Review and what not

I was going to wait until tomorrow to type up tonight's games, but I've been drinking screwdrivers all night (note: that's not gay) and I'm in a typey mood. I didn't even get to start watching the games until after 9 tonight, due to some interestingly scary developments in Project: Baby W. Summary - it looks like she may be on her way early, and thus the W home has been a whirlwind of baby setup activity.

That is neither here nor there. What is here and there, is that we went 4-0 on game bets today. What up? Also went 8-1 on player props. For reals. Dominating the late rounds of the tournament. Like every year. Expect dominance tomorrow. Or a complete collapse to get back towards .500. I don't know. On to the games.

North Carolina 68, Washington State 47: This is the only game where we lost a player prop, as Danny Green outscored Kyle Weaver 15-10. This is also the game I didn't get to see much of, as CBS mercifully switched off this ass-kicking. The interesting thing is that Washington State did the two things that were keys: 1) control tempo and 2) limit Hansbrough. The did both of these in the first half, yet were still down fourteen. The second half saw the dude with one of the worst nicknames ever, "Psycho T" have a better half as the Heels ran away with the game. Seriously that nickname is really just retarded. Also, the dude never, ever closes his mouth. For real. If you say you've seen him with his mouth closed, you're a god damned liar.

Xavier 79, West Virginia 75: This was a fun game, overtime even. After X got out to a big first half lead I was feeling pretty good about myself, but they blew it. The last 8 minutes or so was back and forth for the lead, and was one of the more entertaining basketball games of the year. WVU's Joe Alexander really is a pretty good player, but he's a big time forcer shooter guy. Before tonight's 8-18, he hadn't shot better than 33% in his last three games, but everybody wanted to talk about him like he was jesus because he scores a lot of points. He did play well tonight, but his defense is brutal. On one occasion I saw Josh Duncan get the ball in the post against him and pass up several layups just to continue to make fancy "dreamshakesque" moves and just basically have fun. Alexander is a scorer no doubt, but he plays defense like a Griggs M chick against a drunk dude.

I have a couple other quick comments about that game. One of the more impressive things I've seen in the history of the world was Drew Lavender's defense tonight. Not even talking about the way he handled the perimeter against WVU's guards, I mean one play where Mazzulla for WVU got the ball in the open court and came in 1-on-1 against Lavender, and got turned away. Didn't even get a shot off. Just tremendous closeout defense against a charging opponent. Another thing is that Xavier's best player, Josh Duncan, had four fouls with about 11 minutes left in the game. At one point coach Sean Miller brought him back in, but nobody on the Mountaineers bothered to attack him to try and get a fifth foul. Horrible coaching. Not unlike leaving a 41% three point shooter in BJ Raymond open twice in the last two minutes. West Virginia had this game in the bag with a 6 point lead in OT and let it go. Inexcusable.

One guy I feel bad for in a way that I don't really feel bad at all is WVU's center Jamie Smalligan. Dude came over to WVU from Butler to be the new Pittsnoggle. You know, a seven footer who was more comfortable hanging out around the three point line, a "Rickert" or a "Bogart" if you will. Turns out Huggy-Bear isn't too interested in gays like that, and Smalligan posted career lows in, well, everything. Maybe you should be such a sissy, Rick. I mean Jamie.

Louisville 79, Tennessee 60: The most anticipated game of the night, for me, turned out to be kind of disappointing, as I think both teams turned out to be idiots. I think from the 16 minute time out to the 12 minute time out the teams combined went 1-12. It was very uptempo, but for the most part - well, Tennessee's part, was very stupid. I think the Vols would absolutely win a streetball tournament, and I also think it's very possible Bruce Pearl is a horrible coach. Team is obscenely talented, yet underachieves. Did you also know that some dude who was a bouncer on Jerry Springer has his own show now? The fact that this douchehole makes tons of money and I don't really pisses me off.

Anyway, what the f happened to Chris Lofton? He had 15 tonight, which covered his over/under of 14.5, but it came on 3-15 shooting, 2-11 from three. He made the degenerate gamblers happy, but I can't image Vol fans are too thrilled. His scoring dropped more than five points a game this year, and he's shooting 7.3% worse from the floor. Want to know why? Because every damn shot he throws up there is a fadeaway with the front foot kicking forward. It's not quite chick style shooting, but he's really killing both his future and his teams chances. I mean, I guess he already killed his teams' chances, but I was referring to his NBDL team. They're gonna hate this guy. I also saw him do that stupid thing where when you shoot a three and there's a defender anywhere near you, fall down and try to get the foul. Well, the ref didnt' fall for it and his defender just went streaking down and got hit for a layup - wide open because Lofton was on the floor. I think it's safe to assume chris loften is kind of a homo.

UCLA 88, Western Kentucky 78: Another game we didn't get much of. I'll say that the fact that WKU was able to get all UCLA's guards in foul trouble, Collison out, Shipp and Westbrook with four, is actually fairly irrelevant now that they won. Xavier's guards arent' ooh no there's a snake eating mice babies on the tv now. The snake killed the mom mouse with poison and is now eating the babies since they have no protection dude this is messed up. Wow. Ok, sorry. Xavier doesn't have the quick guards that effed up UCLA tonight, but they have a much better answer inside for your precious Kevin Love who you think is so awesome because he's white and you're a racist son of a bitch. Yeah, I'm calling a Xavier win. I had UCLA as my champ, but they look like total hell right now. They're just waiting for somebody to put them out of their misery at this point.

Oh, and the picture is Sarah Chalke because I wanted it to be. There's no rhyme or reason here. But I did feel I owed people.