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      Conference Tourneys and My Thoughts

      March 12, 2008 /

      This week is championship week. For some leagues like the Summit, you need to win three in a row to make the dance (Congratulations to Oral Roberts!!). It doesn’t matter what you did during the regular season. Other leagues like the Big 12 and Pac 10 and ACC are playing for seeds.

      I have a suggestion to make it more interesting. Let’s take the regular season winner from each conference and they are automatically in and then let’s have the conference tournament winner from each of the top 17 conferences (minus the regular season winner who doesn’t play in the conference tourney) get bids. That will give you 48 teams and it will put more emphasis on the top conference tournaments. Also, it will make the regular season important from top to bottom for each team in each league.

      Congratulations to North Carolina for winning the regular season ACC. However, they are not the ACC Champions unless they win the tournament. That is a fact. Look it up.

      College Basketball

      Beasley Gets Robbed

      March 12, 2008 /

      Tyler Hansborough was named the Player of the Year by Sporting News (no wonder they are going out of business.). Are you kidding me? Michael Beasley had better numbers (rebounding, scoring, shooting percentage) and they give it to Hansborough. Why? Because his team won the ACC. Please!! Take him off North Carolina and they are still in the tourney and have a great year. Take Beasley off Kansas State and they are lucky to be above .500. Come on, you can’t give him the award when he has better players around him and comes from a name school.. This is a total disservice to the future number one pick in this years NBA Draft.

      College Basketball

      Bill Simmons plays “What if?”

      March 12, 2008 /

      The Sports Guy lists his top 15 “What ifs?” of the decade.

      Here’s his take on Boozer and the Cavs…

      15. What if Carlos Boozer never screwed over Cleveland?

      This saga becomes more astounding over time: Inexplicably (the version in which you believe Cleveland would just walk away from an option year worth $700,000 and allow Boozer to become a restricted free agent for no good reason) or explicably (the version in which you believe the Cavs made an illegal handshake deal to “forgo” Boozer’s option year, allow him to become a restricted free agent, then sign him to a $41 million deal), the one thing we know is Boozer used his newfound leverage to sign a six-year deal with Utah for $68 million and screw over Cleveland’s benevolent, blind owner in the process.

      Look what’s happened since:

      A. Boozer blossomed into an All-Star power forward and one of the best 20 players in the league, someone who would have been the perfect sidekick for LeBron James.

      B. Because Boozer bolted Cleveland, that eventually left the Cavs with a ton of cap space … and, um … (take a deep breath, Cavs fans) … the Larry Hughes, Damon Jones and Donyell Marshall signings. Ouch.

      C. Had they kept Boozer and signed Jones as well, the Cavs could have been the first NBA team to start two players with visible chest hair since the 1953 Fort Wayne Pistons.

      By the way, he’s still campaigning to be the Bucks’ new GM. I like him as a writer, but I don’t want him running my team. If the stars align and he were to somehow get the job, I think I’d stop rooting for Milwaukee and start rooting for the Lakers. Seriously.

      Fantasy Basketball, NBA

      Top 10 pitching busts

      March 12, 2008 /

      Mike Leone of FF Toolbox.com ranks the top 10 fantasy pitching busts as the season draws near.

      1. Carlos Zambrano, SP, Chicago Cubs
      Carlos Zambrano is no longer a top fantasy pitcher. He has never had the best head on his shoulders and has always walked too many batters (2nd in majors in walks last season). Now, there are a couple of more red flags that should be associated with Zambrano. Last year, Zambrano threw more pitches than anyone else in the majors. Couple that with the fact that he may have been overthrowing in an attempt to prove that he deserved a large contract and you have an injury risk on your hands. His K/IP dropped from .981 to .818, which is certainly alarming….

      2. Dontrelle Willis, SP, Detroit
      I know I’m picking on the Tigers pitching, but there is just too much hype surrounding Willis. Often when a player gets traded, he receives a lot of unwarranted attention. It seems that people forget how mediocre or below-average that player was before. This is the case with Willis. He was awful last year; opponents hit .294 off of him in the lowly NL where you face a pitcher instead of a DH. Imagine what AL hitters will do to him (last year the NL hit .268 and the AL hit .272). On top of that, only 6 pitchers walked more batters than Willis last season…

      Interesting. I doubt anyone would fall off their chair if Willis craps out again, but Zambrano as the biggest pitching bust in ’08? Sure, fantasy publications might overvalue him a tad, but he should sniff 18 wins again and I wouldn’t be shocked if he gets his K’s back around 200. He should also have more run support this year as the Cubs continue to improve their lineup.

      Fantasy Baseball, MLB

      Is Japan trip bad idea for BoSox?

      March 12, 2008 /

      Tony Massarotti of the Boston Herald writes that the upcoming trip to Japan is starting to severely interfere with the Red Sox’s quest for back-to-back championships.

      Beyond that, here is something to consider: To play roughly 6-7 hours of regular season baseball, the Sox will spend nearly five times as many hours (34) in the air.

      The moon isn’t in the sky that long.

      On the surface, this does not look like an enormous sacrifice. Spring training is far too long to begin with and the Sox open their schedule only a week earlier than most everyone else. One week certainly isn’t too much to promote major league baseball and brand the Sox logo on the side of a pagoda. Who cares about Benny Agbayani when you can have Benihana?

      In reality, the Red Sox aren’t giving up one week so much as they are two, maybe three. Last year, nobody would have batted an eye if Josh Beckett [stats] walked off the mound with back spasms prior to a scheduled start on March 8. This year, Beckett immediately became a candidate to miss a March 25 opener because the Red Sox need to be on a plane on March 19.

      While the trip overseas is good for baseball from a marketing standpoint, I agree with Massarotti in that the Sox don’t need this. Contenders like Boston enter the season thinking about one thing: Winning the World Series. Are the Sox more likely to accomplish that goal staying home? I would think so. Or, to play devil’s advocate, would this even be an issue if Beckett weren’t suffering from back spasms?

      MLB

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