Maddux Sports Blog

I’m going to weigh in tomorrow with in-game analysis during both games. Until then, I just wanted to share a couple of interesting things that have popped up today and provide us with more to think about as we try to make winning picks on the big games:

Kansas loses a player - The Jayhawks become the second team to have to cope with the loss of a minute-eating reserve. Unlike Memphis, though, this was not for disciplinary reasons. In a bizarre incident, guard Rodrick Stewart broke his kneecap in an open practice today. He was mugging for the crowd by doing a big slam and he obviously landed very badly. Stewart, a senior, added just 2.8 points per game, but was good for 11.6 minutes. Like the Allen situation with Memphis situation, I’m not too worried about this one - teams are very likely to shorten their bench and rely more heavily on their starters in a game that is so crucial as this. That’s especially the case when the season ends with a loss, and is almost over with a win, so there is no future to save your players for.

The ‘experts’ weigh in - It is time for the paid geniuses to make their wise picks. There is an interesting contrast between two of the major media outlets. SI.com asked five of their writers who would win. Four came up with UCLA as champions, with three having them beat North Carolina in the final. The fourth has North Carolina beating Memphis. ESPN is a bit different. Three of their five experts has Memphis beating UCLA, though none have Memphis winning it all. Two of them have Kansas winning it all, while UCLA and North Carolina get the nod once. The boldest pick is that he team that is playing best in the final will win it. That’s how you really go out on a limb. If you buy into these expert opinions at all then you have to think that UCLA presents pretty good value in their Saturday game since they are underdogs. The SI writers might want to make a futures bet, too - the Bruins are the longest shots on the board to win it all at 16/5 according to Bodog. Kansas is 3/1, Memphis is 27/10, and North Carolina is fairly significantly favored at 8/5.

The books like their number in the North Carolina game - Almost 80 percent of the bets made so far have been on the Tar Heels, yet the number is still at the -3 that it opened at in most places. That either means that the smart money is hitting Kansas hard enough to balance things out, or that the books are willing to expose themselves at this number. Memphis has had about two thirds of the action, and the line has moved from -1 to -2, so that one is acting more as expected.

The betting-related sports news that is catching my eye in five different sports

Baseball - Pitcher Johnny Cueto of Cincinnati struck out ten in seven innings and only allowed one hit and one earned run to lead his team past Arizona. This guy is ridiculously good, and he should present decent value until the public starts to figure that out.

NFL - Jack Del Rio has signed a five year contract extension with the Jaguars. That’s quite an investment in a guy who has just one playoff win. Unless he has something in his bag of tricks that I haven’t seen yet, this just tells me that the Jags will be decent but not great for the next five years.

College football - There are two quarterback races I am watching closely in spring practices - USC because they have three decent choices, and Michigan because they don’t have any. So far it seems like neither school has an early leader. Michigan only has a week and a half to find one.

NBA - Pau Gasol played 32 minutes in his first game back. He had 10 points, six boards and seven assists. That’s much better than I expected in his first game back, and a good sign for a team that needs a boost.

College basketball - Memphis has suspended reserve guard Andre Allen for the Final Four. I don’t think it is much cause for concern. One on hand he averaged 14.1 minutes per game and played in 37 games, so there is definitely a hole to be filled. He only averaged 3.3 points, though, so chances are pretty good that his time was going to be cut in this game, anyway - Calipari will go with what works best without worrying about the future too much. I’m not going to change my thoughts about the team at all, though I’m a little concerned that whatever happened to get him booted could have an impact on the psyche of the team.

I was sitting down to take my first long look at the Final Four today when, as I often do, I started to think about whether there were overriding rules that should be followed when handicapping college basketball’s last three games of the year. I tend to do this kind of thing whenever I am faced with an annual event. It’s not because I am looking for a system or a shortcut - those don’t exist, or at least not without a ridiculous amount of research and study to uncover them. Instead, I do it because it helps me to focus better on the games at hand, and to prioritize the ridiculous amount of information that I will be faced with. If you don’t have some kind of a framework to build upon when you look at a wildly public game like these three will be then you are vulnerable to being led astray by the ‘experts’ and whatever topics they happen to be focused on these days. In the last two rounds, for example, it would have been pretty easy to discount Memphis because we heard endlessly how badly they shot fouls and how much that matters. As it turns out they shot very well from the line, and they would have won both games fairly handily even if they had been much, much worse.

As I looked at these games, these are the four basic rules that I came up with to shape my further analysis. I’m not suggesting that these are definitive by any means, but they will definitely define and containing both the starting points of my handicapping and the places where I spend the most time:

1. The better team wins - This may seem obvious, but it bears saying anyway. This is not the time to question which team is more motivated or anything else. Every team has been focusing on this all year, and they will be at their best. We see lots of upsets every year leading up to this point, but we don’t usually see them past here. The job, then, is not too get too fancy or too cute with th whole thing, but rather to figure out which teams are better and to back those.

2. Ignore the spread - Obviously this only holds up to a point - it would be stupid to make a bet without looking at the spread. What I mean, though, is that I will be ignoring the spread until I have evaluated both teams completely. I have glanced at the odds to check for irregularities or rapid shifts, but I haven’t really internalized them because I think it is more important here than usual to have a sense of how I see thing splaying out before I see what the oddsmakers have to say. With the public attention being so intense for these games, and with very public teams being involved, I don’t want to be in a position to be influenced by the spread as I make my decision because I have very little faith that the spread is particularly meaningful in this game.

3. It’s about stars, not depth - The bench players and the lesser starters figure into these games, but the best players tend to shine through on these stages. Florida didn’t beat Ohio State last year because they had a stronger bench. They won because their lottery picks outplayed Ohio State’s lottery picks, and because they had more draftable, star caliber players on the roster. It is no coincidence that all of the remaining teams are packed with future NBA players while teams like Tennessee and Xavier that don’t have the blue chip talent are watching the games at home. My focus, then, will be on deciding which of these ridiculously talented players have the best opportunity to shine in the brightest of spotlights.

4. Coaching matters, but it is not a relevant differentiator here - Perhaps nothing affects a college team as much as how well it is coached. It is no fluke that teams regularly experience rapid turnovers when they dramatically upgrade their coach. I don’t think that there is any merit, though, in trying to compare the remaining coaches. You don’t make this level by a fluke, and each of these coaches is among a fairly small handful of the best coaches in the country. Each has had a stellar career, and has shown again and again that they are worthy of their reputations and huge paychecks. I personally love John Calipari and think that he is a master of setting up a challenging system and recruiting to it. That doesn’t mean, though, that I can rationally say that he is better than Ben Howland - a guy in his third straight Final Four - or Roy Williams and his national title. Bill Self might have the least impressive record of the four, but he has led his third team to at least the Elite Eight and he is a proven winner. I think that it is a real mistake to do anything other than to consider the coaches a total wash and ignore them - any advantage you assign to one over another is much more due to personal bias than to a real advantage.

When I was a little kid I was never able to sleep on Christmas Eve. I could hardly even stand to close my eyes. I would just lie there thinking of what was about to come the next day - the presents, the food, the people, the excitement. It was excruciating and torturous, and every second seemed like an hour. Now that I am older, that Christmas eve experience takes place on a Wednesday in the middle of March. The tournament starts tomorrow, and I absolutely cannot wait. Ever since the college football season ended my primary focus has been on college basketball, and it all leads to the three weeks of insanity that get underway tomorrow. I have played every game over in my mind a million times, and I have a hundred different theories about how it might all work out, but until it starts we can’t be sure which, if any, are correct. As I sit here willing the hours to pass until the first tip-off, here are the ten things that I am most looking forward to about the first two rounds:

1. O.J. versus Beasley. The USC - Kansas State game is overhyped and it might disappoint, but the chance to see two guys who are almost certain to be excellent pros, and who are the heart and soul of their exciting teams, is a dream for basketball fans. I just wish they weren’t playing on the first day - a game like this should be on the second weekend.

2. Davidson versus Gonzaga. Speaking of things that shouldn’t be on the first weekend. These are two mid-major programs that make a joke of the term mid-major because of their continued success and their willingness to seek out and challenge the best. Mark Few is a coaching machine, and Stephen Curry is as much fun to watch as any player in the tournament. The fireworks in this game should be crazy, and the winner stands a decent chance of moving on into the second weekend.

3. Butler versus Tennessee. Butler will have to get past a tough South Alabama team first, but if they do then their second game will be a classic. Both teams are very talented, and both will be highly motivated because they should be insulted by the seeds they were given. Tennessee was the last two seed when they had a legitimate claim at a number one, while Butler is better than they were last year when they were a five, and yet they got a seven. Feeling slighted often brings out the best in teams.

4. Watching Vanderbilt struggle. Shan Foster is a very nice player, but I have very little faith in the Commodores. They are maddeningly inconsistent, and I think that they are the worst of the number fours by a wide margin. They have tough games against Siena and then the winner of the Clemson-Villanova game, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see them fall before the weekend is over.

5. Swearing at Duke. Like many of the sports fans on this continent, I truly, deeply hate the Blue Devils. Every time I see Coach K I feel a very strong urge to slap him. I don’t like his team much this year, and I really don’t like how they are playing lately, so I am hopeful and cautiously optimistic that they will face a challenge that they are not up to.

6. Watching Memphis prove a point. I am a huge and unapologetic fan of John Calipari and Memphis, so I am very sick of hearing how they are overrated and won’t be competitive. I’m sure that the team is much more sick of it than I am. They have a fairly soft opening weekend, and I think that the feelings of disrespect will fuel them to come out and deliver a real message in their first two games. Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts match up well with the two best players on any team in the country, and I hope to see them prove it.

7. Seeing which Indiana shows up. The Hoosiers have some incredible talent and should be in a good position to do some serious damage in this tournament. They aren’t because the school hired the worst kind of human being as a coach, and he screwed them over. I am very curious to see if they can play up to their potential. If they can it will make for a couple of very interesting games. Unfortunately, my instinct is that they won’t.

8. West Virginia versus Arizona. Arizona is underachieving, and they have had to endure a truly bizarre coaching situation this year, but they have three legitimate first round draft picks on the roster, and they can play as well as any team when they are at their best. If they can get their act together they could go far. That’s a big if, but if they can pull it together then it would be very exciting. And yes, some of my motivation here is to see Duke lose.

9. Purdue versus Baylor. Purdue is an exciting team to watch which is just dripping with potential because of the incredible collection of young players and the solid coaching. Baylor’s resurgence is one of the more incredible stories in recent basketball history. This is one of those games that I wish both teams could win, so I will be overrun with mixed feelings as I watch this one. I just hope that it is a memorable game.

10. Four straight days of endless basketball. The two best days of the tournament are the first two days because of all the games and the crazy storylines that emerge every day. The second two days are almost as good for most of the same reasons. This weekend makes me happy to be a sports fan, and even happier that watching the games is essentially my job. Life is good.