There is one good thing abut being a Michigan fan right now – there is absolutely no reason to be nervous about Championship Week. It would take a miracle – a really miraculous one – for the Wolverines to make the field. The discussion of the bubble is entirely irrelevant to me. Because of that, I can just sit back and watch – and hope for the worst for bubble teams for my sadistic pleasure. On that front tonight couldn’t have been any better. St. Mary’s, a bubble team on the outside looking in by most accounts, absolutely crushed Gonzaga to win the WCC Championship. That means that they get an automatic bid in the tournament instead of a trip to the NIT. Since Gonzaga was a tournament lock no matter what happened, this means that the 11 spots for at-large teams has been reduced to 10. Now if only Old Dominion had lost to William & Mary.<\/p>\n
22 year old Cuban defector Aroldis Chapman made his much anticipated debut for Cincinnati today, and it certainly looked to be worth the wait. He was only given two innings to play, but he was more than a little good in them. He allowed one hit, but he struck out three while only walking one. Most impressively, he topped 100 mph at least three different times. Players typically get stronger as the spring progresses. If Chapman does that then this could really be a rookie year to remember.<\/p>\n
Things could obviously change a bunch before the brackets come out this weekend, but as of right now Butler and Xavier are both penciled in as six seeds according to Joe Lunardi. If the final bracket had them there then I sure wouldn’t want to play a sixth seed in a hurry. Both of those squads are going to be tough outs.<\/p>\n
Am I the only one who is counted the seconds until the tournament? Next Thursday and Friday are the two greatest sports days of the year after the Kentucky Derby.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is one good thing abut being a Michigan fan right now – there is absolutely no reason to be nervous about Championship Week. It would take a miracle – a really miraculous one – for the Wolverines to make the field. The discussion of the bubble is entirely irrelevant to me. Because of that, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[973,1368,1367,1369],"class_list":["post-2777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-college-basketball","tag-aroldis-chapman","tag-butler-buldogs","tag-championship-week","tag-xavier-musketeers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2777"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2779,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2777\/revisions\/2779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}