0 comments by Matt Zemek on 3/24/2014
The first weekend of the NCAA tournament is over. The 68-team field has shedded 52 teams to get to the Sweet 16. The severe extent to which the Big Dance reduces its pool of participants in four days makes this Monday the best time to tackle a number of college basketball topics. At the top of […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
On the surface of things, it would seem that it’s easier to make conference strength arguments (and comparisons) in college basketball than in college football. Upon further reflection and examination… the statement probably retains a core measure of truth. The extent to which the statement is true (and that’s an opinion, of course, not a fact…) […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 3/23/2014
Sports are cruel. You know this, but head knowledge rarely enables the human person to fully stave off the waves of pain and heartbreak that come crashing down when the freshness of the moment hits. This is the world faced by the Wichita State Shockers and their fans after one of the greatest games in […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 3/22/2014
They’re an established program, but not quite what you’d call a brand-name program. They’re extremely good at what they do, but they don’t have a national following the way Gonzaga does. They’ve made a history of their own in the past five seasons, but they play in the shadows of their city’s sports history. The […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 3/21/2014
It is at once the joy and the frustration of chronicling sports. It is simultaneously the thing that animates so much of a life spent watching athletes and coaches in the competitive arena; yet, it is also the source of such exasperation in the larger theater of public debate. It’s fun, but the road to enjoyment […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
American sports fans love to hate Duke men’s basketball program in much the same way that they love to hate the New York Yankees and Notre Dame football. Success brings forth detractors as well as admirers. It polarizes while also establishing a level of competitive excellence that gives rival competitors a target. Yet, what happens […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 3/20/2014
Buffalo’s Connecticut comeback. Orlando’s unthinkable ending for T.J. Warren and Mark Gottfried. Spokane’s spectacular display by North Dakota State, felling Lon Kruger’s lads. Three cities in three different corners of the United States. Three overtimes. Three tales of human emotions, swinging wildly before resting on opposite sides of the line between victory and defeat. The […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The story of the Dayton Flyers is a story that deserves to be told. A program that has been swimming upstream throughout the past three decades since an Elite Eight run in 1984 has shown that it is made of sterner stuff in 2014. Dayton’s story will be unspooled for 48 more hours, since Archie […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The Tennessee Volunteers crushed the Virginia Cavaliers… and did little else to impress the college basketball community this season. A split with the Xavier Musketeers (the same team that meekly bowed out of the First Four a night earlier in Dayton) didn’t represent an equation-changing feat. Losing at home to North Carolina State (the team […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 3/19/2014
Yes, Bo Ryan, we agree: The most amazing first-round games in the NCAA tournament (taken from the era beginning with the establishment of the 64-team field in 1985) leave you in a state of disbelief.
0 comments by Matt Zemek
When the NCAA tournament begins, do you ever stop yourself and wonder, “Hmmm, has that school ever made the Final Four or not?” A few weeks ago, Run The Floor delved into the debate concerning the most accomplished programs that have never made the Final Four. In this piece, we’ll take a slightly different tack: […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 3/18/2014
For the first 25 to 30 minutes of scoreboard-clock time, Tuesday night’s bubble version of the First Four felt like the matchup of fringe NCAA teams it was. Then, the North Carolina State Wolfpack said a firm but polite goodbye to the Xavier Musketeers. A game that featured plenty of choppy sequences, to the extent […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Plenty of college basketball fans have questioned the credentials of the Virginia Cavaliers and Wichita State Shockers this season. From this vantage point, both teams fully deserved and earned their No. 1 seeds, but that’s not a unanimous sentiment across the college basketball landscape. At any rate, the Cavs and Shox raise the question: What […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Plenty of events have never occurred in the first 75 NCAA tournaments. Naturally, as the Dance has grown from its humble eight-team roots to its present size of 68, the weight and significance of various achievements have changed to a certain degree. Yet, the permanence of the word “never” can still mean something. Here […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 3/17/2014
It's one of the bracket questions that everyone asks when the smoke clears. As Selection Sunday gives way to Bracket Evaluation Monday in office spaces across America, the hot topic is always the bracketbuster, the team that will become the darling of the nation for 48 hours and create a bit of "little guy magic" […]
