The college basketball season is over -- ending Monday night in quite possibly the loudest fart you have ever heard with UConn’s painfully-hard-to-watch 53-41 victory over Butler. College basketball teams, experts and fanatics have started their slow trudge toward a seven month hibernation.
If the mood were a high school memory, it would be like that one time your biggest crush laughed in your face when you asked her out, and when you tried to be persistent, she had her lawyer-dad file a restraining order against you. And then when you tried to apologize to her at school the next day, she maced your eyes and had you arrested in front of all your peers. The cops then mistakenly thought your wild, painful thrashing on the floor was a sign of resistance, so they tasered you. The rhythmic, electric shock took away your ability to control your bladder, birthing the new nickname pee-pants-mace-face (yes, kids are cruel but not very creative).
That’s what the start of the offseason feels like. It’s just depressing all around.
This is the time of year when college basketball columnists put out their last articles of the season. They publish their Way Too Early Top 25 pieces, their Look Out for This Player Next Year pieces and their Hey My Last Name is Forde so I’ll Write About 40 things HURR pieces. I’m not exempt from this process. Later next week, I’ll be writing an article about the 2011 Ohio State basketball team and how potentially awesome they can be.
Dick Vitale is one of the most recognizable names in college basketball. His love and passion for the game is obvious despite the fact that he’s one ‘Duke - North Carolina’ buzzer beater away from complete and irreversible insanity. Still, his opinions and insight on college hoops are well respected, and he recently released his top six teams for the 2011 season.
I found Dickie on Tobacco Rd. nestled deep into a bush between the Duke-Carolina campuses, eating whipped cream out of a Panera bread bowl with a random branch he found. I took it as an opportunity to ask him a few questions about his six selections. What follows is a transcript of our conversation...
This is a cautionary tale, the story of what happens when a kid gets everything handed to him while growing up and how that can lead to trouble down the road. And when an overbearing, ultra-involved father is clearly calling the shots, you can pretty much throw any kind of loyalty out the window.
This was supposed to be the weekend we were talking about the Final Four and Ohio State...you know...at the same time. Since it didn’t work out that way, and we’re about ready to file away Thad Matta’s Buckeyes till November, I thought we’d do what we always do around these parts when the present disappoints. Look to the future.
March Madness is widely considered the most exciting sporting event of the year. You're basically combining 68 teams with 65 games and throwing them into a pressure cooker for three straight weeks. Upsets, blowouts, buzzer beaters, pandemonium -- the NCAA tournament has it all.
I’m not aware of any Internet resource that comprehensively aggregates links to OSU sports information on the web, so I thought I’d create one...for myself if no one else. Hope it’s useful to you too. For the most part, it’s limited to football and mens basketball information, to include national websites, Ohio newspapers, other OSU media contacts and writers/bloggers. Please advise me of any recommended additions or corrections to the following.