NIT fever.

It was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen at UNC. Frankly, I’d rather pretend the NIT didn’t exist. Let’s talk about the NCAA tournament.

Every season I agonize over my bracket. March is the one time each year that my otherwise inappropriate obsession with basketball becomes mainstream. So in the four days between Selection Sunday and the start of the tournament, I release a lot of pent-up energy researching for my bracket. I start by dutifully looking at general team characteristics, coaching styles, wins vs. top 50 teams, etc., but eventually delve into terrifyingly raw philosophical deconstructions and epistemic paradoxes. Every year I go on a journey from hope to desperation to exhaustion to existential angst to a recognition of my own insignificance in the universe to the understanding that Georgia Tech simply doesn’t have the guard play to deal with Oklahoma State’s press.

To avoid a post of Jonesian proportions, I’ll only write about the most intriguing games.

East

#5 Temple vs. #12 Cornell: A lot of people have Cornell winning. Cornell has become one of this year’s biggest “water-cooler dandies”- people who follow basketball a moderate amount have heard of Cornell’s surprising flirtation with the top 25, know that they’re supposed to be good but don’t exactly know why and are mostly picking them as an upset special to impress their equally semi-informed friends. But I don’t see it. Temple and Cornell play very similar styles, mostly because Temple’s coach (Fran Dunphy, who was spent four years coaching under the venerable Gary Williams) was Cornell’s coach’s mentor. Temple’s just plays that style better. They handily beat Penn, who handily beat Cornell. The most telling stat to me: Temple holds its opponents to 28% 3-point shooting (Cornell’s offense runs on the three). In the end, I don’t think the mystical forces of fashionability can overcome talent.

Final four pick: Kentucky. West Virginia could be tough in the Elite 8, but they’re just so boring. They only have one real scoring threat (a relative term in the case of West Virginia). Kentucky’s inexperience scares me a little, but they’re just so talented. Of course, when it comes to teams coached by John Calipari, the number of final four appearances is probably directly proportional to the number of recruiting violations committed.

South

#4 Purdue vs. #13 Siena: Purdue is without their #2 scorer and rebounder Robbie Hummel. They scored 11 points in the first half of their last game (they only had 4 points in the first 16 minutes). This kind of feels like a trap. Siena seems like an all-too-easy upset pick. But then again…

#8 California vs. #9 Louisville: This year’s batch of 8/9 games is relatively disappointing. Cal/Louisville is the most interesting 8/9 game to me. Louisville did beat Syracuse twice. But Louisville hasn’t done much outside of beating Syracuse, and they have trouble defending the three, which is one of Cal’s strong points. I’d lean towards Cal.

Final Four pick: Baylor. I mean, Duke does have an unconscionably easy road to the final four. But Baylor does have LaceDarius Dunn and Tweety Carter. Not only are their names awesome, they’re also one of the nation’s better one-two scoring threats. And, if Duke’s outside shooting is off, they’ll have to deal with Ekpe Udoh, the nation’s fifth-ranked shot blocker. So Baylor winning isn’t inconceivable.

West

#4 Vanderbilt vs. #13 Murray State: Each year, there are one or two teams that shoot over 50% while holding their opponents to less than 40% shooting.  The 30 win Murray State is one of those statistical anomalies this year. Plus, Vanderbilt is a really weak four seed. I love Murray State for the upset.

Second Round

#5 Butler vs. #13 Murray State: I have a friend whose opinion I respect who has Butler losing to UTEP in the first round. I would love to see a UTEP/ Murray State match-up. Either way, I have Murray State in my Sweet 16.

Final four pick: Kansas State. I was leaning this way anyways, but with Onuaku iffy, I feel pretty certain about this pick.

Midwest

Second Round

#3 Georgetown vs. #7 Tennessee: This is hard to pick, simply because both of these teams are so bipolar. Both have really good wins (Tennessee beat Kansas and Kentucky, Georgetown beat Syracuse, Villanova, Duke, and Pittsburg) and they both have bad losses (Tennessee just lost to Kentucky 74-45, Georgetown has lost to Rutgers and South Florida)

#4 Maryland vs. #5 Michigan State: I know some people picking Michigan State simply because of Tom Izzo. But frankly, I don’t respect any team that lost to UNC this year.

Final four pick: Kansas. This is a really loaded bracket, so there are a couple of viable candidates. To me it comes down to: Sherrod Collins + Cole Aldrich +Xavier Henry +  Marcus Morris> Evan Turner (but just barely).

For now, Duke delenda est.

2009 Season

vs. Florida International – 53% of student tickets used.
vs. N.C. Central – 47% of student tickets used.
vs. Valparaiso – 24% of student tickets used.

2008 Season

vs. Pennsylvania – 65% of student tickets used.
vs. Kentucky – 85% of student tickets used.
vs. UNC-Asheville – 40% of student tickets used.

CAA director John Russell says that students are simply not taking advantage of other ways to get tickets. For example, he points to the fact that although 400 tickets were returned for redistribution for last Sunday’s game, only 20 were claimed. However, returned tickets are only distributed at 5:15 PM the day before a game. But for most heavily scheduled college students, going to a game is something that requires a bit of planning in advance. Not knowing whether you are going to get a ticket until the night before is a major inconvenience when planning schoolwork and other activities. It’s a simple truth that making it harder for students to get tickets is going to decrease attendance.

Russell continues to justify the new policy by arguing that students are now twice as likely to receive a basketball ticket. This is true, but they are also far less likely to find friends with tickets in the same phase, and are therefore less likely to use their ticket. CAA Associate Director Clint Gwaltney argues that the previous system of giving two tickets to each student was not working because tickets were still being unused, claiming that only 85% of student tickets were used for last year’s game against Kentucky and something had to be changed.

Russell argues that students can get tickets if they really want them. This is true. This was true last year too. But the issue is not whether you can get a ticket if you try hard enough, it’s whether it’s worth the trouble. And when it becomes more and more trouble, more and more students will decide that it’s not worth it.

The solution to this is not to make it harder for students to go to games. Common sense dictates that if people aren’t doing a certain thing, then making it harder for them to do that thing will not make them more likely to do it. You simply do not promote attending basketball games by making it harder to do.

One experience, though, is especially illuminating given our very race-conscious surroundings. In 2001, I played on a summer league team on which I was the only white player.

Of course, I stood out because of my race. Whenever my parents showed up to one of our games, one of the officials invariably joked that he could guess who my parents were. And all of my nicknames involved the fact that I was white. I’m pretty sure that some of my teammates’ parents didn’t know my real name but, rather, knew me only as “Vanilla Ice.”

Looking back, though, my race didn’t really affect much. There was a little bit of tension over the fact that I started ahead of several black players, but that was never too serious. Our coach was black, so accusations of racial discrimination rang a bit hollow. Any racial strife didn’t get in our way, as we went undefeated.

But, while race didn’t really divide our team, differences in socio-economic status did, at least to some degree. As a middle-upper-middle class WASP, I had been raised in a different cultural milieu than my teammates (a couple of whom acquired criminal records and failed to graduate from high school on time).

This didn’t really affect what happened on the court nearly as much as it affected my performance of the little rituals that surround the game. For instance, I was forbidden from trash-talking, mostly because I once accidentally used the word “lugubrious” in one of my ill-conceived taunts.

However, my upbringing did give me advantages in other areas. I was always assigned to be the guy who complained to the refs about dubious calls. Excuse me sir, I believe you have erred grievously in assigning a foul to my cohort. While I do respect your position, I would only ask- nay, beseech you to be more cautious as the competition continues.

But, most significantly, I brought Diversity to the team. Case in point: during warm-ups, our coach usually played music to pump us up. Each of the starters got to choose a song to play. My teammates each chose hardcore rap songs, while I favored the Smashing Pumpkins. I firmly believe that any time the angst-ridden vocals of Billy Corgan are united with the ghetto-infused dissonance of gangsta rap, society wins.

As you probably already know, the Carolina Athletics Association decided to change the distribution policy for men’s basketball tickets. Before, there were 3,000 winners in the student lottery and each student received two tickets to games. Now, each student will receive a single ticket, with 6,000 students receiving tickets.

The CAA claims this is necessary because too many student tickets were going unused. Now, I attended almost every home game last year, and I did not see any empty student seats. The CAA also tried to justify the new policy by saying that if two students had plans to go to a game together, and both of them won tickets, then two tickets would end up being unused. The statistical improbability of this rare occurrence notwithstanding, in my experience, students with tickets they did not plan to use almost always gave them to someone else.

Now, the most likely outcome of this new policy is that many students will win tickets, but none of their friends will win tickets in the same phase. This will mean that many of these students will not attend, probably leading to more unused tickets than before.

The CAA has pointed to the Duke ticket policy and football ticket policies as models. However, the football stadium seats 12,000 students, meaning that almost all students who want to go to the game are able to go. Most of the seats at the Duke game are reserved for seniors, so it is far more likely that people will know at least a few people from their graduating class.

However, the burden of the new policy will fall harder on some students than on others. Here’s a quick run-down of the students who will be shafted the most by the new policy:

Graduate Students

As geography graduate student Benjamin Heumann pointed out in a letter to the editor to the Daily Tar Heel, graduate students have far smaller social circles than undergraduates who make friends from numerous clubs and other events. Therefore, graduate students are even less likely than undergraduates to receive tickets to the same game and phase as their friends.

Dating Couples

Receiving two tickets guaranteed that couples would be able to go together. Now, they have to hope to hit the statistical bullseye, or hope to bum a ticket off a friend who isn’t using it.

Introverts

Not everyone at UNC has 800 friends. Some people only have small groups of close friends, thereby making it far less likely that at least two people from their group will win tickets. With each ticket winner getting two tickets, they were guaranteed at least one friend to go with.

People without “black market” connections

We all know the type, the person who runs a small distribution ring of basketball tickets. He knows hundreds of people, so many people give him their unused tickets and he redistributes them. Not everyone knows one of these people, and their only chance of getting a ticket is to win one. Now, their only chance of going with a friend (and for this type of person, going with a friend is the only way they will go) is for their friend to also win a ticket.

In summary, this is my third year at the university. I’ve seen priority registration, weekday registration, a $12 child care fee levied on 27,000 students to benefit 34 people, a session of student congress, and a ban on smoking with 100 feet of a building, and this new ticket policy is quite possibly the most ridiculous and most pathetically publicly justified action I have seen from any administrative body at this university.

Sign-ups for the first six games of the season end on Saturday. The CAA should move quickly to reverse this poor decision and re-institute the old policy of giving lottery winners two tickets, before the computer even picks the winners of the current lottery.

UNC’s victory was not a surprise. Though we were playing this week’s “Team of Destiny” (whatever that could possibly mean), who supposedly had the entire depressed state of Michigan behind them (as if that was possible, or even mattered), it would have been a significant upset had we lost. Nor was our victory very exciting (from a purely objective standpoint). It was essentially just a matter of time halfway through the first half. Had this been a first or second round game, they would have probably switch to another game.

And this was the story of our entire tournament run. None of our victories were the least bit surprising or very riveting. Our only really contested game was against LSU, whom we ended up beating by 14. We didn’t win a game by less than a dozen, though we played three teams that were arguably in the top ten nationwide.

But, arguing that this UNC team was special is like arguing that ice cream is delicious. As UNC students, our victory was enough to make the whole tournament a compelling experience. But, there was a sense among some in the sports world beyond the confines of Chapel Hill that this year’s tournament was somehow disappointing. There were even a vocal handful of pundits who went so far as declaring that the 2009 March Madness was boring.

Now, this year did lack a Davidson or George Mason, but it was gripping nonetheless. March Madness 2009 was replete with highlight-reel glutting game-winning shots. Siena’s come-from-behind-double-overtime first round win over Ohio St. was almost painfully epic. Ronald Moore’s game-saving three pointer at the end of the first OT and his game-winning three at the end of the second should have been enough to justify the first weekend to its detractors. Paired with Trevon Hughes’ game-winning shot to cap a thrilling upset for 12-seed Wisconson over Florida St. (both games finished within minutes of each other), they made the second night of action just about as exciting as any night of sports.

Some despaired over the perceived lack of upsets. Sure, the Sweet Sixteen featured only two teams that had to defeat higher-seeded opponents. However, this was also a year in which 10 seeds had a better record than 5 seeds. The 13 seeded Cleveland St. came out of absolute obscurity to crush Wake Forest, whom many (including me) had in the Final Four, setting up a 12-13 game against Arizona. However, these Cinderellas exited early enough to leave room for rounds of marquee matchups, such as the memorable game between Pittsburgh and Villanove. In short, this year’s tournament struck the delicate balance between upsets and quality contests between storied programs.

… all of that, and duke was beaten early and handily. A wise man once said that March Madness is so awesome that you wish it were happening while it is happening. This year was no different.

Champions of the Nation

We’ve just got one question for you after the awesome victory over the Spartans:
WHOSE HOUSE?!?

Slam Dunk!

GO HEELS!! We at CRDaily.com would like to remind everyone to watch the National Championship tonight at 9:21 when the Tar Heels play the Michigan St. Spartans for the national title.
So it’s Rah, Rah, Car’lina-lina, Rah, Rah, Car’lina-lina, Rah, Rah, Car’lina-lina, Rah! Rah! Rah! GO HEELS!