Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Broseph's Bits And The Tuesday Gospel

The gospel was thinking about the NCAA Tournament and was thinking that the cream of this year's crop is pretty well defined. Most years there are at least 10-15 teams who could win it all, but it doesn't seem like the case in 2011. Ohio State and Duke are the best by far in the country. San Diego State is a nice story, but come March they won't be around as long as the first two. I'm not convinced about Pittsburgh or Connecticut and their lofty ranking. UConn is a one man band with Kemba Walker and Pittsburgh's a nice story, but I'm just not putting them in the elite class yet.

Kansas and Texas are in the next grouping of teams. Texas has the feel potentially of a young Syracuse team who won in 2003 even without their own Carmelo Anthony. Kansas is probably the deepest team in the country, but where is their nice wins this season. Move down a bit more and you find Villanova, Syracuse, BYU and Purdue. Each of these teams have faults as well. Nova's inside game will hurt them. Syracuse's lack of a good jump shooter will be their demise while BYU's toughness usually leaves them come tourney time. Purdue's a nice story, but they are a two man team.

Anyways, the point of this exercise is that other then Ohio State and Duke, there's a large grouping of teams who each have a lot of questions. The best part of the Field of 68 is trying to find out who will be their biggest challengers and where will Cinderella's slipper go. Will it be a young Kentucky squad with a lot of talent that could make things interesting? Maybe it's Washington who will run a lot of teams out of the building? Could we have an all Big East elite 8? It seems like they may place at least 10 in the tournament so there's a chance that could happen. Get those pens ready...we're almost at bracket filling time.

The gospel went 0-1 yesterday. Days like that will happen in this game of gambling. We'll bounce back.

Bowling Green -5 -- The Falcons take on Toledo on Tuesday evening. Bowling Green is 8-11, 3-2 in the MAC. They have won six of their last eight contests which include road wins at Buffalo and St. Louis. They are coming off a close five point loss at Akron on the 22nd. BG scores only 62.5 points per game, but they allow only 65.1. The Falcons have multiple weapons with Scott Thomas (11 ppg), A'uston Calhoun (10.3 ppg) and Dee Brown (9.7 ppg) leading the way. The team plays a ton of zone which will fit in well against a Toledo squad who doesn't have a single player who is shooting over 40% from three point land. They have Malcolm Griffin (12.7 ppg) and Reese Holliday (9.9 ppg) as their main threats. The Rockets score a woeful 58 points a contest and allow almost 70. They have lost six of their last seven with the lone win coming against Western Michigan on January 19th. Toledo was blown out at home by woeful Eastern Michigan 71-48. Bowling Green has covered seven of their 11 games against teams with a losing record this season. They'll continue that trend on Tuesday.

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