Watching these 8/9 games id be fine with shrinking the tourney, not expanding.

Boring 8/9 game going to OT

That Auburn kid absolutely deserved to be ejected. Bush league.

Go Yale

Love it. Bruce Pearl is so slimy and after that kid threw the elbow glad they lost.

My family has a lot of connections to Charleston, so I put enough of a bet on the College of Charleston money line that if it hit we'd all get to go to a family steak dinner.

The good news is that I am teaching them early that gambling does not pay.

I guess it's an upset but that Grand Canyon team is much bigger and athletic than any mod-major I can remember other than Gonzaga. Not sure how they're a 12 seed.

Take a look at their schedule and it'll be a lot clearer.

How did Audi Crooks drop 40 on Maryland? I’m sure she’s good but does Maryland not have a girl taller than 5’8”? Looked like a high school senior wrecking 6th graders from the highlights I watched.

Yikes, the WAC sure has seen betrer days. Still, that Grand Canyon team has some size and athleticism. You just don't normally see that from smaller schools.

Some good games tomorrow. Texas-Tennessee and Gonzaga-Kansas should be fun.

18-20 shooting. What a game.

I did 3 entries in 2 work-related pools. One of mine is in top .3% of all entries on ESPN. I did them in 10 minutes Thursday morning. Pretty much only looking at seeds and guessing at upsets. The little I read in the days before suggested GC was one of the top 2 or 3 likely upsets. Being a 5/12 matchup, that was an easy pick.

I may be on pace to do even worse than I did last year, yeah me

I did two in the work pool. One with Kentucky winning it all. But the other one still has my final four teams all still alive, so there's something to root for

One person on our work pool had Auburn winning it all. Woops.

One person in the ESPN pick'em out of 22+ million got all of the 32 games in the round of 64 correct

guess they had something wrong, now it is showing 0 perfect brackets remaining

Kind of cool that Iowa put a market on the court where Clark broke the record. Creative use of the court. Don't think I've seen that before.

So the first half of the UTC-NC State game was officiated by someone who got a degree ... from UTC.

Someone figured it out & they subbed another ref in her place for the 2nd half.

My question is ... considering that the refs online presence mentions her degree from UTC ... how inept is even the most basic checking for conflicts if it took a half to catch this?

NCAA removes official from NC State-Chattanooga due to 'background conflict' - ESPN

Looks like Dusty May to Louisville.

WVU is trying to finalize things with Darian DeVries but has Byington as a backup if things fall apart there. Kyle Smith also under consideration but unlikely.

I haven't seen it confirmed but my boss who's a donor at UL told me last night it was likely happening.

I'm not sure I can take watching that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Chet Holmgren commercial for AT&T again. It's cringey, awful, and seems to play during every break.

Georgia high school caliber officiating in the NCSU-Oakland game.

Scott Foster meets Angel Hernandez caliber.

Yep. Just coming here to say we've got a clown show going on here.

Holy shit, May to Michigan announced. That came out of nowhere.

Hoping it ends up being DeVries.

Apparently Louisville had scheduled to press conference to announce May.

I think both are very good coaches, but would lean toward DeVries.

Vols putting on a shooting clinic ain't they?

How are they winning?

It's a March Miracle lol

I don't get why Oregon didn't sub out Dante when Creighton was fouling. That cost them the game.

Kim Mulkey is a hell of a good coach.

But there is pretty much nothing that could be in that upcoming Washington Post article about her that would be so horrible that I wouldn’t believe it.

Purdue is up 30. Maybe time to take Eddy out of the game?

She seems rather rattled by what that article may contain.

I assume it'll be broader than just one incident, but there were some odd things going on within that team at the beginning of the year that were never quite explained. The star player (don't recall her name; the one who went at Caitlin Clark last year) sat out a few games, then one of their other really good players left the team.

I won't be surprised if whatever that incident was is part of this report.

If Clemson can hold on for another half against Baylor - a big if - the ACC will be 8-0 in the actual 64 team tournament. But I'm still not sure that collective result undoes the damage of the Virginia game...

#7 on Grand Canyon does not pass or defend.

The officiating in this Houston - A&M game has been an adventure.

Unbelievable.

I'm not sure even that ending was worth a 30 minute last 75 seconds, but wow. OT but A&M acting like they won and Houston like they lost.

My A&M upset pick ain't gonna hit but by golly it sure came pretty close

That Buzz Williams timeout made no sense.

there is also plenty of stuff from her time at Baylor

I think women's basketball has to be the worst officiated sport on TV.

This one is pretty egregious. No way WVU is going to be able to win with the refs like this.

Iowa sure got a friendly whistle tonight.

I dunno, pro wrestling is pretty bad as well.

I've railed against this multiple times here and to anyone I talked to about it when Mack was playing. Girls basketball is horribly officiated. It's basically rugby on wood. It's why she didn't play in college because she received so many injuries and concussions from playing middle and high school that she didn't think she'd make it in college.

They treat girls as if they are physically unable to play in the same manner the guys game is officiated. So they just let them beat the shit out of each other. In high school, no joke, each game is basically 2 refs letting 90% of fouls go until there's a pile of girls on the floor fighting over the ball and then they call jump ball. This happens at least 2 dozen or more times a game, on average.

If they would just officiate the game the right way, the girls will adjust. Will it be as asethetically pleasing as the guys game? No, it won't. They also play at the same 10 foot rim as the guys despite the physical differences, so that doesn't help in comparisons. But it will be a way better product than the shit on the court now.

Vast majority of the games in Georgia HS for the past 30 years or so.
Funny thing, it wasn't that pronounced in the 80s.

What you left out of the picture though is the 1 game out of every 8-10 that's the complete opposite, the ones where if you cast your gaze upon your opponent the whistle blows.

It's an unwatchable shitshow about 90% of the time in Georgia now, only the best matchups are tolerable viewing. Introduction of the shot clock turned HS girls basketball into a brutal experience, nothing says "fun" like watching teams shoot around 22% on the regular.

In my experience, the quick whistle was reserved for the best players, as if they had "earned" the right to get men's calls. We had one Mack played against, a great PG who went to Tennessee then transferred to UK. She never amounted to much in college but in HS she was great. She'd get every touch foul in the paint once she got near the basket.

I see the argument for the shot clock and it was a raging argument here, too - Mack's team sucked so we were constantly behind and there were a couple coaches who went "4 Corners" for the entire 4th quarter of games - but yeah, on average, most teams can't run a consistent offense let alone one that would get them decent shots within the clock time. Of course, for Mack's team, the shot clock probably would have been irrelevant because they'd turn it over before the shot clock got anywhere near zero.