OT: Badgers move on

If anything they were screwing Wiscy all night. I don't like the timing of the call though. I think it's a no call situation.

doesn't blatently create space with his forearm I bet he gets the bump foul on the Badgers.  He forced the official to make a tough call by creating space.

Either way I'm always amazed at how Bo Ryan can make any group of talented players look terrible at playing basketball.  Arizona is an amazing team.

 

I hope our "net worthy" shirts aren't grey.

I hope our "net worthy" shirts aren't grey.

I'm rooting for Uconn tomorrow. If there's three big ten teams in the FF, then there's a 50 percent chance a douchebag is national champion.

Ball don't lie?

Both brothers going down within hours of each other.

getting decided by iffy calls down the stretch. Don't think Wiscy AZ got shafted on the last call, but it sure looked to me like Johnson was fouled before he pushed off. 

I remarked earlier today that so much stuff goes uncalled in most games. . . when teams are pretty evenly matched it's often hard to tell who really should have won. 

Redact.

I don't have the same dislike in my heart for Wiscy I do for MSU so I am content with this arrangement although I think that 7 foot tree is a better matchup for Morgan than Kaminsky so I was leaning AZ.  Bo Ryan does the same thing Beilein does - finds players for a system and I don't dislike his intensity either.   He doesn't have 3 HS All Americans like Izzo, and neither do we.  Ryan is not Crean-like to me.

That said I will have my UConn gear on tomorrow even though I dont think they match up well with MSU.  2 of the final 4 is enough for me.

p.s. I'd be very curious to see how many of the "cool cool lets get MSU in there too, for Big 10 pride...and then we can beat em and such" are out of state people who don't have to deal with Spartans on a daily basis.  Eff Ohio and MSU.

Good for Kaminsky. Guy's a beast. Charles calls you the man, you're the man.

Where have all the buzzer beaters gone? 

to officiate. You could have called a blocking foul on Wisconsin, but it would have been soft. The push-off was blatant, but calling it means you should have called the defensive foul in hindsight. Calling nothing would have given the offensive player an advantage because that foul cleared more space than the blocking foul inhibited. Overall just a lose-lose play for the refs.

Even if we get that far, Wiscy will be a tough out. Kaminsky is a monster.

But it'd be pretty crazy to have a Final Four with 3 Big Ten teams. Even though I'd love for MSU to flop tomorrow night.

Hey Op, perhaps you are getting the negs for calling this OT. How is this OT? 

Not OT.

Put me down as one for absolutely not rooting for 3 big ten teams in the final four. UCONN

"It rewards the defender for getting to a spot versus defending." I've never understood this. How is getting into a good position to cut off an opponent NOT defense? What's wrong with a player anticipating moves and getting there first? That seems like good, heady defense to me. There's often not a lot you can do on defense otherwise besides swiping at the ball for a steal or blocking a shot or just putting your arms up in the air.

on that play is that the official should just swallow the whistle.  The Wisconsin player initiated contact.  The Arizonal player pushed him away.  You could have justified a defensive OR offensive foul in that situation.  So I say just play on.  It isn't like the push-off resulted in him getting layup or dunk.   Since both players basically committed infractions of some sort, why decide the game for them?

 

Honestly, the defensive player bumped first, so you really have to make it a defensive foul, but I realize that's a pretty soft defensive foul call to make with 4 seconds left in a 1-point game.

I'm not convinced they got the replay right.  The ball DID change spin, but it could have been from the Arizona player diving in from behind.  His trailing hand could have hit the ball again, causing it to change spin.  If the Michigan play yesterday was "inconclusive", this was inconclusive times 10.

 

I'm 99.999% sure Maymon hit that ball out of bounds.  Tonight?  I'm not really sure what happened, even after watching the replay.

I'm surprised how many people are upset that Wisconsin won.  Yeah, they can be annoying to play against, and I haven't forgotten two buzzer-beaters against us, but that's not enough for me to actually hate Wisconsin when they're out of conference.  As far as I'm concerned, they're not a rival, just another conference opponent, albeit one that's had more success against us than we'd like.  

In NCAA play, I root for all Big Ten teams other than MSU, OSU and  IU (because of Crean; I'd root for them otherwise).  Ryan/Wisconsin don't quite move the "hate" needle enough for me.

 

 

Tomorrow wins it all.

It was a very tough call, and I think it should have been a swallow the whistle. He pushed off. He got bumped. Also, why is everyone so sure that Hollis-Jefferson wouldn't compete for that rebound? Anyhow, to those who don't mind the bump at all, if Michigan wins, I assure you we will be annoyed if they don't call Gosser for initiating contact as he will do it to Nik all day. That Kaminsky match up is tough for everyone right now, but I'm pretty damn happy that this team minus Hardaway, Burke and McGary is in the Eight. Go Blue. 

Both calls were good.

It's maybe worth stepping back for a minute, for a shake of the head.

Wisconsin in the final four isn't a shock. But is there a single person on the planet that could have imagined a year ago (never mind four years back when it looked like his best offer might be Northern or Southern and probably very few here had even heard of him) that they'd be going to the final four because some of the best college basketball teams in the country can't find a way to stop Frank Kaminski?

Thursday night he scores 19 and blocks six shots going up against a guy that was thought to be a possible lottery pick a year ago. Tonight he drops 28 against one of the best defensive teams in the country, Barkley's entire halftime spiel is that he's unstoppable, and people on this thread are using words like "beast" and "monster".

What he's done to his game through hard offseason work is unbelievable.

And it's got me thinking about how that kind of work affects a program, which then acts back on the players and encourages the work. What do you think it's like for a new player at Wisconsin to come into the program and watch Kaminski convert himself from likely mid-major nobody to dominant NCAA tournament force?

Well, we dont' have to imagine because Michigan's had something similar going on, a line that runs from Novak and Douglass to last summer's Stauskas/LeVert workouts.

It's contagious. It's what makes great programs great. And I think it's maybe where the one-and-done model of assembling a program breaks down. Jabari Parker comes to Duke, is a really good player, they win a bunch of games but no championships...and he leaves. The next class comes in and he's already gone, they never see him work on his game, they don't learn anything from him. Ten years from now we're watching him in the NBA and we sort of remember that he went to Duke. The program gets nothing from him, which is fair because he doesn't get much of anything from the program either.

I don't think I'd get much pleasure from being a fan of a program like that. But I sure had a great time tonight watching Frank Kaminski.