Arch Sadness

On Thursday thousands of Missouri Valley students and alumni will descend upon St. Louis for the four day drinking/basketball orgy known as Arch Madness. This week always makes me sad. The one good thing, maybe the only good thing, about being a student at Creighton was Bluejay basketball, and the opportunity to skip classes, road trip it to St. Louis, put 14 guys in a hotel room, and get fucking shitfaced for three straight days. I've been on record as saying that generally, if you aren't from Wisconsin, you cannot handle your booze. But this week, young and old alike from such places as Omaha, NE, Springfield, MO, Cedar Falls, IA, Des Moines, IA, Normal, IL, Terre Haute, IN, Carbondale, IL, Witchita, KS, Evansville, IN, and Peoria, IL, combine forces for a drunken, sloppy mess. And they do it well.

Oh, and they play a little bit of basketball too. Creighton plays at 2:30 on Friday against Bradley. Maybe CU has finally put everything together. They have played well the past two weeks. I would give them almost no chance, except for the fact that strange things happen at Arch Madness. Creighton has won ten tournament titles, which is twice as many as any other team. They are also the only team ever to win it as a 4 seed (2000). So anything is possible. If not, I guess there is always the CBI tournament.

So to all students and alumni of Valley schools heading to the Lou tomorrow. I'm jealous. Some day, when my wife and Twinkie's wife finally wise up and get rid of us, and I either quit this job, own the place or Uncle Sam stops requiring taxes to be filed, we will make our triumphant return. Until then, GO JAYS!!!

ESPN's unfathomable love with the ACC

*Note* The opinion of ESPN is in no way, shape or form related to the opinion of Mr. Sports Bottle. I just read his post and it reminded me of what I heard a few days ago.

So I'm just casually watching ESPN while making some food the other day, when sports caster after sports caster starts babbling on about how they can make a really good case for UNC to still be number 1. What the fuck? Really? This is fucking basketball, if you lose, you drop, regardless of who you play, because there are 35 games to make it up later on. They lost to Boston College, who for all intents and purposes has no business being in a game with them. Look at that powder puff schedule that's gotten them to number 24 in the nation. They lost two early games to *cough cough* Saint Louis and an ok Purdue team. But what matters is they haven't lost lately, so they rise in the polls.

The Badgers on the other hand are outside of the top 25 right now with losses to the currently #5, #7 and #15 team in the nation. Other than the UConn game early on those were all really hard fought losses, however we've spread out losses out during the non-conference season and thusly we dropped later on and haven't climbed back into the top 25.

What about Pitt still being undefeated? Yea, they haven't lost and yet just because some dickwads at ESPN think UNC is better on paper, they are totally willing to throw them ahead of an undefeated team. Even though Pitt just clubbed a Georgetown team who had been playing really well lately. Have I ever mentioned that I love the Big East? I was always a huge fan of that conference and it topped my list when Marquette went there in the wake of the, the ACC is trying to make a football super conference(which failed) so we'll make a basketball super conference(which succeeded and left them with a still pretty good football conference), poaching of all the good C-USA teams at the time. The Big East is what the Big Ten wishes it could be.

But anyways, that's just the way the basketball polls work, there are so many more games than football that there is usually a lot of liberty taken with moving teams up and down. Of course what do the polls even really matter other than being a reference point for SoS computations to help determine what bubble teams get in to the PLAYOFFS at the end of the season. College basketball is so much better than college football.