The Madness Edition

The first Thursday and Friday of the NCAA basketball tournament are two of the greatest days of sports anywhere. The first Saturday and Sunday are the next best two. The second round games are generally better played games but there is nothing quite the same as seeing a 1 or 2 seed on the ropes against a tenacious underdog in their first round game. The First Thursday was the most exciting day of basketball from what we hear. We were hard at work but apparently there were buzzer beaters and several one point victories. Iowa State has already departed the tournament for many of our pools and no one had Georgia State over Baylor. The great state of Texas was eliminated in the opening round. The University of California at Irvine Anteaters took the storied Louisville Cardinals to the last possession with their first invitation. We were sorry to see them lose but were glad they covered the nine points. UCLA beat another Cinderella on their way to the second weekend. The underdog scraps away and the higher seed starts to sweat being upset in the first round and being on sports center for eternity. The underdog might be on television for the first and only time in their career. Duke has several titles but there early round exits have been more noteworthy as well. Kansas won the title in 2009 but there second round upset by Stanford last year is in every discussion about the brackets this year. There is nothing like these first two days anywhere. The Yard does take exception to how the rounds are now credited for NCAA tournament history. With the recent addition of the play in games, the first round has now become the second round. So any team that makes the 64 team draw is already in the second round. It is always sounds better on the resume for a coach to declare he coached a team into the second round of the tournament. It sounds better than saying you made the tournament. It sounds like you won a tournament game. If you win your first game that is a second round game, you are into the third round. The poor coaches who get to the play in game and lose are in tournament historical limbo for performance. Technically, they made the dance but not the first round. Because there is not a first round but they did not make it anyways. The victor of the First Four bypasses the first round that isn’t and goes straight into the second round. Got that? So technically, the first round is now just a memory and everyone gets a pass to the second round as long as you win your first four game. It is 25 years since Bo Kimble lead the Hank Gather-less LMU Lions into the NCAA tournament. The Lions played at a frenetic pace that has never been seen since that record setting season in 1990. Paul Westhead was the mad scientist mixing a brew he could never repeat. It was even more mythical in light of the grinding play of college basketball today. After Gather’s tragic passing, the Lions rallied with the city and in front of an underdog nation. LMU scorched the defending National Champion Michigan Wolverines 149-115. It is still an NCAA record for points scored in a game. Jeff Fryer was 11 of 15 from 3-point range setting another lasting record. It is rare to score 115 and lose by 34. Loyola would race through the tournament before they ran into another team of destiny-the UNLV Running Rebels. The Reb’s cruised to a 131-101 in the regional final over LMU on their way to the only national title Las Vegas has ever claimed. It was the last time LMU would participate in March Madness. The 1990 Rebel team that dispatched LMU is still revered in this town. They are more revered for dispatching Duke for the title but they beat them both by thirty. Jerry Tarkanian was their iconic coach and fearless leader. Those Running Rebels are the only national champion Nevada has ever had in a major sport. They beat down the hated Duke Blue Devils by 103-73 score in the championship game. It was a brilliant game pitting a rebel against a legend. The Rebel owned that night. Coach K had never been beaten by that wide a margin in any game let alone the national final. The 1990 UNLV team was the last team to win the title that was not from a traditional power conference. After winning the title, UNLV would enter the 1991 season undefeated before eventually losing to Duke in the national semifinal. Larry Johnson, Stacey Augmon and Greg Anthony were all seniors on the 1991 team and NBA first round picks. Larry Johnson won the Wooden award. He is the only former junior college player to win the award. Tarkanian has a well-deserved statue in front of the Thomas and Mack Center and streets named in his honor here in the desert. Tark would take on UCLA, the NCAA and all comers with his successful teams through the years. He started at Pasadena City College for his first college job. He quickly progressed to CSULB that was known as Long Beach State at that time. Long Beach would be the first college basketball games a Yardling could attend. Our allegiance was to UCLA but who could get seats to see the legendary Bruins in 1970-75. 49er tickets were available to almost all of the games and Tarkanian fielded exciting teams that were fun to watch. Compared to the stoic Wooden teams, Tark had creative teams with personality. In 1971, Long Beach took the eventual national champion Bruins to the final buzzer in a 57-55 after leading by 12 at halftime. UCLA had Wickes, Rowe, Patterson and Bibby. Long Beach had Ratleff and Trapp. Tark would get into Wooden’s head with his aggressive, unpredictable coaching style. Wooden never scheduled a regular season game with this university that was thirty miles away. With his hang dog eyes, short sleeve shirts and a damp towel hanging from his mouth, Tarkanian was Goofus to Wooden’s Gallant. Wooden had the titles and the pedigree. UCLA had skeletons in those alumni closets in those heady days but it was Tarkanian that the NCAA investigated. Tarkanian realized he would never have success coaching in the Legend’s shadow in Southern California and the alleged pedigree of NCAA basketball before the current era of “one and dones”. Everyone was in for four years unless they flunked out, were injured or could show financial hardship. Hardship was not an easy argument even for the most impoverished athletes. Tark would find hardship ballers who wanted a chance and would invest in their future through his vision. He would shepherd, mentor and father his unwashed and un-recruited players. Everyone was a baller but they all might not have been students or choir boys. Many made it to the NBA and were successful but people only seemed to remember the problem children. There was only one photo that surfaced with his players in the Jacuzzi with a known big time gambler and there was Lloyd Daniels. Of course, this was before the telephone let alone the camera phone. Tark might not have lasted in this time, space, and megapixels. Tark regularly recruited in the JuCo ranks. He gave kids a chance and built teams out of these castoffs from the Division One elite. It is amazing to think in these years of one and dones that Tarkanian was ostracized for bringing in Junior College players who stayed for two years. The NCAA constant harassment eventually ended with Tarkanian winning a judgment against the dastardly non-profit. It was wonderful to see the basketball HOF elect Tark to the hall this past year. He barely made it before his recent passing. We can only hope baseball can act with compassion with Pete Rose. Basketball is dominating the Yard house and Mrs. Yard is certainly not as invested. We expect Kentucky to win as do most pools. Calipari has shown an amazing ability to coach freshman to victory. This Kentucky team is exceptional and very well could be one of the best college teams ever. Kentucky is a great team in an average conference. The SEC is a formidable football conference. The fourteen team SEC had four qualifiers for the tournament. Kentucky is the consensus number one seed for the entire dance. The fourteen team SEC had four basketball teams in the tournament. It was remarkable for the Wildcats to finish the regular season undefeated. But the SEC is not a remarkable basketball conference. Kentucky is the only team from the SEC still in the tournament. The other ten teams in the conference are getting ready for spring football. Kentucky is very good but they went into OT to beat Ole Miss at home. They needed two OT’s to beat a Texas A&M team that did not make the tournament. The Wildcats gave up 21 offensive rebounds to an undersized Cincinnati team Saturday afternoon. Arizona and Wisconsin are not undersized. There are more stalwart challenges ahead for the Wildcats than anything they have played in months. The Wildcats are large and talented but also young and untested. They are not going to go down early or without a fight but they may not make to Indy let alone cut down nets. It is not always easy to predict how confident youth might respond when everything you have worked for over a year is challenged. Calipari is a maverick, a villain and a genius. He has cashed a few karma cards and he has never had a program go unpunished by the NCAA under his leadership. OT: It is hard to close the edition without a comment on the Bruins stunning victory over former Bruin Coach Larry Brown and the SMU Mustangs. SMU was the lower seed and a four point favorite. Many contended UCLA did not belong in the tournament. The Yard went to several Bruin games this season and it was a team in transition. They graduated five freshmen and sophomores to the NBA from last year’s squad. The Bruins were steady at the start of the game and took a four point halftime lead. They surged out to a ten point second half lead and looked like the team that went 15-1 at home this year. From that inflection point, the Mustangs went on a 19-0 making the Bruins look like the little cubs who once trailed Kentucky 31-7 at the half this season. And then, a season of tough moments, distilled into 1:10 of dogged determination lead by the coach’s son Bryce Alford. It was a controversial call but he was 8 out of 10 from trey at the time. The Ref did him and the Bruins a solid.

The Yard-Cloud Edition

In the early missives of the Yard, we were distributing our rants via our home computer, the cloud was something that obscured the sun. Our expectations were meager and we lowered the bar as needed during those halcyon early days at the Yard. Our subscriber base over the years has grown dramatically from the original three loyal family members to the hoard of nearly sixty-two today. The technology demands of sustaining this type of subscriber growth could bring more substantial enterprises to their knees. There are few enterprises less substantial than the Yard but it still has been a daunting task. The output of blogs has been stifled by our archaic IT infrastructure or so I was lead to believe at our last budget meeting. After much passionate discussion by our brightest minds and tightest wallets, the Yard is apparently moving to the cloud. It has been promised that it will be transparent. We hope it is or heads will roll. Tony at the Yard is now in a cloud near you. The Yard is trying to plan our annual pilgrimage to the desert for spring training baseball. The weather is always nice, the games are meaningless in an entertaining way. Nice weather and meaningless entertainment always brings out the trim. Back in the day there were $15 ballgame tickets, $6 dollar beers and priceless views. We were having such fun attending this annual event until the Giants won their first World Series Title in 2010. Spring Training was a journey only the most ardent Giant fan made during those years in their desert by the sea. Most fans came to see any games anywhere in the valley. Giant fan only wants to go to Scottsdale and see the Giants and the rest is peripheral damage. Their fervor and the subsequent titles have seen nearly all costs associated with spring training double over the past five years. These Giant fans are coming in droves and paying the freight no matter what it costs. Long time baseball fan is having to move some freight on the side to pay for a seat. It is a robust Bay area bandwagon that will be invading the desert with their shirts, hats and entourages this year. The season of sports blight is upon us. In Los Angeles, the circumstance is more pronounced. The Laker’s season was over on the first night of the season when Julius Randle broke his leg in his first NBA game. The Laker’s season had already ended a few seasons earlier but one can hope. The NBA is on the verge of relevance for 4-6 franchises and none are in Los Angeles. Baseball is trotting out players with jersey numbers above 70 for the next several weeks. The NFL is on their brief sabbatical from the public eye before the draft and March Madness our greatest event is not coming soon enough. So for the next several week’s sports talk will be dominated by two men-Joe Lunardi and Mel Kiper Jr. These are two men who will be referenced and questioned often during the coming weeks. Joe is the preeminent bracketologist for the NCAA basketball tournament. Kiper Jr. is the face of the NFL drafts and mock drafts. Both men are rarely seen any other time of the year except now. They both have mops of hair that Yardlets have found difficult not to get sucked into the vortex of follicles while listening to their diatribes. Lunardi routinely and correctly picks the seedings and brackets for the NCAA tournament before the official results are announced. He is absolutely amazing with his analysis and predictions. He has a thick mop of hair that seems to undulate with his diction. He is accurate and interesting while articulating who is in, who is out all while a beaver rests on his pate. Apparently, Joe’s people got wind of this blog and he is sporting a new look for the 2015 campaign. All the better because he is certainly more entertaining and accurate than Mel Kiper or his hair. Mel Kiper Jr. gets more air time and hair time than Lunardi. He has a fluffed up pompadour that is as alternatively ridiculous as is the stern scowl he maintains across his bespectacled face throughout all interviews. It is a viewing dichotomy. Kiper will conduct his daily mock draft in the months leading up the April 30 draft in NY. His endless promotion of the draft to event status has been a boon for the cash strapped NFL. The NFL draft became a Red Carpet affair in Prime Time. The NFL owes Kiper Junior a tremendous debt for turning the boring player draft into a must see event. Never mind that or that the many mock drafts Kiper conducts he gets few if any of the picks correct. It is great theater just not great prognostication. Overtime: Peyton Manning is a first round NFL Hall of Famer. He has set every record that will be surpassed in the future. Eli Manning may never make the HOF and will never set any records except possibly most career interceptions by a quarterback who has won two Super Bowls. It does not matter because at the end of every Mississippi BBQ at the Manning’s, Eli is the guy who won two Super Bowls. Peyton is the guy who yelled “Omaha” and sang about Nationwide while creating an amazing amount of statistics that produced just a single championship. Peyton will win the endorsement title as well but Eli owns bragging rights. Peyton finally relented and allowed the Broncos to pay him $15 million for one more chance to right this wrong in Oxford. People might say he already has enough money. No one does NOT want $15 million more except Barry Sanders, so far. Peyton, Eli might win another. From the heart: The celebrity social media comments regarding Chris Kyle and American Sniper are deplorable. Kyle did what he was asked to do by the US Military. He completed his task with bone shattering precision. He protected his brethren against extreme odds and saved American lives in a war not of his choosing. Al Qaeda had a bounty on his head. The movie is riveting and by all accounts an accurate depiction of Kyle’s efforts over four tours of duty in Iraq. The impact it had on him and his family as he tries to assimilate back into family life is the story. His exploits were legendary but the impact war has had on all our veterans is unconscionable. Seth Rogen gets to make comedies about assassinating North Korea’s dictator because of the freedoms people like Chris Kyle have fought for since 1776. Michael Moore gets to make movies regaling institutions and governments while accumulating $50 million in wealth from these same liberties afforded by our constitution. Depicting American Sniper as a propaganda film denigrates all of the heroic efforts and the troubling despair our US Veterans have encountered. Film makers, actors and their liberal brethren can castigate the US government for their role in Kyle’s mission but not him. Chris Kyle is an American hero.