carolina, defeats Duke; Duke losing 10 games this year, and where they have won 7 of the last 8 (now 7 of the last 9) ACC tournaments, they get bounced out in the first round by North Carolina State; U-Conn, a disappointing year all around getting bouned out of the Big East tournament seemingly easy by Syracuse; what about Kentucky? This has been an unpredictable NCAA season this year. I mean every year, there are many things that make you blink twice, and think “What just happened?” but this year it’s just been some major schools have really slimmed down on their game, losing more considerably. UCLA, a solid season, yet getting bumped out by California in the Pac-10 tournament. Just another reason why college basketball is a lot of times superior towards the NBA in terms of excitement, and trying to predict who does this, who does that.