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somewhat reminiscent of Maryland in 2006 after Gary Williams bitc*hed about Bradley getting into the NCAA
and his team relegated to the NIT...then losing their first game as the overall #1 seed...
Last night Arizona State - the top seed in the NIT was playing at home against Jacksonville and got lazy and complacent with a double digit lead and ended up getting beat 67-66.
The ESPN announcers spent 99% of the air time talking about how good Arizona State was, how they really deserved to be in the NCAA, and then...time and time again they offered reasons/excuses/alibis as to why the Pac-10 seemed down this year...
And the reasons bordered on the incredulous and preposterous......
Here's a few of the silly excuses that were offered for the Pac-10's apparent weakness this year...
--injuries
--injuries
--injuries
--they were a good conference actually but beat each other down with parity
--scheduled tough (this is downright false)
--distracting issues (negative press at Oregon, USC, etc...)
--tough early season tournaments take it out of the better teams
--always have so many great players that jump right to the NBA with eligiblity left that it catches teams short manned
(also silly - they have far fewer kids jumping to the NBA than other conferences)
--the better coaches have retired or quit (Lute Olson, Tim Floyd)
--then finally this one - that all the better coaches are so good they get hired away somewhere else...and the only such example offered was Tony Bennett (Washington State) - but then how was the Pac-10 ranked the best conference last year without Bennett?
and his team relegated to the NIT...then losing their first game as the overall #1 seed...
Last night Arizona State - the top seed in the NIT was playing at home against Jacksonville and got lazy and complacent with a double digit lead and ended up getting beat 67-66.
The ESPN announcers spent 99% of the air time talking about how good Arizona State was, how they really deserved to be in the NCAA, and then...time and time again they offered reasons/excuses/alibis as to why the Pac-10 seemed down this year...
And the reasons bordered on the incredulous and preposterous......
Here's a few of the silly excuses that were offered for the Pac-10's apparent weakness this year...
--injuries
--injuries
--injuries
--they were a good conference actually but beat each other down with parity
--scheduled tough (this is downright false)
--distracting issues (negative press at Oregon, USC, etc...)
--tough early season tournaments take it out of the better teams
--always have so many great players that jump right to the NBA with eligiblity left that it catches teams short manned
(also silly - they have far fewer kids jumping to the NBA than other conferences)
--the better coaches have retired or quit (Lute Olson, Tim Floyd)
--then finally this one - that all the better coaches are so good they get hired away somewhere else...and the only such example offered was Tony Bennett (Washington State) - but then how was the Pac-10 ranked the best conference last year without Bennett?