And in the end...

The Final four, the culmination of March Madness, I even think I picked Kansas back in December, or whenever it was that they kicked BC’s ass so soundly. Of course when I filled out my bracket I had UNC and when I was asked who would win before tip-off I said Memphis, but I think I’ll concentrate on my December prediction. I’ll admit that I was definitely rooting for Memphis; I’ve become infatuated with Derrick Rose’s talents. The Miami Heat were widely thought to be tanking for a shot at Michael Beasley, but I think they might want to be tanking for a shot at Rose instead. I loved seeing Memphis put it to UCLA, for some reason UCLA fans and supporters had become unbearable to me. Between the “no love for Love” debate, and their fans complaining about the constant reminders of every call going their way for a couple months. Listen, that’s the price you pay for getting a series of awful calls go in your favor, you got the wins but in exchange you have to listen to the complaints. Anyway, I didn’t mind Kansas winning. After years of not winning despite having arguably the best overall talent in the last fifteen years, why not have them breakthrough and win. Bill Self like Roy Williams before him had been labeled as a guy who couldn’t win big games, as recently as three weeks ago there was talk of Self being fired without a great run, of course now he’s the subject of a bidding war between Kansas and his Alma Mater Oklahoma State.

So some final thoughts on the college basketball season. Today on ESPN’s Around the Horn they asked if this Kansas team was one of the best ever in college basketball. The question is ridiculous on several levels. First, while they did have a very good season, they certainly didn’t dominate for the entire season. But more importantly, the best players don’t stay in college anymore. Derrick Rose was the best player in this tournament, and he was a damned freshman. He isn’t one of the all-time greatest freshman either, and next year he’ll be in the NBA, with all the other truly elite players. No team of this era would win against the best teams from the 90s. To call them one of the greatest teams of all-time you have to compare them with teams like the Early 90s Dukies. I’m not even sure if this team could’ve kept the game close against the Laettner/Hurley Duke team. How about the Fab Five Michigan teams, they didn’t even win a title, but I don’t think they would’ve had too much trouble disposing of a team like Kansas. I don’t mean to come down too hard on Kansas, they were the best team this year and deserve to have their day, but we should also remember that college basketball isn’t what it used to be despite what all of its fanatical supporters would claim.

One more quick sports note for today. Bill Buckner threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Red Sox home opener today. The fans gave him a huge standing ovation that lasted for more than two and a half minutes once he got to the mound. All the sportscasts declared that the Boston fans had finally forgiven Buckner. Enough time had past, and the Sox had won two championships, the fans could be so magnanimous as to forgive poor Bill. No longer would they ask “how dare he?” The real question is can Bill forgive the Red Sox fans. Today wasn’t about the redemption of Bill Buckner, it was about the redemption of Red Sox nation. Bill forgives them for their years of unwarranted abuse, and the applause was just an indication that the fans finally deserved his forgiveness. Bill never had to be forgiven, he gave everything he had to the game, he hobbled out there everyday and performed as a near Hall of Fame level player. He made one error in extra innings of a tie game and for some reason that’s all that anyone wants to remember. It’s all part of the strange relationship between athletes and fans. The fans feel like the players owe them something, the players somehow represent them because they play for their favorite team. It’s all very baffling, but somehow Bill Buckner and Steve Bartman and many others have been sucked up by this bizarre fixation and had their lives altered forever. Today Red Sox nation is forgiven its past discretions but doomed to repeat them someday. Today we can cheer and lets just hope we actually learned something through all of this.

And I’m Baaack!!

So much has gone on these last couple weeks outside of politics, and it’s all in The Bender’s wheelhouse. The most important thing that went down of course was the final episode of the RW/RR Challenge on MTV. The Gauntlet wrapped up and while the Rookies won with their slim compact team, it may have been a career ending moment Big Easy. Eric aka “Big Easy” couldn’t finish the grueling final mission. I don’t know exactly how hard the final mission was, but I can’t believe how poorly he performed. I watched the reunion show this week to see if there’d be an explanation of what had gone wrong for him, but there was none, so I don’t want to be overly critical, it was obvious that he wasn’t exactly a pro athlete and not in ship shape, so he probably had some fear inside that his life could’ve been in jeopardy. All that said, I just don’t think he’ll be treated the same if he comes back for future Challenges. There was one interesting thing that caught my eye from the reunion show this time around. And no, it wasn’t that Coral came out guns blazing (not referring to her boobs.) It was that a few of the contestants seemed to go out of their way to state that they were successful in real life outside of their roles as MTV celebrities. I really enjoyed the idea that a lot of these people were making their livings as MTV personalities, perhaps that’s a thing of the past but hopefully there will be a book about the lives of reality TV celebs, sooner rather than later.

In other huge reality TV news, Chekezie Ezie was voted of American Idol. For me he was truly the most likeable contestant, especially more so than that little fraud David Archuleta. Chekezie was done in by two things this week. First, that damned Kristy Lee Cook singing one of the most patriotic songs ever written. I could just imagine hundreds of thousands of votes coming in from the red states on her behalf, and those votes may or may not have been preceded by conversations that anyone who doesn’t vote for her doesn’t love America. In fact I heard there was a situation in Texas where a fight broke out because someone wasn’t voting for Kristy and the result was that the “un-American” voter was banished to Massachusetts. So that person got what they deserved. The second big factor for Chekezie getting voted off was that he kept singing songs that no one had ever heard of. I remember his singing some Luther Vandross song at some point that had also been sung by Mariah I think, but aside from that I had no idea what he was singing. He even managed to find two Beatles songs that no one had ever heard of. But no use crying over it now, Chekezie is gone and all he got was some stupid video montage with Fat Ruben Studdard singing in the background. What we need is America to smarten up and vanquish that little devil spawn David Archuleta. Perhaps my words are too strong, but I can’t stand these little child star types, especially when they keep singing preachy songs like “Another Day in Paradise” and “Imagine.” He’s too young and inexperienced to understand those songs, at least “Imagine” anyway.

Have to at least weigh in on the NCAA tourney. I watched it all, the first day sucked. Duke survived a scary game but ultimately won, and there’s nothing more disappointing than that, and when they did lose it was to West Virginia, who is coached by the very hate-able “Huggy Bear” Bob Huggins. Other quick observations from the first weekend, I was quite under-whelmed by Michael Beasley. This guy is supposed to be the top pick, but he couldn’t even look good against Wisconsin. Wisconsin is a good defensive team, but if you’re a top star you have to be able shine on the big stage. Long story short, The Miami Heat are tanking for no reason. Stephen Curry was a revelation, the hype for him began last season and I poo poo’d it because I thought he was a product of his father’s fame. But he may be the best college player around before his career is over at Davidson. He’s an amazing shooter and undersized shooting guards are perfect for the college game. His shooting is so good that he may end up in the NBA someday, despite his diminutive size. Davidson really was the show-stealers of the first weekend, not only because they’re a double digit seed making it to the sweet sixteen, but also because they knocked off the only true title contender who has been eliminated so far. Georgetown really broke a lot of hearts because expectations were so high, they had probably the best Center in college basketball in Roy Hibbert, along with a top senior point man in Jonathan Wallace. They had a comfortable second half lead but it all fell apart, worst of all for many fans, CBS was showing other games for the bulk of their collapse so the comeback really seemed to come out of nowhere. Week two is set up well despite the eliminations of Duke and Georgetown, hardly any low seeds have stayed around, and one of them is Villanova who while a low seed had high expectations all season and has seemingly put it together for now. My last impression from week 1 is that Kevin Love is a really good college player, but I just don’t see him making it in the NBA. He had two clutch turnaround jumpers from the post to help win it against A&M and complete the comeback, but he’s too slow and not tall enough to ever be an NBA star. Perhaps a good conditioning program could change all that and he’ll be an all-star someday, I’ve been wrong before, but he just doesn’t seem to want it badly enough right now.

That’s way too much for now, so I’ll end it there. I double posted so don’t forget to scroll down and read about the Clintons if you’re bored enough.

-Bender Out

Great Oden's Raven

The title is a quote from Anchorman, I know that it would be more fitting to go with a title that celebrated Florida given that they won the tourney, but I like this one better. Plus the whole "It's good...To Be...A Florida Gator" thing just doesn;t come through that well in print. Anyway, for my purposes, Oden was the main story because I don;t care as much about who wins these things as I do about who could possibly help the Celtics win a few playoff series in the next decade. I'm not trying to be greedy but winning three playoff series since Larry Bird retired is just not gonna cut it. But I digress, Oden looked frickin awesome and I want him more than ever. He had at least two incredible blocks that made me salivate plus he showed decent touch on his post moves and he's already a better free throw shoote than Tim Duncan or Shaq. The other big story from an NBA fans perspective was Corey Brewer emerging as the best pro prospect on the Florida. The hyperbole got a little bit out of control when Billy Packer started claiming that Brewer was effectively guarding both Oden and Conley on seperate plays. Neither Dennis Rodman nor Scottie Pippen could've pulled off that feet, and they're the two greatest defensive small forwards ever. Brewer is a fine player, but he's the type who fills out the highlite reels moreso than dominates a game. I also couldn;t help but notice he acts kinda like a douchebag on the court, to paraphrase John Thompson's comments after the game, it's a good thing they play so well on the court because otherwise their shenanigans drive me crazy. After a timeout half way through the first half he walked away from his own bench and started clapping towards the OSU players, then later in the game he wagged his finger in Oden's face after Oden went for a pump fake. Of course all of this was far more acceptable than seeing Noah perform his tired act in the midst of falling to the bottom of the lottery in next June's draft. The only way I will ever root fo Jo Noah is if he does his hair like Sanjaya (the ponytail mohawk) on draft night. Until he realizes that he needs that hairdo, I shall not root for him. The one thing that I kept thinking during the broadcast monday night was, when did Lenny Kravitz get so old?

The main point of discussion for fans of college basketball should be , where does this Florida team rank in terms of all-time greats? Obviously they can;t be too high on the list because the dynamics of the college game have changed so much in the last twenty years, but given the fact that they one two in a row they have to be considered as better than any team this decade. They really played well together, they all knew their roles and were willing to let their teammates shine if the situation called for it, but I have trouble imagining this team being able win championships back in the early 90s. Certainly the Duke team who won back to back was better. I think that the UNLV teams of those years were a lot better as well. They were actually very similarly put together, but UNLV had Larry Johnson back when he was an explosive force and Greg Anthony was easily better than either Taurean Green or Lee Humphrey. Couls this Florida team have beaten the '93 UNC Tarheels? I think they would've had a shot but I still would take UNC if I was a betting man. All that being said, this team has officially put Florida on the map as a basketball power from this point forward. I was amazed to hear that Florida hadn't made the tournament before twenty years ago. I believe that was back in the days os the M&M boys, Vernon Maxwell and Andrew Moten, not even sure if Dwayne Schintzius was on the scene yet. but starting with Lon Kruger's run in the Early 90s and now with Billy Donovan leading them to two titles and a runner-up in 2000 they have been the most succesful south of Durham, NC.

The other subplot revolves around Billy Donovan's future with the team. I gotta believe that he'll hang around. Sure Kentucky is offering a bit more money, but there's something to be said for creating a national powerhouse that will last for a long time. Kentucky already has it's coaching legends, but Donovan could be to Florida what Coach K is to Duke. He could be the one true legend that created the program, he'll have plenty of money to live comfortably for the rest of his life and someday they'll name the arena after him. none of that can ever be his in Kentucky, and although they'll be rebuilding next year, they'll be a contender again just as easily as he could build UK into a contender.

On a final note, Billy Packer used the term "fag" on the Charlie Rose show last week, and I want him fired from announcing for CBS. I'm not a very PC person, and I think it's ridiculous that someone in his position would throw out that term in a normal conversation or interview. But really I just want him fired because I think he takes away from the broadcast, he seemingly takes the wrong side on most debates and sometimes during instant replays I honestly believe that he isn;t watching the monitor, perhaps signalling to a vendor instead. So I'm gonna try to use this incident to get Packer out fo there. Who's with me? No one? Oh well, in that case.

-Bender Out

The latest of my hiatuseses

It's been a while since I posted, due to a combination of laziness and a nice trip down DC for a wedding. Most of you already know this of course because at least five of the ten people who actually read my blog were at said wedding. The wedding was kick ass, it was in Georgetown, and needless to say I'm a much bigger fan of the area than I am of the local university's basketball team. I must pat myself on the back for looking phenomenal in my tux, and I was even told as much by several admirers, including one very fetching cougar who was all about my set, but I digress. Anyway as a result of the weekend's festivities I didn't watch nearly as much basketball as I would normally have and can only speak on a few limited aspects of the second weekend of the NCAA tournament. So here are a few things I couldn't keep my mouth shut about. First, a few people cried about a supposed travel by Jeff Green in Georgetown's exciting win over Vanderbilt, and my take is this: how come guards travel almost everytime they come into the lane and no one says boo, but everytime a big man takes two and a halfsteps they can;t believe there was no whistle? If you go by the rule book definition on travels there's probably a travel on every possession, and just because guards are smaller, quicker and smoother doesn't mean that they should get away with it more, although they do. The one game I actually got to watch this weekend was Ohio State's huge comeback against Tennessee. The Buckeye's had no business getting that far down in the first place, but they really kept their cool and allowed the Tennessee style to even itself out, then when the game was on the line Oden was able to make his presence felt on the defensive end. Once again proving why Oden needs to be the number one pick in next year's draft.

I was able to follow the Georgetown-UNC game on the radio, and with five minutes left UNC had seemingly taken control of the game and were up ten, but after that point the Tarheels fell apart completely, I wish I'd been able to see the game on TV but this game was so good that even translated on the radio. Not only have Hibbert and Jeff Green established themselves as sure lottery picks, but I'm starting to come around on Tyler Hansbrough and I'm starting to think that someday we'll be looking back at this game as a classic featuring six future lottery picks. The most interesting subplot for me was seeing JT3 outcoach Roy Williams. Williams supposedly had gotten the monkey off his back a couple years ago by winning the national title, but it seems to me like there was just too much talent on that team for Williams' poor game coaching to take over. Between his days at Kansas and now at UNC he has arguably coached the most talent of out of any college coach over the last twenty years and to see him with only one title has got to be considered a disappointment. Meanwhile John Thompson III is emerging as a superior coach to even his father. In some ways it reminds me of how Bill Belichick emerged from Parcells' shadow to become the superior head coach. You would think that equalling the legend would be impossible, let alone surpassing it, but JT3 already seems to be a superior game coach and if he can continue to get the big recruits he could have a more succesful career than his legendary father.

Anyway, that's all I've got about college basketball for now, and in the world of sports there really isn't much else going on as best exemplified by the fact that Michael Ray richardson's "anti-semitic" remarks have dominated sports radio today. What Richardson said was stupid, but I really didn't care to hear about the dumb comments of the head coach of the Albany Patroons. The one silver lining in all of this was an anecdote that made it to the air today involving something richardson had said as a player. When he was playing for the Nets one particularly difficult season he declared "This ship be sinking." Then when the reporter asked him how low it could sink he said, "The skies the limit." In case you were wondering, richardson, a former NBA All-Star is far from the most famous coach to ever lead the Patroons, in the mid-eighties their coach was Phil Jackson, so maybe someday Richardson will end up as a coaching legend, who knows?

One last sports note, Jonathan Papelbon has been moved back into the closers role this year. Good news for my fantasy baseball team, but bad news in the big picture. It's a waste to have someone of Papelbon's talent level in the role of closer. The contribution of a closer as compared to that of a good starter has become completely overrated in the last couple years. If I have to endure one more person making the point that Mariano Rivera has been the most important player for the Yankees over the last ten years, I may vomit. At this point he's one of only two guys who has been there for the full time period, along with Derek Jeter, who was not the player as a rookie, that he is now. But more importantly, if Rivera had been a number one or number two starter for those ten years he would've been a hell of a lot more valuable. People see the closer as such a critical role because it's a very obvious thing, any idiot can see that when a closer blows a save he cost them the game, but it's a lot more difficult to quantify the value of a high level starter. Hopefully the Red Sox can fnd a less talented guy to be a top closer next year and Papelbon can start to fulfill more of his potential, give him a shot at greatness, and if he can't quite hack it, they'll move him back to being a dominant closer.

Those are my sports thoughts for today, I'll be back soon to fill you in on the world of entertainment.

-Bender Out

The Madness Has Begun

In some people's minds the official start of March Madness is this week with the announcement of the field of 65. But really the madness has been going on since at least Thursday with the start of the Big East tourney, if not even earlier. A few quick thoughts before I get into the specifics of the brackets. I think Tyler Hansbrough averaged at least two elbows/slaps to opponents faces during the ACC tournament. He pulled a Kobe on Jared Dudley during the semi-final and pretty much intentionally punched Dudley in the face under the guise of getting tangled up, then pulled a similar, although more incidental, move on Brandon Costner in the final. To me this is just more evidence that when Gerald Henderson broke his nose, that was no accident. The whole ACC Tournament showed two things, first, UNC was by far the best team in the league, and second, the league was very deep. I feel like if FSU were in any other league, they be dancing right now, unfortunately you can't take two thirds of any league, no matter how good they are at this point.

The highlight of this weekend to me was the crazy finishes in the mid and low majors, the league tournaments in these conferences really are a microcosm of the National Championship Tournament. These teams are fighting for their lives and just making the tourney is the equivalent of winning the big dance. The best finish came in the MAC where Miami of Ohio hit a miracle shot to win a berth. The only low major game that I watched completely was Albany's upset of Vermont up in Burlington. The level of play is obviously noticeably worse, but the action can be really intense and the effort is the same if not better form any game you watch all season.

OK, onto my review of the seedings. The most important part of the selection show is of course the snubs, because their season just ended when they thought they still had a shot. I'm especially sensitive to their plight, I remember in 2003 when BC seemingly had done enough to get into the tournament, they had ten wins in the Big East during the regular season and had made it to the semi-finals of the Big East tourney, as if they needed more to fill out their resume, they beat NC State, another bubble team, handily on the road and they had beaten UConn by 20 in Storrs. But the selection came and went without BC's name being called, as you can tell I still have bad memories of it to this day. The biggest shocker today, Syracuse was left out. The Orange had seemingly locked up a spot with a huge win over Georgetown a couple weeks back, but now the Orange's season is really over, believe me, they don;t care that much about the NIT. Not as surprising was FSU being left out. But they seemed to deserve it more than a lot of the other bubble teams . They upset Florida, the team who was named the top seed overall by the selection committee, and they also won at Duke, which was still a decent feet this year. The Seminoles didn;t lose to anyone outside of the RPI top 50, but unfortunately the ACC was so deep this year that they were the eighth best team in a twelve team league, and the committee didn;t want to take that many teams from one league.

As for the teams that got in, my hometown Eagles got the seed they probably deserved, and they should be able to beat Texas Tech in the first round, but it's no sure thing. Their reward if they can beat Texas Tech? Getting beat up by Georgetown. I guess the NCAA wants them to get eliminated by one of their former Big East rivals every year, as they were by Villanova last year. Best case scenario would have been to get a six seed, and hope to play one of the weaker three seeds in the second round, but all in all they'd have to view a second round exit as a nice accomplishment. speaking of Georgetown, I've decided that the Big East was a one team league similar to the way the ACC was dominated by one team. Georgetown seemingly got the best draw out of anyone in terms of having an easy ride to the Elite 8. If they're playing against UNC for a chance at the final four, I'll have a lot of trouble choosing who to root for. They're probably my two least favorite teams right now, the one highlight might come when Tyler Hansbrough tries to pull his junk and either Pat Ewing Jr. or Roy Hibbert knocks him out. I know it's a long shot, but really it's the only scenario I'd enjoy. By the way, the dumbest comment of the day came on ESPN, Digger Phelps said that Georgetown would sneak up on everyone. Who the hell are they gonna sneak up on you moron, they're one of the favorites to win the whole thing, but you think they're gonna sneak up on everyone. Why don;t you just concentrate on finding a puce Highliter to match your new tie, and let the real analysts say something.

A few other notes, how did Florida get ranked as the number 1 overall team? Are we just ignoring their three game losing streak because they dominated their weak opponents in the SEC tournament. They let recent performance greatly dictate every other seed in the tourney, but not this one for some reason. Ohio State deserved that honor, especially because they dominated a worthy team, Wisconsin, in their conference tourney. I was gonna make my predictions for the Final four, but I'm not very good at that sort of thing, and I'd probably just end up naming the four number 1 seeds. I will predict that UNC will meet Texas in the sweet 16, leading to a ton of people predicting Texas to win, but UNC will handle them easily. I'll also predict a couple upsets for Georgia Tech against UNLV and Wisconsin, and maybe even a trip to the elite 8. I'm also going to begrudgingly predict a run for Duke, I'm not sold on either Pitt or UCLA in the tournament. Of course I made these predictions about UCLA last year. My last prediction is that I'll play hookie on Thursday and Friday afternoon.

Can;t wait til Thursday at noon, til then...

-Bender Out