I didn’t watch the last week of the regular season because I spent a week on a free cruise. Well, I say it was ‘free’, but really it was paid for by gambling losses on a cruise 4.5 years prior; it’s amazing how willing Royal Caribbean is to give you a nice room if you just please continue exercising your Dunning-Kruger effect in the casino on a regular basis. I long ago learned that there’s an inverse relationship between your wallet and how genuinely a casino employee smiles when you show up, and suffice it to say there have been plenty of toothy grins over the course of my cruises.
This was not the only payment that was made, there was also payment rendered in the bathroom the last morning in the form of a norovirus infection. For the uninitiated - and god bless your innocent souls - norovirus symptoms appear to be nearly identical to food poisoning. It is not airborne but transmitted through contact, though either form of transmission is problematic when you’re on a ship large enough to have its own diving show. The cruise lines take precautions to minimize this, including mandatory washing stations prior to hitting the buffet & enough hand sanitizer stations around the ship you might think the entire venture is a Purell money laundering scheme, but at the end of the day there are a few thousand people (and a couple thousand of which are tiny disease vectors otherwise known as “children”) in a confined space so some of this is…boy, I wish there was a relevant naval metaphor for irrelevant actions in the face of certain doom. My wife was diligent in hand-washing and used hand wipes before & after eating like her entrée was pan-seared monkeypox so of course she caught it first, which meant that even though she holed up in the room & I spent relatively little time around her to minimize contact, unless the cruise was willing to offer up a second free room for me to sleep in - I didn’t bring that much gambling money - my immune system was in store for its greatest defensive effort since she caught COVID two years ago.
Well - bringing it back to sports! - if my body was Texas, the COVID defense two years ago was Houston Christian & the norovirus defense was the Kansas State home game. The morning we were to depart the ship, my body woke up at 5am and began to inform me that the vacation was truly over. No matter how much my brain tried to convince my body that this was just nerves, that I was stressing myself over an imagined issue, on this topic my body had the last, loudest, unimaginably volcanic word.
For anyone considering a juice cleanse but is pressed for time, might I suggest getting norovirus instead? The entirety of your system gets cleaned out just like in a juice cleanse, but instead of spending a week drinking lemon water you get to unload every toxin and scrap of bubble gum in your system in a matter of hours. Forget your old-fashioned one-exit cleanse system, norovirus disrupts the cleanse market by taking full advantage of both possible exits and there are times it feels like it’s going to invent a third. HACK YOUR BODY’S DIGESTION WITH THIS ONE EASY TRICK. I spent 6 days eating and drinking to the point of excess that four days later I went up to a Chipotle counter and almost reflexively ordered a Tito’s & soda, but I walked1 off the ship weighing almost exactly what I weighed when I boarded. Take that, science!
I do not recall exactly when the last time was that I vomited, it had been several years at that point, but let me assure you that counter was forcefully reset. What my sweet, petite wife had happen to her over the course of a 36 or so hours, I did a speedrun through in the span of an Avatar movie. (I’m not sure which one is worse, the slow burn or the flash fire, you’re free to discuss amongst yourselves.) You learn a lot of things about yourself in these moments; whether it’s how flexible you are to contort yourself into prime hurling posture in a cramped cruise ship bathroom (I am!), whether your significant other is willing to meet the challenge of getting you off the ship and into the car (she was!), or how much time it takes your stomach to fully digest beans (more than I had!). There’s a lot of internal honesty and/or pride checks when you’re pressed for time and have to make decisions which will impact the arc of your return home, like if you can drag your ass off a ship or need to be carted off, or when the doctor finds out you have a 5+ hour drive ahead of you and immediately hands you a couple pairs of Depends. The respective answers to those questions are I did, and
My wife was a rock star throughout this, considering she had eaten maybe 600 calories in the 2 days prior to this and was less than 24 hours removed from her own personal digestive dilemmas. She made the trek to the 2nd deck to get me meds, she found people to help me down to the medical section - it’s not as festive as the rest of the ship! - and she drove us home with minimal issues. If it weren’t for her, I might have spent the day in a biohazard tent outside a Galveston Hampton Inn wishing for the sweet release of death; instead, I spent the day on the road wishing for the sweet release of death and treating every potential fart with the sort of suspicion usually reserved for Jared from Subway showing up unannounced to your child’s birthday party. What a way to ring in our anniversary.
So, yea, basketball, huh? How about it?
The Texas Draw
The headline here is that anything less than an Elite Eight appearance should be considered a disappointment; not just because that’s the average expectation of a 2-seed in a vacuum, but because that’s the most common outcome for teams with Texas’ statistical profile. Here are the 10 most similar teams to Texas since 2008, per Bart Torvik:
If you don’t limit it to teams with a similar seed, things get a bit more muddled per Bart Torvik:
(I also think Elite Eight should be the bar for ‘success’ based on the draw they received, but we’ll get to that.) Let’s start with the first game:
Colgate
KenPom rank: 114
Adjusted OE: 44th
Adjusted DE: 231st
I think Texas fans should remain calm if Colgate is still close or in the lead halfway through the 2nd half, because this is what they generally do. Including this year, Matt Langel has made 4 of the last 5 tournaments in a 1-bid league and in every appearance they’ve put a scare into a 2 or 3 seed in the first round.
2022: They led 3-seed Wisconsin 52-50 with 10 minutes left before losing 67-60
2021: They led 3-seed Arkansas 54-50 with 11:30 left before losing 85-68
2019: They were tied with 2-seed Tennessee 52-52 with 10 minutes left before losing 77-70
Colgate has some pieces that could cause Texas problems - they make nearly 41% of their threes, they have more interior size than Texas, and Tucker Richardson will cook Texas defenders if they’re not playing their assignments correctly - so this doesn’t seem to me like a cakewalk, but Texas is a significant favorite and should win if they play even a B- game. I would be a lot more concerned about this matchup if Colgate played decent or even opportunistic defense, but they don’t force a lot of turnovers. They take care of the ball well and prioritize the defensive glass, but those are relatively minor spots I focus on for Texas for possible upsets.
If the game is still close with 10 minutes left in the game, don’t let visions of ACU start dancing in your head just yet. Colgate may keep things close for longer than you like, but they’ve yet to close out a first-round win and the math says this is unlikely to be the year they break through.
(Also, when is Matt Langel going to get a look at a higher level? He’s been at Colgate for a decade and turned them into the class of the league. Maybe he’s happy where he is, but it seems like somebody at a bigger mid-major or low-end P5 should consider him.)
Penn State
KenPom rank: 39
Adjusted OE: 17th
Adjusted DE: 101st
Penn State is a high-variance team; they’re going to shoot a high percentage of threes and if those are going in they quickly get dangerous, but they were .500 in the Big Ten because they don’t prioritize offensive rebounds and they don’t turn other teams over so they’re not likely to generate many additional chances to score. They also take care of the ball very well; but that tracks as any team this dependent upon perimeter scoring is marginally less likely to turn the ball over since they’re not getting in the paint a ton. Run them off the three-point line and your odds of winning go up substantially.
Texas A&M
KenPom rank: 25
Adjusted OE: 30th
Adjusted DE: 37th
Texas A&M faithful are caterwauling about getting a 7-seed because they were second in the SEC & made the title game, blaming the situation on Buzz complaining about being excluded last year. Never you mind they had a shit non-conference schedule which they went 8-5 in and lost to Murray State and Wofford, which tied them for the most Q4 losses in the NET top 30. The other team? Utah State, a 10-seed. Maybe don’t lose to bad teams?
The Aggies have been great since the turn of the calendar and are a very solid team, if you were just looking at the second half of the season they play more like a 3 or 4-seed. That said, this particular matchup seems like a good one for Texas. As a rough guideline, the closer a team resembles Creighton both from a roster and schematic standpoint, the more concerned I get about them playing Texas. So from that frame of reference, let’s look at A&M:
3-point shooting: 32.8%, 246th in D-I. Not only does A&M not shoot the three reliably well, they also don’t shoot that many threes (285th in D-I in 3PA/FGA). So I’m not super-worried about them spacing Texas out.
Interior size: 247th in D-I in average height, so there’s no Kalkbrenner/Edey-type in the middle causing problems for Texas’ relative lack of size.
Rim protection: 219th in D-I in block percentage. You can get to the rim on them.
A&M doesn’t run the same offense as Creighton, but there’s another piece I’d like to bring up.
Turnover margin: Sometimes when I’m tinkering with the numbers, I take the percentage a team turns the opponent over and subtract from it the percentage a team turns it over, and the lower the number is the better a team is performing in either forcing turnovers, taking care of the ball, or both. For example, Texas turns the ball over 16.5% on offense (65th in D-I) and forces turnovers on 22.8% (19th in D-I) of defensive possessions. Subtract the two and Texas is at -6.3, which is a very good number and an indication they’re doing both things well. Texas A&M is 18.3% & 21%, respectively, which is -2.7. It’s still a solid number, but they don’t take care of the ball as well as they force turnovers. If their number was close to even with Texas, I would be more concerned.
If Texas doesn’t make it out of the first weekend, something went very, very wrong.
The rest of the region (other than Houston) is mostly teams who don’t particularly scare me if I’m Texas. They’ve beaten Iowa State, Indiana is solid but would have to get past Houston - assuming the Hoosiers get past Kent State in the first round - for Texas to ever see them, & the same thing can be said for Miami to a lesser extent, though their defense is more suspect than Indiana’s. If Marcus Sasser was out for the tournament, Texas might be a slight betting favorite to make the Final Four. I think Texas would struggle to beat Houston, as the Cougars are playing at least as well as they did the last time they made a Final Four run and their defense will happily grind Texas’ offense to a halt.
Most Texas fans are understandably focused on the Aggies and the Cougars, but the team I’m looking at is Xavier.
Xavier
KenPom rank: 16
Adjusted OE: 9th
Adjusted DE: 70th
Xavier would be happy to run with Texas as their adjusted tempo (39th) is faster than Texas (91st), and while they don’t take a ton of threes (31.3%, 320th) they make them at almost as high a clip as Colgate (39.5%, 3rd in D-I). They crash the glass on both ends significantly better than Texas (77th in D-I on offense, 52nd on defense) and they have the interior size in 7-foot Jack Nunge to cause Texas issues. They swept UConn, took 2 of 3 from Creighton, and were one of only 3 teams in conference play to beat Marquette. Do not sleep on Sean Miller’s squad. Texas avoiding Xavier is a substantial boost to their chances, in my view. If you’re a Texas fan, maybe consider becoming an Iowa State fan for a weekend.
Miscellaneous tourney notes
Pour one out for our dear Iowa friend Tim Preston; he had to cancel our Vegas March Madness trip a few months ago because one of his closest relatives is getting married this weekend and asked him to be part of the wedding, and then this weekend he had to watch Texas get put in extremely-close-to-the-house Des Moines for the first two rounds. Just an absolute nut-kicking series of events for him, if I were a worse person I would have laughed my ass off at this. Thankfully, I am an amazing person and have only felt the deepest sympathy for him. Yep, that’s it. ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIF
Is there a possible second-round matchup I’m begging for more than TCU/Gonzaga? There is not, though Creighton/Baylor and Purdue/Memphis also seem enticing.
Can we all collectively thank the selection committee for not trying to shoehorn Marquette and/or Tennessee into Texas’ region? The Aggies already seem a bit convenient, though the last time this matchup was attempted Northern Iowa hit Texas with a One Shining Moment and ended up as the middle person in a first-weekend human centipede. At least they didn’t turn this region into Texas’ version of Game of Death.
If you’re looking for a First Four rooting interest, Will Baker is on the Nevada team playing Wednesday and he’s playing Bobby Hurley’s Arizona State team, so that’s technically two reasons to root for Nevada. Baker has shot 38.2% from three (47/123) his two seasons with the Wolfpack. See, all he needed was to be taller than everyone again!
Kansas possibly getting Arkansas in the 2nd round feels like the kind of matchup where their repeat bid could get derailed a couple rounds too early. Now that I’ve typed this out, Kansas will win by 18 while Bill Self practices breathing exercises during his downward dog on the sideline.
My Elite Eight is pretty chalky, there are three 1-seeds, two 2-seeds, a 3, a 5, and a 6. I think the selection committee’s increasing use of analytics sites is leading to fewer instances of a team being vastly over or under-seeded and once you get to the second weekend the upsets tend to be fewer & farther between. That said, I do have one 13-seed making the Sweet Sixteen.
My final four picks are Alabama, Houston, Purdue, and UCLA, though the injury to Jaylen Clark has me waffling pretty hard on the Bruins. If they don’t make it, Saint Mary’s is my pick for their replacement. I might even be changing it as you read this. I have Houston beating Bama for the title, but seeing Edey deal with Houston’s super-aggressive post traps would be very entertaining.
Two final notes:
I don’t have much to say about the Ole Miss hire that Dana O’Neil didn’t already cover here, and I’m looking forward to not thinking about either party for months at a time. Fuck both him and them, they deserve each other.
I have no inside info, but my hunch is that CDC is in advanced talks with whoever the next coach is. If I’m him, I have it narrowed down to Rodney Terry and the one big splash alternative hire, preferably with his mind already made up on who he wants in the position. I don’t think this tournament should be the deciding factor, March Madness is a very fickle beast and single-game sample sizes are poor ways to judge a coach when you have a mountain of other data available. I don’t believe Terry has to make it to a specific round to be hired permanently, either he’s your guy or he’s not. He has 10.5 years of head coaching data for you to inspect, this tournament shouldn’t fundamentally alter how you view his fit. There’s a very good chance the best (in my view) non-Terry option will be available by Sunday evening in Musselman, and with the transfer portal already open prolonging the hire will make next year’s roster build increasingly difficult. You’ve had months to do your due diligence; make the move so whoever is in charge next season can get to work keeping next year’s recruits, talking to possible current roster holdovers, and filling the assistant/support staff as needed. If you hire correctly, they’ll be off and running in no time.
Okay, it was more like a Weekend at Bernie’s situation if I was both Andrew McCarthy and the dead guy.
And...thanks!
When you begin your Quinquennial cycle of colonoscopies at age 50 you will have the opportunity to relive the clean and flush experience.
Something to look forward to...perhaps not.
Unless we have Jay Wright locked up or UT loses to Colgate, there's no reason to not bring Terry back. The team, fanbase and most importantly the recruits all want him.
Musselman is a good coach and recruiter, but they didnt exactly do a lot with their talent this year. If Terry were to make the sweet 16 or further, it would be a complete slap in the face to bring on Musselman and I could easily see us losing Holland and AJ Johnson. Could also see guys transfer
Give Terry a 3 year deal and fire him after 2 seasons if we perform subpar