Overdosing on basketball this week?

The LSU Tigers take it all in Sunday when they were announced as a No. 3 seed in the South Region of the NCAA Tournament. 
Photo from LSU web site; please note the man on the far right -- sports information guru Kent Lowe (from Shreveport).

     The NCAA Tournament -- men's basketball, that is --is always a helluva lot more interesting if you have a team in it.
     This season, I'm interested. It hasn't been that way all that often the past 26 years.
      At the risk of taking verbal or written shots, considering the past couple of weeks, thank goodness for LSU's team.
      OK, it is what it is, and everyone has their opinion -- and I have heard and read plenty -- but I have enjoyed watching these Tigers. They have not (laugh here) cheated their fans.
      Whether the NCAA, or some of the nation's sports scribes, don't think LSU deserves to be in this NCAA Tournament because of the recruiting/payment allegations is a moot point. The Tigers, as we watched on TV Sunday evening, are in the bracket.
      Which is why, for the first time in four years, I watched the NCAA Tournament Selection Show on CBS. 
      Lot more fun waiting to see where a team you like is seeded, who the first-round opponent is going to be, and the time and place of the game (and hopefully, games).
      Would love to see Louisiana Tech back in the tournament some day; it has been 28 years. Used to be that the Lady Techsters were automatic for the women's tournament, but those days have passed, too.
     I am not the basketball junkie many people are, so without LSU or Tech involved, much of the recent NCAAs have been played without me. Love the game, always have, but it is not 24-7-365 with me. I can take it, or leave it.
     (And, dang it, no "Big Dance" references for me. Sick of it.)
     Do have a rooting interest in the Tennessee Vols because it's the SEC, I like their coach and their players, and mostly because son-in-law cares a lot. Even the non-sports-gene daughter cares some because of son-in-law's job (sports talk radio host in Knoxville). They are Vols.
    Now, about LSU ... as I gently reminded Vols' fans, the regular-season SEC champions (pending investigation).
    Appreciate how these Tigers played -- and won -- so many close games. It is a talented, and fearless, and mostly young team. The point guard (Tremont Waters) is fun to watch. So is the senior second guard (Skyler Mays), a real team leader. The big freshman center (Naz Reid) has a world of potential if -- when -- he harnesses his wild streaks. 
     The suspended head coach? Helluva job, I suppose. But you have to wonder about his ethics, don't you?
     Something else to wonder -- how much did the reported FBI tape of coach talking to agent/runner play into the NCAA Tournament committee's bracket consideration.
     Maybe this is an unfair thought, but going into the Selection Show, my suspicion was that LSU would not get a break. 
     Yale is a very interesting first-round opponent, and not likely a pushover; a second-round game is going to be tougher; and if the Tigers do get to the Sweet Sixteen (no given), likely to face Michigan State and then Duke, that's a difficult route. Of course, no NCAA Tournament route is "easy."
     Quick history lesson: When Dale Brown was the LSU coach, once he got the program rolling, the Tigers were in the NCAAs 13 times in a 15-year stretch -- including 10 in a row. So it became routine.
      Since 1993, this is only the seventh time in 26 seasons LSU is "in." So, enjoy ... no matter what the circumstances.
      An omen? In  2006, when LSU beat Duke, then Texas, in the regional in Atlanta to reach the Final Four, the games in the first two rounds were won in Jacksonville, Fla. That's where these Tigers will tee it up in Thursday's first-of-the-day games (11:40 a.m. tipoff, Central time, TruTV).
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     More thoughts, including some items gleamed from a recent Basketball Times issue ...
     • Tulane is looking for a new men's head coach and, yes, if LSU possibly will be, too, soon, is there a better candidate than the just-fired-at-Texas A&M Billy Kennedy? Grew up in New Orleans, son-in-law of former Jesuit Blue Jays state championship coach Kevin Trower, former Tulane assistant and former head coach at Centenary and Southeastern Louisiana. And, from what everyone says and writes, darned nice guy and pretty successful coach everywhere, including  A&M (except for this season).
      • Bob Ryan is one of the most popular and knowledgeable basketball writers ever, an NBA expert.  Writing in his "Journal" for Basketball Times, his topic was seeing games in 200 college gyms/arenas. Here is one paragraph that will interest some of my Fort Worth friends:
     "Being dazed and amazed while watching a game on a stage at UT-Arlington's original Texas Hall. Yes, I said, 'stage.' " 
      • A Basketball Times column on women's hoops by Rhiannon Potkey (Knoxville News Sentinel, one of my stops) is about Grambling State senior guard Shakyla Hill and her historic two career quadruple-doubles (double figures in points, rebounds, assists and steals). 
     What I did not know (and maybe you did not either): Hill, who played high school ball in Little Rock, is the younger sister of Raheem Appleby, who as the article noted, passed Karl Malone for seventh place on Louisiana Tech's all-time men's scoring list. Small world.
     • Jim Sukup, editor of Collegiate Basketball News and publisher of The RPI Report for 27 years, etc., writing about "other" postseason tournaments, noted that the CIT (Collegeinsider.com Tournament), which began in 2009, calls some of its first-round games "Classics" to honor "coaching greats from the past" for their contributions to the sport.
     One of those honored: The Riley Wallace Classic, in 2017, named for the former Centenary player/assistant coach/head coach and 20-year, 334-wins University of Hawaii head coach. Riley, the redhead-turned-gray, now lives in Las Vegas with time in Hawaii.
     • One for Notre Dame and Northwestern (La.) State fans: A long segment from the book Mike Brey: Keeping It Loose, by the longtime Irish head coach who played three seasons for the NSU Demons in the late 1970s. The book was written with John Heisler, the former senior associate athletic director at Notre Dame (started as assistant sports information director).
     Brey has several references to then-NSU coach Tynes Hildebrand, referring to him as "... just a typical southern guy. He was very steady and a really good man." 
     They still have a strong relationship. But Brey also refers, a couple of times, to Tynes being fired from the job in 1980.
      Not correct. 
      Unless I am mistaken and as I remember it (looked it up), Coach Hildebrand -- subject of a five-part blog series here two years ago -- resigned that job after 15 seasons, the last couple difficult ones. He was not forced out. So I think Brey misfired on those shots. 
        • Joe Connor wrote about his "365 games in 365 days," his continuing travels around the country attending basketball games. Big deal. Hey, Joe Rhodes -- our friend from Shreveport and for years American traveler and owner/driver of the Traipsmobile -- did that twice more than three and four decades ago.
       

Postseason? How about postmortem?

    With apologies to my LSU friends, and my Tennessee, TCU and UT Arlington friends, our men's basketball teams don't need to be playing tonight.

     If you are excited about being in the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) -- or in TCU's case, something called the College Basketball Invitational -- have at it. I'm not joining you.
    If a team can't play in the NCAA Tournament, it shouldn't play anymore at all. Thank you.
    LSU's goal -- or anyone else's -- should not be the NIT. That tournament, once upon a time, was played entirely (with only 12 or 14 or 16 teams) at Madison Square Garden in New York City -- the only reason it was glamorous.
    They could have quit after the 1970 tournament, which was glorious because LSU was in it (the Tigers' first postseason appearance since a Bob Pettit-led NCAA trip in 1954). That gave us four extra games in Pistol Pete Maravich's career -- and he had a spectacular Garden party.
     After that, don't know that I've ever cared much (or any) about the NIT, exception being an occasional Louisiana Tech appearance.
      So I read this Monday: There are 148 men's teams playing in the basketball postseason -- 68 in the NCAA, 32 in the NIT, 32 in the College Invitational Tournament, 16 in the College Basketball Invitational.
     Too many, way too many.
      Like the college football bowl season ... and I'd do away with about 20 of those bowl games right now. Teams with 7-5 and 6-6 records don't need to keep playing.
       The college basketball season starts far too soon, and lasts far too long. There is now a Preseason NIT and dozens of other warmup tournaments in November. I'm still footballing then, OK.
      And now we're playing basketball on several fronts deep into baseball spring training.
      Here's what else makes no sense about the NIT ... LSU is playing at Oregon tonight, UT Arlington is at Washington. Exactly how many Tigers and Mavericks fans are able to make that trip?
       Used to be, the NIT would have regional matchups in the first round. At least the organizers -- which is now an NCAA-run committee -- put Tennessee, Middle Tennessee, Savannah State and Marshall in the same pairings for the first two rounds. That's regional.
     Why not, say, LSU and UT Arlington, Oral Roberts and Ole Miss or Mississippi State together in a "pod?"
        I can even be critical of the NCAA Tournament expanding. Look, it was perfect at 64 teams. Didn't need the expansion to 65 -- the Tuesday "play-in" game -- and now it's 68, with four "play-in" games (two tonight, two Wednesday).
      The NCAA's first two full-schedule days are compelling -- the prospects of the smaller schools from the smaller conferences (Butler, Valpo, Western Kentucky, Northwestern State, etc.) knocking off one of the big names. Great stuff, great television as they roll from game to game. It's wall-to-wall basketball.
       It's almost as good in the women's tournament, but not quite. Honestly, the parity in the men's game doesn't carry over to the women. If they cut the women's NCAA field to 32 instead of 64, a lot of bad matchups would be avoided.
       Sorry if that sounds sexist. I wish there were more competitive women's teams. It's just not so.
       Anyway, if you're a college hoops fan, enjoy the games. I'm only going to watch some of them. Won't even watch LSU at Oregon live on TV tonight (Bea wants to watch the Dallas Mavericks' game, as always, and the postgame show).
       Besides, it's the NIT -- the Not Interesting Tournament.  And that's not even the CIT or the CBI ... or the CIA. Whatever.