Unverified Voracity Does Not Have A Relevant Picture
DEATH STARE. Charles Matthews remains the most expressive Michigan player in recent history.
A rousing hurrah was detected. Beilein:
John Beilein, on WTKA this morning, said he wishes he could have been inside "one of the local drinking establishments" during the Florida game to witness the reaction to Isaiah Livers' dunk.
— Andrew Kahn (@AndrewKahn) March 26, 2019
Poole working through it. Ethan Sears looks at Poole one year after the shot:
The questions about the shot against Houston flowed towards Poole on Saturday. Inevitably, they always will. Jordan Poole will never escape it.
One day after the season, Poole was working with Isaiah Livers in the gym and stopped to take a picture. Livers made fun, saying something to the effect of, “You made the big shots, Mr. Big Shots.” Poole snarled.
“I don’t wanna be known for only just the shot,” Poole said. “Know what I’m saying? Being able to put all the hard work that I have in, being able to start, get the opportunity. Last year I think I only played 11 minutes, something like that, in that game.”
[After THE JUMP: the worst tournament in sports tops itself!]
Michael Avenatti is bad at crime, and this is relevant to us now. Dude got arrested for attempting to extort Nike. The attempted grift was thus: fired AAU coach threatens to rat on Nike's participation in the same kind of recruit purchasing that various Adidas runners got jail time for.
Bol Bol and his handlers also received large sums from Nike. The receipts are clear as day. A lot of people at Nike will have to account for their criminal conduct, starting with Carlton DeBose & moving higher up. The diversion charade they orchestrated against me will be exposed
— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) March 26, 2019
DeAndre Ayton was also named as a guy who took the money.
Avenatti took this information-type substance and threatened to have a press conference at a time set up to maximally damage Nike's stock price, and then demanded millions of dollars to bury it. Nike recorded the conversations and turned them over to the feds.
The interesting bit for people hoping that amateurism will collapse in on itself:
Nike has won the current news cycle as it relates to Avenatti. The apparel company exposed Avenatti’s alleged scheme and, by working with law enforcement, prevented him from publicly accusing the company of involvement in a plot to pay high school basketball recruits.
The win might not prove lasting. Avenatti, as noted above, would likely be convicted if he goes to trial and could then be sentenced to prison. In lieu of that “worst-case” outcome, Avenatti could negotiate a plea deal with prosecutors—the same prosecutors who have prosecuted Adidas officials. In any plea deal, prosecutors would require that Avenatti turn over evidence and perhaps implicate other persons.
Could Avenatti hand over to federal agents texts, emails and other implicating records? Would those records reputationally harm Nike the same way that Adidas has been reputationally harmed by the college basketball corruption probe? Could he “name names” that are well known in basketball—be they Nike officials, college coaches or NBA players—who would then become the target of FBI agents?
If he's got the receipts and is given a deal to turn them over so that the Adidas investigation keeps going and going there may have to be a reckoning. Yeah yeah pipe dream.
It's just a blip. This is indeed the chalkiest tournament ever, at least to this stage. Cue complaints:
As is increasingly the case in recent years, the power conferences rule. The Sweet 16 is comprised of five teams from the Atlantic Coast Conference, four from the Southeastern, three from the Big Ten and one apiece from the Big 12 and Pac-12. The only outliers are Gonzaga from the West Coast and Houston from the American Athletic, and both of those come with asterisks: the Zags are a perennial basketball power; the Cougars have become Houston billionaire and NBA Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta's boutique college program.
"Increasingly the case." Cumong man. You have to go all the way back to 2018 to get a bracket insanity like Loyola-Chicago coming out of a South Regional in which the Sweet 16 had an 11, a 7, a 9, and a 5. Virginia went down in flames to UMBC in… 2018. Sometimes favorites do win.
I do think there is a little something that might be setting up chalkier tournaments: the committee is less bad at its job. Is Wofford a 7 seed ten years ago? Probably not. If they'd thrown the Terriers on the 11 or 12 line they'd be playing a worse team in round two and would be more likely to blow through them.
The worst tournament in sports tops itself. The NCAA hockey tournament has been seeded and announced. Congratulations to one-seed Minnesota State:
Enjoy your road game thousands of miles away from Minnesota. Meanwhile Duluth got shipped to Allentown, Pennsylvania. That's the "Midwest" regional, because Philadelphia is in the Midwest now. It is a cool 18 hour drive from Duluth.
Bowling Green and Arizona State are also forced to head halfway across the country. The only team in that regional anywhere near it is Quinnipiac, the three-seed. And they're three hours away.
Duluth was thinking about bidding with its home arena, but didn't bother because the committee refuses to put regionals at college hockey rinks:
The University of Minnesota Duluth and Amsoil Arena decided to sit out the most recent round of bidding for NCAA Division I men’s ice hockey regionals despite a door opening last year for a school to host a regional once again at its home rink.
DECC Executive Director Dan Russell said the DECC and UMD did not submit a bid for Amsoil Arena to host the 2017 NCAA West Regional because the NCAA made it clear in the bid form that it was looking for a neutral site, not a home site.
Notre Dame got one at home because literally no one else bid, and apparently there is no arena anywhere in the Midwest people are willing to bid at.
How long will this madness continue? Every single non-revenue NCAA playoff features a bunch of home games. Except college hockey. The current system annually throws up farcical results like a 1 seed playing 4 seed Providence in Providence, and it lurches on.
On the other hand. Minnesota State's average age is 22 and seven months. They're the third-oldest team in college hockey. They have three seniors. Every single Minnesota State player is a non-prospect who spent two or three years after high school playing junior hockey instead of being in college. Great system.
Cut, and eligible. Tate Martell bailed from Ohio State when they brought in Justin Fields, and was recently declared immediately eligible at Miami. This was largely because OSU gave him the cold shoulder:
Leach, according to a UM source, made the case that after landing quarterback Justin Fields from Georgia, Ohio State made no efforts to keep Martell. This argument carried weight with the NCAA.
After Ohio State landed Fields, the relationship between Martell and the Buckeyes obviously was impacted, and “no efforts were made by Ohio State to rectify the feelings between the two,” the source said. “Tate felt it was in his and Ohio State’s best interests to transfer.
Ohio State did not object to that or try to get him to change his mind.” …
“At that point,” according to a UM source, “he’s run off and now has to find a new home and found [UM].”
Not quite cut, but when they bring in another quarterback and you can't get them to answer the phone the direction they want you to take is clear.
Martell's transfer doesn't mean there's a transfer free-for-all on the horizon. It was "enormously helpful" that OSU did not object to any of Martell's arguments, per his lawyer, and his argument largely rested on the fact that OSU wanted his scholarship back. In situations where that's not the case waivers won't be granted. Probably.
The Martell case may in fact create some relief for guys who get run off.
Etc.: Hire Big Boutros! NCAA tourney games have worse shooting than you'd expect. My money is on Pope Thrower.
March 26th, 2019 at 12:58 PM ^
I don’t know why prosecutors would give that slimeball Avenatti any kind of deal. They don’t need him. The people with direct knowledge are the kids who were paid, and he has identified some of them already. They have the evidence, what he has is simply what he got from them. Start with the kids, and collect it yourself.
I will be surprised if the kids would talk and implicate themselves in tax fraud. Avenatti on the other hand would sing like a canary.
Yeah, that pesky Fifth Amendment.
They'll offer Avenatti a deal if he offers evidence, and they won't go through with a full-blown offer unless they know the evidence is worth having. If he has nothing, they won't bother. If he has something - anything - that can help a case in any way, they'll offer something. As Tex said, Avenatti will sing. He is not the omerta type and has nobody to protect anyway.
Agreed. I highly highly doubt Avenatti has anything that the feds don’t already have.
And that's just it; if the feds don't need Avenatti's testimony, they won't give him a deal to get it.
Hard to believe it was not many months ago during the muck-fest that was the Kavanaugh hubbub some people were touting this dumbass as a presidential candidate. He's since proven himself a complete fraud in the midst of two national scandals in less than a year. He should go to prison just on principle.
All these years I've been reading Big Boutros's posts and picturing a hairy fat man sitting in a Barcalounger eating fried chicken legs and a side of moussaka.
So disappointed.
Exactly. Since when are people's avatars not pics of themselves? So am I to believe that NateVolk is not a hot chick in a bikini frolicking on some beach?!
What are the chicken legs fried in? This is important.
Gyro grease?
Come on, man. He worked hard to get in shape, and to have you throw that in his face? It has to hurt.
Yeah, I can't even figure who the actual "bad guy" is in that situation. Everybody, I guess?
Agreed that they're likely already working w/ the feds, but even if they weren't, what they did was absolutely the right call in almost every other regard--legally, ethically, PR-wise, and in terms of long-term business sense.
1) Ethically it was the right thing to do, obviously.
2) If Nike is in the crosshairs of the investigation already, trying to pay off Avenatti and/or other would be whistle-blowers (even if it was extortion) would be a MASSIVE mistake. They'd basically be digging themselves a deeper hole with the feds.
3) If Avenatti & any of his connections do in fact have damanging information & could testify against Nike, then burning them in the extortion arrest hands the Nike legal defense team a great tool with which to impeach Avenatti & ther others as witnesses.
4) Even if they weren't in the crosshairs of the feds already, if Nike thinks they're about to be & are essentially bracing for impact because they know the case is bad against them, then may as well be proactive and stop the bleeding now. You're a multi-billion dollar company. Take the short term financial & PR hit so you don't turn a bad 6 month or 1 year story into a bad 2 or 3 year story. Run to the feds, feed them some additional leads in their cases, and try to cut a favorable deal by getting on the prosecution train before it decides to run over Nike at full speed.
Yes, Nike put out a press statement after hours yesterday stating that they've been cooperating with the FBI on this case for over a year.
The US attorney for the SDNY sort of confirmed this as well during his press conference.
Fuck the college hockey committees. Their rules are shit. The small schools are shit for holding back what could be a great tournament. 20-21 y/o freshmen "getting late early(nope--->) late" are bull shit
I really can't get excited about college hockey. The really good players are only around for a year if they play college hockey at all. Watching a ragtag bunch of 23 year old USHL washouts play for Quinnipiac in a one-game knockout tournament just doesn't move the needle when the greatest tournament in sports is happening at the same time.
"...Notre Dame got one at home because literally no one else bid..."
But why did Notre Dame bid even though the committee said it was looking for neutral sites? Fun answer: because Tom Nevala of Notre Dame was chairman of the NCAA men's ice hockey committee, and he slapped together a bid at the last minute for Notre Dame to host in South Bend when he saw that there were no other bids in the region. Other schools did not have access to this information, and so did not bid.
Isn't that an awesome system we have here? We don't play in home rinks because that would be unfair.
We are "western" college hockey fans, and there's a regional difference here. Many eastern teams, especially the ones with small fanbases, are fine with the regional system. They're fine with it because they can play close to home. Allentown is five hours from Boston. It is closer to Providence than it is to any western team that actually made the NCAA tournament (the only "western" team that is closer in any event is host Penn State, I believe).
Eastern teams are fine with this arrangement because they always, always have two regionals that they could attend that are less than a 3-hour drive from each other. Eastern fans know that if their team makes the tournament, they will probably be two hours or less from attending the game.
Minnesota State-Mankato fans (and UMD fans and Northern Michigan fans and Bowling Green fans and now fans of teams like Michigan and Wisconsin) almost never have an opportunity to attend a regional close to home, because even in the increasingly infrequent year where one is close, the chance of getting shipped somewhere else is extremely high.
The net effect is that western fans have increasingly learned that attending NCAA tournament hockey games is something to assume they will not be able to do. They are trained to stay home.
When regionals have been played at home sites, there have been fairness concerns (and, look, Providence gets what is essentially a home game). But the atmospheres have been great. The three regionals hosted by Yost are some of the greatest sporting events Michigan has ever participated in.
Not every home tournament game will be so exciting. But many will. Fans of teams will have an opportunity to watch a do-or-die game and cheer on their team. When the road team pulls the upset, they get the pleasure of shutting up an actual crowd, instead of simply enjoying the silence of an empty arena.
The regional system exists because a subset of eastern and small schools find it benefits them. But it harms the sport, and is grossly unfair to the entire western region. Its persistence in the face of perpetual, continual failure is a clear demonstration that the hockey competition committee doesn't care about the fans or the health of the sport.
But, 2020 frozen four is in Detroit and NO Michigan team will be in it. The LCA will be very empty.
Frozen Fours are different. It's the championship. They sell out when they are in Colorado even if no Colorado teams are in it. They sell out when they are in St. Louis. They even sell out when they are in Florida.
Yep. Frozen Four will sell out in Buffalo this year even though the closest schools to it are OSU and Clarkson
ACC 5 teams
Sec 4 teams
Big 10 3 teams.
Enough about how the Big is the best conference. Home teams just win a lot cause the refs like home cooking. Check out the Big records at home.
Go Blue. See ya at the Pond.
Yes. Conference strength should probably only be judged by the teams at the top...
easy to forget that MD lost to the #3 seed on buzzer shot and Iowa took the #2 seed to OT. that's two close calls to have 5 BIG teams in the sweet 16. yes, the BIG is the best overall conference.
March 26th, 2019 at 11:15 PM ^
Also state and minny played, so that guaranteed one wasn’t going to make it
Pope Thrower? Cumong man, Jizyah Shorts is an all-timer.
When I saw Jizyah Shorts, I thought for sure this was a made up list ala Key and Peele's East/West Bowl...
Precious Orji being criminally underrated as a 3 seed. But yeah, they (she?) lose to Jizyah Shorts in the final.
Wow. I didn't realize Minnesota State got so enormously screwed. How does the committee put a 4th seed Providence in their home city?? You have got to ship that team cross country
For years the smaller schools have complained that home regionals are unfair and should be avoided, maybe one of them getting the ultimate shaft as a 1 seed will finally cause them to reconsider
As I recall, teams that host, if they make the tourney, are sloted to play at that arena. It's the primary reason to submit a bid to host
Yep--that's true. But the host in Providence is not PC, it's Brown. So there was no rule that Providence College had to be placed in the Providence Regional.
LOL WTF. I guess they were the highest 4 seed, saving for host requirements elsewhere. I'm so fed up with this shit
Which we would both agree is a stupid bandaid to a terrible tournament format. Everything is solved by going to home sites except for the sad feelings of the teams that either get the #15 or #16 as an autobid team
The state of college hoops is definitely not great. Those Sunday NCAA games after Duke-UCF literally made my eyes hurt.
I guess I sort of agree that Martell being allowed to play right away doesn't mean there will be a transfer free for all. The reason there will be a free for all is because OSU already had 2 of these happen last season and the media barely covered them at all because they were not big names like Fields and Martell. Antonio Williams and Jack Wohlabaugh both were granted immediate eligibility at UNC and Duke respectively. Now Williams may have been given eligibility because hes from North Carolina and was moving close to home for some family issue that wasn't publicized. Most likely it was because of playing time. He lost all of it to Weber and then Dobbins. Wohlabaugh is from Ohio and transferred to....Duke.
yeah, williams' family issue was that his family would've been disappointed if he didn't become a starter somewhere.
the transfer rules are shit. the schools still essentially hold 100% of the power - if ohio state had wanted to be dicks, they could've blocked him.
the justin fields thing isn't much better. if i'm getting this right, someone used a slur toward him, and he used "fear for his safety" / mitigating circumstances as his reason for transferring...what that has to do with him sitting out a year, i have no idea. is immediate eligibility some sort of salve?
please please please note - i am NOT suggesting that he made too much of the incident, or that he wasn't totally justified in getting the hell out of athens. i totally back him on that...i'm just not seeing why immediate eligibility has anything to do with it. i feel somewhat the same way about shea patterson, for what it's worth; imho, the justification for him being immediately eligible seemed tenuous. would it have harmed him or his career to sit out a year?
it sounds like i'm venturing into old-fartism here, but i'm really not - i'd much rather players be able to transfer anywhere, as often as they like, with no impact on eligibility than have these ha-ha rules, pseudo-justifications, and exceptions.
Not sure I understand the logic of the Tate Martell thing & how it wouldn't become a near free-for-all for most guys.
- So it sounds like if the school doesn't challenge the petition, it's almost always ganted now? Or at least, the only bar the player needs to clear is, "My current team isn't making me feel warm & fuzzy now."? Seems like a distinction without a difference.
- True, OSU didn't challenge it b/c they wanted the scholarship slot. I guess that makes things easier for guys who get processed to not have to sit a year, which is a nice consoliation prize. But I could easily see schools caving to guys that they DON'T want to see leave, simply for PR reasons. It sounds like the NCAA doesn't want the bad PR of being the bad guy & denying petitions, so they're basically putting that decision in the individual schools laps. I could see a scenario where a huge % of schools don't challenge ANY petition--even if the player is badly wanted by the coaching staff still (e.g., high end back-up QB, quality depth at various positions), simply because they don't want to be seen as the bad guy from a PR perspective.
It's my understanding of the Martell situation that he basically said "OSU is no longer interested in me and is creating an environment that isn't conducive to my growth as a student-athlete" or something along those lines, and because OSU actually did that and didn't care it being public, there was no counter-argument. That's why I think limitations on transfers should be abolished; they don't really have any objective bar to cross. It's all based on if/how your current school responds to your transfer attempt, which removes all responsibility from the organization (the NCAA) that should oversee it.
As for bad PR, I don't think colleges care all that much. Look across the college landscape and you see so many schools that almost wallow in terrible press and don't really give a shit.
Look at all that GD construction on the Ohio Turnpike. Just an awful drive, even in the best of conditions.
There isn't enough indica bud to make any part of Ohio remotely interesting. Part of me dies just thinking about driving on 75 multiple trips per year to visit in-laws in Mason.
You should move up to sativa bud. It will make even Ohio interesting.
Smart people take 2.
I wasn't even at a bar but the reaction to that Livers dunk was awesome at my house, and I was having a little watch party with mostly Spartan fans. He had a lot of speed for that dunk and it was glorious.
Kinda cool that Nike paid the big bucks for Bol squared to go to Oregon and have him play, what, 7 games.
Good thing Miller got reinstated at Arizona last year. He would have never paid Ayton /eye roll. Glad Zona sucked this year....cheaters.
I sort of wonder what happens with Oregon vis a vis the Nike situation. That's always felt like an NCAA violation waiting to land, and this feels like even more smoke in their direction. We joke about LSU being a redacted team, but there's a good chance 2 of the Sweet 16 teams don't exist in a year.
March 26th, 2019 at 11:02 PM ^
Well Oregon already had the violations with Chip Kelly in football that led to a show cause against him. People often forget that even if he hadn’t left for the NFL, Oregon would have had to fire him for that.
Their basketball program is almost certainly paying players. For a coach like Dana Altman to all of a sudden start hauling in the #1 class is a huge red flag. Ole Miss style baby. Question is, does Nike have too much influence for them to really be punished?
We have another week of Reggie Miller and Dan Bonner, unfortunately. Anderson and CWebb on UVA/Oregon and Purdue/Tennessee. Nantz/Raftery/Hill for Duke and MSU unsurprisingly. And Eagle/Spanarkle for UNC/Auburn and Kentucky/Houston.
The second and third teams are way better than the top team because Nantz sucks.
At least Miller and Bonner come with Kevin Harlan, who's great on the play by play.
Nantz seems to hate players with any personality and sounds like he can't wait to get to the Masters.
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