The Presidential Bracket

ESPN has been buzzing the last couple of days about President Obama filling out an NCAA Tournament bracket, and have been showing his picks on a segment of Sportscenter.

Leader of the Free World or not, I don’t think President Obama’s bracket is a very good one (after all, his Final 4 is identical to mine!). Nevertheless, I think it’s neat that the same March Madness that appeals to so many people apparently interests our Commander-in-Chief as well, and I think it was a good PR move for him to release his bracket publicly.

Some people are complaining about Obama taking time out from dealing with the serious issues facing our country to do something as unimportant as fill out a basketball bracket, but I think that’s a little ridiculous, considering that it probably only took him about 10 minutes.

Of course, if President Obama spends as much time watching this year’s tournament as I am planning to, then we might have something to talk about.

You can see all of his picks here.

Rock Chalk

Well, after a dismal start, I ended up doing fairly well in the pools I joined thanks in large part to the Kansas Jayhawks winning the National Championship over the Memphis Tigers 75-68 in overtime.

Of course, depending on how you look at it, maybe it’s Memphis who I should be thanking. The Tigers led by nine with just over two minutes to play, but missed four of their last five free throw attempts which ultimately gave Mario Chalmers the opportunity to tie up the game with a dramatic three pointer as time expired.

I feel particularly vindicated because I picked Kansas to win the National Championship back in January, and (along with a lot of other people) thought Memphis’ poor free throw shooting would eventually catch up with them and prevent them from winning it all.

Incidentally, I can’t stand Memphis head coach John Calipari, and it has annoyed me all season the way he has brushed off the Tigers’ free throw shooting woes as a non-issue. I wonder if he’s changed his mind now.

It was a fun college basketball season, and it was topped off by a great Championship Game.

Now comes my least favorite part of the college season—when a bunch of foolish underclassmen leave school early for the NBA and are never heard from again. Scotty Thurman, anyone?

A Good Weekend

This past weekend was a busy one for me, but it was good.

Friday evening we journeyed to the middle of nowhere in Southwest Missouri for our annual youth lock-in at the Ark (I took the picture of the sunset during the drive). Despite its name, the Ark doesn’t really resemble a ginormous wooden boat at all, but it is a very nice place to have retreats and activities.

We filled the place up with 60 people from four main congregations, and had a good time playing basketball, ping pong, foosball, volleyball and watching movies. My favorite might have actually been playing shuffleboard, even though it made me feel like I was in my 70s, and my wife completely owned me.

I had never been before, but overall, I was pretty impressed with the place. Aside from a gym, kitchen and movie area in the Ark building itself, there was also a dormitory with motel-style rooms, and best of all, there was this cool chapel built in the woods where we had our devos.

It was pretty neat architecturally, and kind of reminded me of Fay Jones’ famous chapels. Inside, there were these large scrolls on the wall with the Ten Commandments written on them, which was interesting, and it had really good acoustics for singing.

• • •

The weekend was also a good one because it was the last weekend of the college basketball season before the NCAA tournament. Starting Wednesday with the opening rounds of the Big East Tournament, I got to watch a ton of games.

Best of all was the Arkansas Razorbacks playing their way into the NCAA tournament by going 3-1 in the SEC tourney, with wins over South Carolina, Vanderbilt, and Mississippi State.

The Hogs got demolished by Florida in the championship game, but they played that game without Charles Thomas, who had 18 points and 18 rebounds in the semis and went down in the first minutes of the championship game with a sprained ankle.

Thomas should be back for the Razorbacks’ first round game against fifth-seeded USC Friday night. Being the loyal fan that I am, I’m predicting an upset and actually have the Hogs making it to the Sweet 16 in my brackets.

Speaking of brackets and Florida, I have them going really far in the tourney, despite the fact that Joakim Noah is a big dork. He actually looked like a retarded person when he started breaking it down after the Gators won the SEC championship, and what’s up with the way he talks? Is he trying to establish his street cred or something? Give me a break: Noah’s father was a European tennis player and his mother is a former Swedish model.

Vanilla Ice had more street cred than that.

Blast From The Past

Kendrick Davis was Stan Heath’s first recruit as the head coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks.

Davis was not heavily recruited, but he was a capable scorer who had a couple of big games and, along with Jonathan Modica and Eric Ferguson, was one of the three freshmen who accounted for the bulk of the Razorback offense during the 2002-2003 season.

In 2003-2004, Stan Heath made the woeful decision that Ferguson would develop into a useful SEC player (hindsight is 20/20; at one point I thought E-Fergie would be good too). That, along with the arrival of big-time recruits Ronnie Brewer and Olu Famutimi, led to a drastic reduction in Davis’ minutes and consequently, in his point production (10.3 to 5.4).

Davis saw the handwriting on the wall, and transferred after the 2003-2004 season to North Texas, where he had to sit out a season. Davis has been a star for the Mean Green, averaging 16.8 points per game last season, and 13.8 per game this year despite battling through a hand injury early in the season.

Tonight, North Texas beat Arkansas State 83-75 in the finals of the Sun Belt Conference Tournament, giving the Mean Green an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, their first since 1988.

I was never a huge fan of Kendrick Davis when he played for Arkansas. He was pretty one-dimensional, and even as a scorer, was fairly inconsistent. But he was willing to take a risk and be the first player to sign on to a UA program that was reeling after the stormy departure of Nolan Richardson, and I always thought it wasn’t fair that he was cut out of the picture for other players who were perceived to be better.

Who would’ve thought when Kendrick transferred after the 2003-2004 season that he would end up appearing in the same number of NCAA Tournaments as Brewer and Ferguson, and would win at least as many tournament games?

I guess things worked out pretty fairly after all.