Never? Did I say never??

Bob Ford of the Philadelphia Inquirer seems confused. I know I am.

"The Play" - and it will be known for a very long time as "The Play" among followers of Villanova basketball in particular and Philadelphia basketball in general - never works in practice, of course.

[Can't you just picture Ford forcing this "The Play" moniker into every conversation he has about that Villanova-Pitt game?

Co-worker/friend/relative/total stranger: Bob, tell me saw the finish to that Villanova game!
Bob Ford: You mean "The Play?"
Other Person: No, I mean when Scottie Reynolds went almost the length of the court weaving through defenders and hit that shot in the paint with practically no time left?
Bob Ford: Right! "The Play!"
Other Person: What the hell are you talking about? Did you see the game or not?
Bob Ford: Of course. It's called "The Play." Everybody's calling it "The Play."
Other Person: Nobody is calling it that. That's stupid. Whatever, Ford.]

It is one of the Wildcats' standard, end-of-game, little-time-left, 94-feet-away plays, and they practice it every day, with the blue team of starters being defended by the white team of reserves. Never works.

[I wonder why it NEVER works in practice....]

Either the inbounds pass goes to Scottie Reynolds and he can't make his way through the maze of defenders quickly enough, or the pass goes to Dante Cunningham but is knocked away. Or perhaps the blue team scores, but leaves too much time on the clock, and the white team comes right back down and wins the imaginary game.

[That would mean that the played WORKED though, right?? You know what? Forget it. Whatever, Ford.]

Best Damn Benchmark Period.

Personally, I would be a little surprised if John Calipari left Memphis to take the Kentucky job. But, I could see how Memphis fans might be moderately nervous. Geoff Calkins of the Memphis Commercial Appeal, however, identifies the key pro-Memphis arguments that should help put all Tigers fans at ease.

He can’t get more famous than he is now. He can’t get richer. He can’t do better than the No. 1 recruiting class in the country. He can’t have any more appearances on “The Best Damn Sports Show Period.”

[Yup. Sorry, Kentucky. Unless you randomly hire Tom Arnold as your athletic director in the next few days, might as well start looking at other candidates.]

"Wanting it" > Anything Else

Last night, I found myself watching Villanova completely destroy Duke and wondering aloud "How is 'Nova doing it?" Well, thanks to Bob Ford of the Philadelphia Inquirer, my query has been answered.

It is this simple: They don't want it to end.

[Analysis over!]

From the very start, Villanova played to win, not to avoid a loss.

[Which would also leave "winning" as their only option..... right?]

From the very start, the Wildcats gave No. 2-seeded Duke far more than it wanted.

[Well, that's not surprising because we've already established that Duke wanted "it" less than Nova did, so the amount of "it" that Duke wanted was likely a manageable sum.]

If the game was a test of will, only one team passed.

[In fact, Jay Wright's $2,000 suit was actually made out of "will." Really durable fabric.]

Whatever this postseason will become, however far it will go, it isn't over yet.

[?]

Slow stretch, paging Nils, etc.

Apologies for the recent drought. Chalk it up to some recent travels and Nils' propensity to completely vanish for weeks at a time. Which reminds me, several people have asked if Nils and I are, in fact, the same person simply operating this site under two psuedonyms. This is not the case, but now I am also starting to wonder if Nils is a real person....

In other news, March Madness is one of my favorite times of year, but it doesn't seem to lend itself to the usual amount of humorously poor sports journalism. Fortunately, baseball season starts next week.

Nonetheless, here was a quality facts-be-damned piece on the tournament from Jim Litke in the Boston Herald.

The focus for the first weekend of the NCAA tournament may have been on fresh faces, but next weekend it’s back to familiar ones.

[OK.]

The NCAA tournament is miles ahead of the BCS when it comes to crowning a real champion, but they have this in common: Nobody wins it on the cheap. There are 330-odd Division I basketball teams competing for 64 spots and the median program runs a yearly operating loss approaching [the] million figure.

[Did he write this in the cab on his way over to meet his deadline?? 330-odd? You couldn't look up the exact number? And where are we getting these "median program" operating loss numbers from? You couldn't type "number of ncaa division 1 basketball teams" into Google, but you went through the balance sheets of all 330-odd programs? P.S. It's 65 spots now.]

Money is the short answer to the question of why a real mid-major still can’t win the NCAA tournament.

[After the previous paragraph, we were supposed to be expecting the *long* answer?]

The [Siena] Saints still might have been good enough to topple another No. 1 seed most nights, but not Louisville on this night.

[Huh? What?]

It took nearly all 60 minutes for that slight edge to prove decisive, but it usually does.

[Actually, this is a good point. Louisville really showed why they are superior to Siena in those 20 minutes that immediately followed their FORTY MINUTE BASKETBALL GAME.

Solid editing job.]