Top25

This is becoming a bit of a habit, us meeting like this. But if you are reading this you really want to try out Wix. Go on then.

Compare that to the beginning of the season list below ...

Can The Jayhawks Contain Michigan?
by Douglas Black, ENERSPEC, March 26, 2013

Only weeks after both programs were positioning at the Number 1 spot in AP and USA Today Polls, the Kansas Jayhawks pulled a Number 1 seed while the Wolverines of Michigan seeded 4th in the NCAA Tournament.

On January 27, 2013 Eamonn Brennan of ESPN.com made a case for why either team had a case to be ranked number one.

Why Michigan should be No.1; On a per-possession (or really any other) basis, Michigan's offense is the best in the country. The Wolverines have scored 1.21 points per possession overall this season, and in seven Big Ten games they've hardly slowed down (1.20). Thanks to point guard and player of the year candidate (frontrunner?) Trey Burke, the Wolverines have the second-lowest turnover rate in the country as of this writing. Thanks to Burke, Tim Hardaway Jr., Glenn Robinson III, Nik Stauskas, and the rest of this lineup, the Wolverines convert all of those Burke-crafted possessions into points more often than not.

Why Kansas should be No. 1; (The Jayhawks) feature redshirt freshman guard Ben McLemore, who has blown up any and all of the already high offseason expectations about his evolution into stardom. McLemore could well play his way to the No. 1 overall pick in this summer's NBA draft, and he can score against college defenses at will.

No one player can carry a team, at least not unless your initials are MJ. Jayhawk freshman guard McLemore scored only two points against North Carolina, which is not supposed to happen. His 6.5 points per game in Kansas’ two tourney games is well below his season average.

But if McLemore is firing on all cylinders Friday, the Wolverines will find containment problematic.
The Wolverines on the other hand, have a stable of talent, including Big 10 Player of the year Trey Burke. Burke has been putting up big numbers, leading the squad in scoring with 18.8 ppg.

Glenn Robinson III and Mitch McGary have also stepped it up for the Big Dance, averaging 17 and 17.5 ppg respectively. And Hardaway is hitting the three pointers with lethal precision.

In either case it will be close, perhaps too close to predict with any reasonable certainty. After all, who could predict all of the upsets of this tourney thus far? There will be no upset between the Maize & Blue and Jayhawks - both teams still deserve No.1, as Eamonn Brennan opined in January.

Again, per Brennan of CNN.com,

The Wolverines could have been the last unbeaten team in the country had they found a way to overcome Ohio State in Columbus two Sundays ago, but their brutally cold start led to a 56-53 loss and robbed them of the chance to be the No. 1 team in the country. – January 27, 2013.

Some predictions and the results of some overtime ‘ciphering by my Magic Eight Ball (a long and cumbersome, overly complicated algorithm that takes all irrelevancies into account);

Kansas has a 52% likelyhood of winning, the line we would give is – 1.5 (if we were Vegas).

Now compare that to Nate Silver, the number crunching guru at the New York Times who gives Kansas a 54.9% likelyhood of advancing, current Vegas odds giving both schools 5-2 odds of making the Final Four, and a line (today) of -2.0 to Kansas, and you can see why predictions are hard (especially about the future – Yogi Berra).

But if Michigan can best Florida after Kansas, and Ohio State advance past Louisville, a Michigan – Ohio State Championship would be a dream come true for this blogger, and sports media in general.

The Biggest Rivalry in college sports punching the Biggest Dance Card of all.

One can only hope.

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Will This Be the End Of the Road For the Explorers?
posted Wednesday, March 27, 2013 by Douglas Black, ENERSPEC

Exploring uncharted territory is exactly what the 13th seed LaSalle Explorers are doing this week, taking on the 9th seed Shockers from Wichita State University (a moniker not short on irony).

Becoming only the second “First Four” team to ever advance past the round of 64, the Explorers head into their Sweet 16 matchup versus fellow shocker (pun intended) Wichita State with a chip on their shoulder.

Had it not been for the 15th seed FGCU Eagles making the Sweet 16 round, (only one team can say they were the first), LaSalle would have been this year’s Cinderfella Squad with their own very-first-ever performance.

Wichita State had a very respectable season in 2011, culminating in an invite to the Big Dance where a much stronger Butler squad ended their run in the second round.

WSU followed up this season with an impressive 28-8 overall record, winning a dozen of those games in the Missouri Valley Conference.

And the Shockers are also missing out on a limelight that should be, but let’s not lose perspective. Yes, any team can win, just look at Butler from a few years ago. But chances are, no.

Nate Silver, the New York Times stats and likelihood prognosticator, says Cinderella Eagles from Florida Gulf Coast have merely a 5.5% chance of advancing to the next round. On the other hand, either LaSalle or WSU will advance to the Elite Eight. Someone will win.

Silver gives the advantage to Wichita State with a 71% chance of beating La Salle. With all due respect to Mr. Silver’s uncanny ability as demonstrated during the recent Presidential and Congressional Elections, our Magic Eight Ball disagrees.

Granted, the track record in these first rounds has been less than stellar for Magic Eight Ball, but whose has guessed a string of upsets? We are going with LaSalle to continue their Cinderfella run because the number crunching produced a pro-Explorers line of -1.5 points.

Slim, yes, but what the hell, we believe.