Hey guys, after an extended Spring Break vacation I have been back on the Palouse to enjoy the beginning of the final six weeks of classes and to see our basketball team do what it is so good at-letting me down. Click on the jump to read part of an unedited column I wrote yesterday for the Daily Evergreen about the overrated Big East and to hear my thoughts on the DeAngelo Casto situation and how it should be handled.
The Big East is a big fraud.
The basketball conference praised all year by ESPN experts Joe Lunardi and Doug Gottlieb has gotten throttled in the first three rounds of this year’s NCAA Tournament.
11 of the 16 teams from the country’s most overrated basketball conference received bids to play in the NCAA Tournament. An epically bad NCAA Tournament committee rewarded mediocre regular seasons by the likes of West Virginia, Marquette and Villonova while ignoring good teams from competitive conferences.
Entering this week’s Sweet Sixteen, there are more teams remaining from the city of Richmond, Virginia then there are from the Big East. All season I had to listen to every sports commentator from here to Bristol, Connecticut sing the praises of a conference without a dominant team.
Sure, Connecticut and Marquette both are still remaining among the tournament’s sixteen teams. However, the reason they were able to make it to this point is because they defeated teams from their own conference in the third round.
Pittsburgh, a number one seed from the Southeast Region, showed the smarts of a recreational YMCA team in the final seconds against Butler. With the game tied and less than one second remaining, a Pittsburgh player inexplicably fouled Butler’s Matt Howard while pursuing the rebound after Pitt missed their second free throw.
In retrospect, maybe it was a good foul. Howard is one of the nation’s elite players when facing up 85 feet from his own basket with less than a second remaining.
Number two seed Notre Dame, a dark horse in many brackets to make the Final Four, looked helpless against a bigger, less skilled Florida State team on Sunday night. Also, St. Johns lost to Gonzaga convincingly.
A Rick Pitino led-Louisville team kicked off March Madness by losing to national powerhouse Morehead State. (Enter Michael Scott joke here)
Perhaps my humor reflects a 7th grader’s, but I find it ironic that a coach nationally embarrassed for having an affair in a restaurant bathroom two years ago would lose his opening round game to a school named Morehead State.
Digressions aside, the “King of Sleaze” nonetheless graced the set of the CBS NCAA coverage with his analysis. Seeing Pitino squirm in his chair as Charlie Barkley ripped into a conference he said had “no talent” was superb television.
Visibly angered, Pitino guaranteed Notre Dame would crush FSU. The Seminoles went on to pound the Fighting Irish 71-57. Barkley looked vindicated while Pitino squirmed in his chair after being embarrassed on national television.
This exchange topped off a nightmare weekend for East Coast teams who received a ridiculous amount of credit they never truly deserved. Sure, the Big East exhibited a great level of competi tiveness. However, the perception of their strength was boosted by the conference’s ridiculous television contract it has with ESPN.
The Big East’s poor performance in the NCAA Tournament simply proves the selection committee snubbed a number of teams, namely St. Mary’s, Virginia Tech and perhaps even the Washington State Cougars.
Their decision to pencil in USC and UAB in front of teams like the Cougars and Gaels displayed a level of incompetence I simply cannot come to grasp with. Why USC squeaking by a mediocre Cal team in the Pac-10 Tournament’s play-in game made them a NCAA Tournament lock remains a mystery to me.
I acknowledge the fact the Cougars blew a variety of chances to be a sure-fire NCAA team, but they never lost to Rider, TCU and Bradley University in their non-conference schedule like the Trojans did. WSU receiving a bid to play in the NIT Tournament was simply a reflection of a skewed national perception of a weak PAC-10 Conference.
Perhaps next year the selection committee will ignore national hype and evaluate teams fairly, but I doubt it.
Now, moving on to our very own Washington State Cougars basketball team. After an impressive win last night over Clay Bennett State, DeAngelo Casto was arrested early Tuesday morning and cited for possession of marijuana. Seriously, this team’s motto should be, “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.”
Honestly, this type of stuff used to really piss me off. I know my boy Coug-A-Sutra is nearly about ready to blow a gasket. In the old days, this would keep me up at night while I worried about this team’s future. But this is the third time it has happened. I’m almost indifferent, and I can’t say I place a lot of blame on Casto.
I mean, what in the hell was the Pullman Police department doing raiding his apartment at two in the morning on a Tuesday night? Do they really not having anything better to do than pick a poor, minority college athlete?
I imagine Casto will be suspended a game by Bone. It would be hypocritical to sit him out the rest of the season to make an example of him. Obviously, pretty much every member of this team recreationally uses marijuana. That’s been the word here on the Palouse for a few months now. The term “skyblue” is a direct reference to smoking a little herb.
For what it is worth, as head coach, I would address the problem (if you can call it one) in the offseason. Simply say if another player runs afoul of the law, they get the boot. Whether the arrest pushes Casto to seek a job playing basketball overseas remains to be seen. However, I highly doubt the Spokane native would forego his final season on the Palouse to play in Europe.
As for tomorrow night’s contest – I really think the loss of Casto won’t make a huge difference. Brock Motum plays superb at home and Klay Thompson is playing as well as anyone in the country right now. Even Abe Lodwick is knocking down threes lately. Couple these factors with a hopefully raucous Beasley Coliseum and I think you have all the ingredients for a win over a team who finished eighth in the Big 10.
Tomorrow night, like almost all home games, I’ll be sitting in the first five ZZU Crew rows across from the Cougar bench. With the cheap prices of these NIT tickets, I really think it is time for the WSU alumni to step it up and actually attend a few of these games. 5,000 people in attendance simply isn’t getting the job done. This team feeds off energy from the crowd as well as anyone in the country. Having the arena at least three quarters full tomorrow night should be a necessity.
Contrary to what many might say, this game is actually very important. WSU has never reached the NIT Semifinals in the school’s history. The opportunity to accomplish playing in front of the country at Madison Square Garden should be supported with a near sell-out crowd. Let’s get it done tomorrow.
Prediction:
Washington State: 68 Northwestern:62
Go Cougs!
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
