tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18361641213459597492024-03-16T01:08:21.728-06:00Drive and DishBasketball commentary with an emphasis on the college game. Because basketball is Life.S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.comBlogger476125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-78129472456193394792023-03-16T01:18:00.007-06:002023-03-16T13:25:27.890-06:002023 NCAA Tournament Bracket<p>This humble blog, <i>Drive and Dish</i>, has had a years-running tradition of publishing the handwritten Tournament brackets of its founding members and part time contributors. </p><p><br /></p><p>That longstanding tradition was interrupted for three years because of COVID-19 -- the 2020 NCAA Tournament was cancelled due to COVID (so there were no brackets to publish), and Drive and Dish published non handwritten brackets when the Tournament resumed in 2021.</p><p><br /></p><p>Non handwritten brackets were also published again in 2022, due to our continued vigilance here at Drive and Dish to keep everyone safe from brackets that had passed through our potentially Delta and/or Omicron variant-infested hands.</p><p><br /></p><p>But now with COVID-19 officially in the rearview mirror, Drive and Dish has resumed its tradition of publishing the handwritten brackets of its founding members.</p><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMQPqFFg5SDZ5yPL3UB-kiTt3ed1f5CUf_1R2Qfhfqs8JOluMvUtbLzI7nwLqttWlgiyYFRxh9HHoam6GKF-nuUnKWwio0pji7uUqj7iAu1hj5nLZ2dQkkhQXINWRNBoBj8z6WT-RjUP81D1yJs8I9ieEunDFPKAy9l2xiimCwNeXxptpHXZPQPT3x/s2156/23%20NCAA%20Tournament%20Bracket.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1664" data-original-width="2156" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMQPqFFg5SDZ5yPL3UB-kiTt3ed1f5CUf_1R2Qfhfqs8JOluMvUtbLzI7nwLqttWlgiyYFRxh9HHoam6GKF-nuUnKWwio0pji7uUqj7iAu1hj5nLZ2dQkkhQXINWRNBoBj8z6WT-RjUP81D1yJs8I9ieEunDFPKAy9l2xiimCwNeXxptpHXZPQPT3x/s320/23%20NCAA%20Tournament%20Bracket.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-12324240253346374132022-03-17T07:00:00.004-06:002022-03-17T17:24:08.534-06:002022 NCAA Tournament Bracket<p>From its inception in 2007 to 2019, Drive and Dish maintained a tradition of publishing its writers' hand written NCAA Tournament brackets on the morning of the Tournament's opening day.</p><p><br /></p><p>Last year, in light of COVID-19 health concerns, the Drive and Dish Board of Directors made the health related decision to relax some of its stringent guidelines for filling out NCAA Tournament brackets. For the first time in our history, we gave our writers the option of submitting an electronic, non-paper and non- handwritten bracket.</p><p><br /></p><p>The result was that 50% of our published were electronic and not hand written, while the other 50% were done in traditional Drive and Dish fashion--hand written and submitted on dog eared paper.</p><p><br /></p><p>This year, Drive and Dish has implemented an ironclad vaccine mandate: all Drive and Dish contributors, regardless of whether or not they physically work in the Drive and Dish headquarters -- contributors who work from home and only submit content online must comply as well -- are required to submit proof of full COVID-19 vaccination, which includes having received both booster shots. </p><p><br /></p><p>Additionally, all Drive and Dish contributors must submit a record of all other vaccinations and proof that they've received this season's flu shots.</p><p><br /></p><p>We also require all contributors to wear N95 masks covered by cloth surgical masks -- double masking -- when writing and submitting their contributions to this website, regardless of whether they appear in person at the Drive and Dish headquarters, or whether they write remotely from home and submit their work electronically.</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyone who fails to comply with the Drive and Dish COVID-19 health guidelines will be suspended from Drive and Dish indefinitely and prohibited from contributing to Drive and Dish during their suspension.</p><p><br /></p><p>We have also extended our relaxed guidelines for submitting NCAA Tournament brackets for another year. Thus Drive and Dish contributors who are eligible to post brackets have the choice of whether to submit paper, handwritten brackets or whether to submit electronic brackets.</p><p><br /></p><p>Unfortunately, due to our contributors' widespread lack of compliance with the Drive and Dish COVID-19 health guidelines, no Drive and Dish contributors are eligible to submit and publish brackets this year. </p><p><br /></p><p>Thus, Drive and Dish has been forced to submit an Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) generated bracket for 2022 -- a historic first for this blog. </p><p><br /></p><p>We've gone to great lengths, however, to ensure that the Artificial Intelligence algorithms accurately replicate the thought processes of Drive and Dish publisher "S.K." The A.I. software has learned all that there is to know about the way "S.K." thinks, writes, and acts. It's recorded and analyzed hundreds of hours worth of data from EEG tests that monitored "S.K.'s" brainwaves -- from the beta waves present during daily activity to the theta waves present during his sleep. Ss a result, the A.I. has accurately modeled everything about "S.K." -- from his overtly stated preferences to his unconscious, pattern recognition based biases.</p><p><br /></p><p>The result is a virtual Drive and Dish 2022 NCAA Tournament bracket that completely replicates not only the preferences of the Drive and Dish braintrust (which has been reduced to just "S.K." these days), but the tone, tenor and overall "ZFG" attitude that this blog has employed through the years. </p><p><br /></p><p>Without further ado, we present the 2022 edition of the Drive and Dish NCAA Tournament bracket (BTW, Happy St. Patrick's Day):</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhTt8g1gvehPzPMNcpZtTMif7_L46HwmzcnVsGns0mcglOG3ECwHrBkXOo3jtb27kdq1W0QuIbZK95_xOEMBI7xM8qrNf76brwOXm1yif4iM7SALnKpmCvZQybBs_SUXoW8sRedS-Wd06Qh3CPmYWy0Zm_P51sIxI6zebcIM8faKg1Be5BJtBMfs_tg=s1130" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="869" data-original-width="1130" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhTt8g1gvehPzPMNcpZtTMif7_L46HwmzcnVsGns0mcglOG3ECwHrBkXOo3jtb27kdq1W0QuIbZK95_xOEMBI7xM8qrNf76brwOXm1yif4iM7SALnKpmCvZQybBs_SUXoW8sRedS-Wd06Qh3CPmYWy0Zm_P51sIxI6zebcIM8faKg1Be5BJtBMfs_tg=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-52857669666079427172021-03-18T17:45:00.009-06:002021-03-23T13:02:31.820-06:002021 NCAA Tournament Bracket<p>Since the inception of Drive and Dish way back in 2007, it's been a longstanding tradition of this humble blog to publish our handwritten brackets early in the morning of the first day of the NCAA Tournament. </p><p><br /></p><p>Casual readers may assume that we've always posted our brackets early in the morning of the Tournament's opening day because of our commitment to serving our readers with high quality content in as timely a manner as possible (i.e., we want our readers to be able to see our brackets first thing in the morning, before they head off to work or to school).</p><p><br /></p><p>But the actual reason that we've always published our brackets in the early morning of the first day of the NCAA Tournament is because our Editor in Chief has always decided to just click the "publish" icon upon stumbling home from the annual Drive and Dish Bracket Release Blowout Bash . . . just to be on the safe side, in case he found himself too hung over to do so later.</p><p><br /></p><p>This year, after a one year COVID-19 lockdown-mandated hiatus, there was a tremendous amount of pent-up demand for us to resume hosting our annual Drive and Dish Bracket Release Blowout Bash. We received countless inquiries from our readers and fans who wanted to know if the annual Bracket Release Blowout Bash would be reinstated, and if so, how to go about purchasing tickets. For the record, we were planning to have Steve Aoki and Dillon Francis play the reinstituted 2021 Drive and Dish Bracket Release Blowout Bash. Unfortunately, we encountered a significant number of difficulties relating to logistics when we were in the planning stages of reinstituting the Drive and Dish Bracket Release Blowout Bash, and as a result, had to postpone the official announcement of the Bash (and its ticket sales) until we had secured a venue and had worked out the attendant contractual details.</p><p><br /></p><p>Drive and Dish was founded in Chicagoland, and our Blowout Bashes were always held in Chicago. But Chicago is still in semi-lockdown mode, so it's not really possible to host a giant blowout bash there at the moment. Besides, Chicago has devolved into a mostly deserted, lawless and violent shit-hole over the last couple of years. So it wouldn't be a great idea to host our party there anyway.</p><p><br /></p><p>We investigated the possibility of renting a private island in the Caribbean for our blowout bash, but several of our financial backers ended up having cold feet over hosting a party on a private Caribbean island. It turns out that <a href="http://https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyre_Festival">Fyre Festival </a>and the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/jeffrey-epstein-suicide-victims-girls-virgin-islands-lawsuit-trafficking-a9285536.html">Jeffrey Epstein/Epstein Island</a> saga are still casting dark shadows over the Caribbean island rental industry.</p><p><br /></p><p>So after having exhausted nearly conceivable option for the reinstitution of the Drive and Dish Bracket Release Blowout Bash for 2021, the Drive and Dish Board of Directors ultimately came to the difficult decision to break with tradition and forego the Bracket Release Blowout Bash for the second consecutive year.</p><p><br /></p><p>But we're not alone in breaking with tradition this year: Many of the nation's most august institutions have been forced to break with tradition in 2021. For example, after having cancelled the 2020 NCAA Tournament due to COVID-19, the NCAA itself has more or less thrown tradition out the window in 2021 by in order to ensure that the '21 Tournament is able to take place at all. Thus, all NCAA Tournament games will be played in the Indianapolis area, and the Tournament officially tips off on a Friday, rather than on Thursday.</p><p><br /></p><p>What's more, all teams participating in the NCAA Tournament must quarantine in their respective hotels when not practicing or playing in Tournament games, and only a limited number spectators will be allowed to attend Tournament games.</p><p><br /></p><p>Thus, in the spirit of breaking with tradition, Drive and Dish has elected to forego filling out handwritten brackets in favor of "touch-free" virtual brackets. </p><p><br /></p><p>Make no mistake, it was a difficult decision for us to make--we at Drive and Dish has built our brand over the years by holding steadfast to our principles, even when it's been unpopular to do so. We've stayed true to what we've believed in even when doing so has caused us to be accused of being defiantly contrarian. The handwritten bracket has been a staple of Drive and Dish since our founding, and we understand that some of our longtime readers may be disappointed by our decision to break with our tradition this year. </p><p><br /></p><p>The Drive and Dish Board of Directors deliberated long and hard before coming to our decision. We held hours of Board-wide virtual meetings on Zoom, and several late night one-on-one FaceTime calls between several of the key decision makers on the Executive Editorial Committee. All options were considered; every conceivable course of action was given a fair hearing. But in the end, we decided that the safety and health of our staff and our readers were too important to leave to chance. Even if it meant breaking with tradition. </p><p><br /></p><p>In other words, our lawyers won out and we decided that is was smarter to make the "CYA" move of trying to limit our potential liabilities than to hold steadfast to our principles.</p><p><br /></p><p>The following is the official "touch less" Drive and Dish bracket for the 2021 NCAA Tournament, as agreed to virtually on Zoom and officially recorded by Editor in Chief, S.K. (it will be uploaded to the blockchain and offered for auction as an <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/what-are-nfts">NFT</a> on the first day of the Final Four):</p><p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTcH0xZOTtu_phwC-S9lezaeAJLXu3rDD2-lhW0bep7-MIk_0_oijBJ4HR3QQWDHXqufXIetYbcR9PULZHqSYdwhRa7wQgDZcaoxwZeWilx9hIR4grjT-9iCUnUBvQPffkXBJmuG_2ec4/s1118/Screen+Shot+2021-03-19+at+11.36.52+AM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="740" data-original-width="1118" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTcH0xZOTtu_phwC-S9lezaeAJLXu3rDD2-lhW0bep7-MIk_0_oijBJ4HR3QQWDHXqufXIetYbcR9PULZHqSYdwhRa7wQgDZcaoxwZeWilx9hIR4grjT-9iCUnUBvQPffkXBJmuG_2ec4/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-03-19+at+11.36.52+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><p style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Update (03/20/21):</b></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Occasional guest commentator G.O., has delivered a handwritten bracket -- in the traditional Drive and Dish pen-on-paper format -- to Drive and Dish headquarters. G.O., also known as "Ozzie," was unaware of the new Drive and Dish COVID-19 health guidelines and the corresponding changes that have been made to our NCAA Tournament Bracket filing policies.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">The Drive and Dish Board of Directors held an emergency Zoom call and decided to allow the G.O. handwritten guest bracket, even though it violates the new Drive and Dish COVID-19 health guidelines. </p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">However, pursuant to our new COVID-19 health protocols, the G.O. handwritten guest bracket was quarantined for 48 hours in a fully sealed disinfectant chamber that was guarded by armed private security contractors dressed in hazmat suits. Upon the completion of the 48 hour quarantine, the bracket was cryogenically frozen for six hours, and then thawed by a laser. </p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">It was then delivered to the Drive and Dish headquarters, where it was scanned and uploaded to Drive and Dish:</p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1SKPtbyklSuRn964ZI7zCfDicEFmaOGwzfYkfhaODLeK-fM7Qb3WiDWqgjeThHacBVDPSummsmR39GcorlkVtk4b0SkWHqNs0HoP14z8kvkZdoahl8dRJDZlJXUhInha8ucpHh8LQAQE/s2048/2021+OZZIE+Bracket.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1548" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1SKPtbyklSuRn964ZI7zCfDicEFmaOGwzfYkfhaODLeK-fM7Qb3WiDWqgjeThHacBVDPSummsmR39GcorlkVtk4b0SkWHqNs0HoP14z8kvkZdoahl8dRJDZlJXUhInha8ucpHh8LQAQE/s320/2021+OZZIE+Bracket.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p></p><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-62731425347537064932019-04-08T18:52:00.001-06:002019-04-08T18:52:26.094-06:002019 NCAA Men's Basketball National Championship Game: Virginia vs. Texas TechTonight Texas Tech will play Virginia for the 2019 NCAA Men's College Basketball Championship. Both Texas Tech and Virginia will appear in the Championship game for the first time in their respective schools' histories.<br />
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Based on the gaming industry's published odds, Virginia enters tonight's game as a slight favorite. Both teams, however, play stifling defense and run controlled offenses that attempt to probe the opponents' defense until they can generate a "good" (high percentage) shot. <br />
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Usually, the team with the most future NBA players and the best leadership at Point Guard will win the Championship. Looking forward to tonight's game, neither team is loaded with future NBA players, though both Virginia and Texas Tech have one or two players who will likely play at the next level (Texas Tech's Jarrett Culver is a likely future NBA draft lottery pick). Both Texas Tech and Virginia are led by experienced Point Guards who run their respective offenses very well, who display strong leadership and who can either score all night long from behind the three point arc or by putting the ball on the floor and generating shots in the lane. Virginia PG Ty Jerome leverages his 6'6" frame to his advantage against smaller opponents; he can get shoot over smaller Point Guards, and when he gets into the lane, his size allows him to get shots off against other teams' big men that most PGs couldn't. Both teams also feature outstanding three point shooters on the wings, with Virginia's Kyle Guy being widely recognized as one of the best shooters in the game. <br />
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Texas Tech's backcourt of fifth year South Dakota graduate transfer Matt Mooney and Italian import Davide Moretti are essentially combo guards who are equally capable of being both the primary ball handler, and of lighting it up from behind the three point line. Mooney stands out for his grit and leadership, though, as well as for his ability to score off the dribble. Virginia's guards are great shooters, and Jerome is noticeably bigger than either Mooney or Moretti. But Tech's guards can shoot the lights out too, and nobody on either team is tougher than Mooney.<br />
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Texas Tech shooting guard Jarrett Culver and Virginia shooting guard De'Andre Hunter are both future NBA players. As mentioned earlier, Culver will be a lottery pick in the 2019 NBA Draft. Both players are big (6'7"), athletic wings who can create shots for themselves off the dribble with relative ease, and who shoot well enough from three point range. Culver had a quiet outing against Michigan State in Saturday's semifinal victory, but he stepped up in the last three minutes of the game by making two crucial shots at the most opportune of times, which effectively served as the daggers that sent Tom Izzo's Spartans home to East Lansing, MI.<br />
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The Culver vs. Hunter matchup will likely be almost as interesting as the Jerome/Guy vs. Mooney/Moretti matchups.<br />
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Virginia has more size on the front line than most teams, including Texas Tech, but the Red Raiders from Lubbock counter with tough, experienced big men of their own. <br />
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Overall, the game is likely to be a lower scoring, defensive minded affair. Both teams have outstanding backcourts with great three point shooters, as well as players who can create shots for themselves and create shots for others. The backcourt is probably where the game will be won or lost.<br />
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Drive and Dish expects tonight's game to be close (if low scoring), but we expect Virginia to come out with an edge. Texas Tech surprised the world by beating Michigan State, and Virginia had the good fortune to escape (thanks to a missed double dribble that wasn't called on Ty Jerome in the last seconds of game) against Auburn.<br />
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Virginia knows that they're lucky to be here and that they have something to prove. Texas Tech knows that they have something to prove as well, but we expect Virginia to play with a slightly bigger chip on their respective shoulders. We also expect Virginia to be the beneficiary of the referees' calls.<br />
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Most of America will be attracted to the storyline of Virginia going from the only Number one seed to lose to a sixteen seed in the history of the NCAA Tournament, as they did last year when they lost to 16 seeded Maryland-Baltimore County, to winning the National Championship a year later. It's our hope that the referees in tonight's game aren't also attracted to that storyline. <br />
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Here's to hoping that upstart Texas Tech keeps that from happening.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-10121748421502351202019-03-29T16:51:00.001-06:002019-03-29T16:51:05.904-06:00DJ MIxes<a href="https://www.mixcloud.com/ad4552/">SK DJ Mixes</a><br />
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-65756527661214781582019-03-21T06:41:00.000-06:002019-04-08T16:39:12.366-06:002019 Drive and Dish NCAA Tournament BracketDrive and Dish has a longstanding tradition of publishing handwritten NCAA Tournament brackets on the morning of the Tournament's first day.<br />
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The tradition began one night in the late '00s, when after playing pickup basketball into the wee hours, Drive and Dish's founders decided to fill out brackets and post them to this blog at a 24 hour Kinko's near the health club where our post-pickup hoops brainstorming had taken place.<br />
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It would probably be smart (for branding purposes) to say that the reason we decided to fill out handwritten brackets, as opposed to publishing more professional looking text brackets, was because we were committed to keeping this blog "authentic," with a DIY, lo-fi, boutique blogging hipster sensibility.<br />
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But the real reason we filled out handwritten brackets is because it was faster to just download a bracket, fill it out, scan it and post it to the blog.<br />
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Of course, origin story aside, the decision to <i>continue</i> publishing handwritten brackets year after year has been motivated by our recognition that "authenticity" is the current lingua franca in online media. Thus, doing handwritten brackets helps to brand this blog as unyieldingly "authentic," DIY, lo-fi and boutique.<br />
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And just to keep things even more "authentic," yours truly has continued the somewhat more recent Drive and Dish tradition of waiting until the morning of publication to actually fill out a handwritten bracket. That keeps the bracket from being well thought out, and helps Drive and Dish continue to promote the "fly by the seat of your pants" culture that we've worked so hard to foster.<br />
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In other words, it's still faster to just download a bracket, fill it out, scan it and post it to the blog.<br />
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But it would be great if we could turn that lack of preparation and thoughtfulness into a marketing/branding strategy.<br />
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Thus, Drive and Dish presents its 2019 brackets.<br />
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For the second consecutive year, brackets have been filled out by Drive and Dish founding member "S.K.", and Trainer to the Stars (and soon to be <a href="http://floridaman.com/">Florida Man</a> [more <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article228217004.html">here</a>]) "C.H."<br />
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<b>C.H. Bracket:</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Zx-OJGPjoklV29aNIcxj4DgKtLWsNt_KYs_yslrFD5EJJGtQsBO2CGRZxyXzBpxoSN1xpuviiJHx3ph-i6VA2Al_Pv7voOJUKsbIaR3s06rAf4-saJq_yWRFJqvvL9mLpwdGeynWF64/s1600/Chase+Harris+2019+NCAA+Bracket.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1240" data-original-width="1600" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Zx-OJGPjoklV29aNIcxj4DgKtLWsNt_KYs_yslrFD5EJJGtQsBO2CGRZxyXzBpxoSN1xpuviiJHx3ph-i6VA2Al_Pv7voOJUKsbIaR3s06rAf4-saJq_yWRFJqvvL9mLpwdGeynWF64/s320/Chase+Harris+2019+NCAA+Bracket.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>S.K. Bracket:</b><br />
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<b>Update:</b><br />
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Drive and Dish has decided to publish an even more "authentically" DIY, intentionally grimy and lo-fi hand written bracket courtesy of guest bracketologist "G.O." (not unlike a $500 pair of ripped jeans, or a pair $900<a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-dirty-gucci-sneakers-slammed-20190321-mnumkxmrirfotkbqsx62kkz6c4-story.html"> intentionally dirty Gucci </a>kicks, this bracket even comes replete with folds, creases and crinkles!).<br />
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<b>G.O. Bracket:</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN_d72dLHYId65R8UlhA-zM4CIizN0x_xZJw9AHiHdUUSBr_cYyTBrGku5X7d8WHswLbRoKzUntq1WFecKF-b8lwekA0sgromeHehOpQ0l5tKGGChXexSY5Y8QSPmKeDd2nZ71YYXNzyE/s1600/Greg+Osbourne+2019+NCAA+Bracket.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1245" data-original-width="1600" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN_d72dLHYId65R8UlhA-zM4CIizN0x_xZJw9AHiHdUUSBr_cYyTBrGku5X7d8WHswLbRoKzUntq1WFecKF-b8lwekA0sgromeHehOpQ0l5tKGGChXexSY5Y8QSPmKeDd2nZ71YYXNzyE/s320/Greg+Osbourne+2019+NCAA+Bracket.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>Update (3/27/2019):</b><br />
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The first week of the NCAA Tournament has come and gone. Survive and advance is the name of the game. Sixty four teams have been cut in half to thirty two, and then cut in half once again to sixteen. The losers have all gone home. The wheat has been separated from the chaff. The Sweet Sixteen is set, and Drive and Dish is keeping score of its prognosticators' respective bracket wins and loses.<br />
<br />
The following is a run down of how the Drive and Dish experts' respective brackets have fared thus far:<br />
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<b>C.H. (Record: 12-4):</b><br />
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<b>S.K. (Record: 12-4):</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnUfDzvS3beGR-EUZiLYNXJ0C7tP3jIdOJ3Qk-B3d_oCnRRg4q3M4tmkcfpBPyLUAygECeqGHaMCRW_QRVGGuCehHyy4PSIjCIJhcGY_dGpPJH2kRlDAKU3laAqgFdQGt9eje9870mykI/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-03-27+at+11.58.31+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="555" data-original-width="544" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnUfDzvS3beGR-EUZiLYNXJ0C7tP3jIdOJ3Qk-B3d_oCnRRg4q3M4tmkcfpBPyLUAygECeqGHaMCRW_QRVGGuCehHyy4PSIjCIJhcGY_dGpPJH2kRlDAKU3laAqgFdQGt9eje9870mykI/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-03-27+at+11.58.31+PM.png" width="313" /></a></div>
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<b>G.O. (11-5)</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSt-1V_iH_UyJ8BJjTwG2R3eaMkKzZjDHNfG9FSs84JYaU4NhCEX8LMkxPR1hMJ-8P238QM7I_Giqs__SCg4VjB_diXZoFcUH1UNCiN5tsjWMiEnszpH7wqb2Z68lWL3b8rR-QWpZWJ30/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-03-28+at+12.15.25+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="358" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSt-1V_iH_UyJ8BJjTwG2R3eaMkKzZjDHNfG9FSs84JYaU4NhCEX8LMkxPR1hMJ-8P238QM7I_Giqs__SCg4VjB_diXZoFcUH1UNCiN5tsjWMiEnszpH7wqb2Z68lWL3b8rR-QWpZWJ30/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-03-28+at+12.15.25+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>Update (4-06-2019):</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
The results are in. We have an official Drive and Dish Bracket Challenge winner, even though the Final Four is only beginning, a National Champion won't be crowned until Monday night (4-08-2019), and the "win" is by default, since only one bracket of the three filled out by Drive and Dish's prognosticators correctly predicted a Final Four participant.<br />
<br />
The winner is the bracket filled out by "G.O.," or "Ozzie," who should probably heretofore be referred to as the Bracket "Wizard of Oz," since his bracket has Auburn in the Final Four, and none of the other Drive and Dish bracketologists' brackets even has a single team still playing.<br />
<br />
So by virtue of having predicting Auburn's ascendency to the Final Four, "G.O.," or the "Bracket Wizard of Oz" wins by default, regardless of who ultimately goes on to win the National Championship on Monday (G.O.'s bracket has Auburn losing to Tennessee in the semifinal game).<br />
<br />
All in all, it was a completely pathetic showing by Drive and Dish's "experts," given that only one of our "experts" even correctly predicted so much as a single Final Four participant. But then most of the "experts" in the national media picked super Freshman Zion Williamson and Duke to win the Championship, so most prognosticators ended up looking bad this year. <br />
<br />
Maybe the public relations department at Drive and Dish should try to spin our "experts'" dismal brackets as having been among the few in the nation who were prescient enough to see that Duke wasn't as good as everyone else thought. Maybe Drive and Dish could issue a press release with a title like "Drive and Dish experts saw what ESPN's Jay Bilas, Dick Vitale, etc. didn't."<br />
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More to come...<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-33649265865730584942018-03-15T08:51:00.001-06:002018-03-15T13:16:57.644-06:00Official 2018 Drive and Dish NCAA Tournament Bracket and No-Holds-Barred Death Match Bracket Challenge<div class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIGW8XClz07kjh5I9UpgVniMH1ppe9debqiJv4uc0uQgct5_ctSaTKtZvCp0fHxijfiKqLtygg3Y1WOXzwELBaXOrTMqastRX6MNmAysy5dEXPWCeN4-koHIbEyA-kQaAwSTjnZhrXO74/s1600/th-1.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIGW8XClz07kjh5I9UpgVniMH1ppe9debqiJv4uc0uQgct5_ctSaTKtZvCp0fHxijfiKqLtygg3Y1WOXzwELBaXOrTMqastRX6MNmAysy5dEXPWCeN4-koHIbEyA-kQaAwSTjnZhrXO74/s400/th-1.jpg" /></a><b> VS. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJMOP9eldEksdkGU_fNfS9Vr3IGIA_tAAd-7XEpmtfw7GdDxoLxWoDHMNxiiw-6xcCQ3WHHYinrXsuxiyaO-yJM30-Qft86RqPiFg3WeOGK1D0zrAEBkvUt7mlghyphenhyphenlM7jc69Ubj4t9YJ4/s1600/th.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJMOP9eldEksdkGU_fNfS9Vr3IGIA_tAAd-7XEpmtfw7GdDxoLxWoDHMNxiiw-6xcCQ3WHHYinrXsuxiyaO-yJM30-Qft86RqPiFg3WeOGK1D0zrAEBkvUt7mlghyphenhyphenlM7jc69Ubj4t9YJ4/s400/th.jpg" /></a></b><br />
<br />
<br />
It's that time of year again. The 2018 NCAA Tournament officially tips off today. That means millions of college basketball fans (and degenerate gamblers) will be missing-in-action from school, work and other areas of their lives in which they have all manner of responsibilities to uphold. </div>
<br />
American GDP may temporarily dip anywhere from 10% to 30% for the first two days of March Madness, as the gears of the American economy grind to a near-halt because the nation's workforce has bailed out on work and on its other responsibilities in order to watch the daylong cavalcade of televised NCAA Tournament games.<br />
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Hard core fans of college basketball (and degenerate gamblers) are well known for treating the first day of the NCAA Tournament like children treat Christmas morning: they spend weeks, if not months, in eager anticipation of the moment -- often going so far as to count down the days -- that the Big Dance finally arrives. <br />
<br />
The smartest college basketball fans (and degenerate gamblers), however, treat the first day of the NCAA Tournament like children treat Christmas morning for another important reason as well . . . because the first day of the NCAA Tournament is also the day in which Drive and Dish publishes its annual handwritten NCAA Tournament bracket!<br />
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And there's another import reason that those same smart college basketball fans (and degenerate gamblers) count down the days to the release of the official handwritten Drive and Dish NCAA Tournament bracket each year: It's now just about the only time all year that Drive and Dish actually publishes anything new.<br />
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Much as deer spend the waning days of summer feverishly preparing for rutting season in the Fall —bucks viciously lock antlers and fight, instinctively understanding that it will be their only chance all year to procure a female for mating -- the smartest college basketball fans (and degenerate gamblers) spend their winters in anticipation of reading the enlightened basketball acumen that graces each megabyte of bandwidth used to host the official hand written Drive and Dish NCAA Tournament bracket . . . for they've come to instinctively understand that it could very well be their only chance all year to read the sage basketball wisdom of Drive and Dish!<br />
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<b>Background: </b><br />
<br />
Drive and Dish <a href="http://driveanddish.blogspot.com/2007/03/bienvinedos-drive-and-dish.html">began publishing</a> on March 8, 2007, as the major conference tournaments were wrapping up, and just before that year's NCAA Tournament field was revealed to the public by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. At first, Drive and Dish co founder Mark Buckets wrote earnest articles about college basketball, while yours truly talked trash and published smart-assed, "click-bait" style blog posts written in "hot take" fashion about almost anything that was even remotely connected (however loosely) to college basketball or the NBA.<br />
<br />
On the eve of the 2007 NCAA Tournament, yours truly toned down the smart-assery just a hair (though not all the way) in order to publish a rambling mashup of random thoughts about college basketball, titled "Deep Thoughts (About College Basketball)." In that post, Drive and Dish made its first official NCAA championship prediction (though it was done in a pretty unofficial manner) when yours truly correctly picked Joakim Noah, Corey Brewer and Al Horford's Florida Gators to <strike>sober up just long enough to</strike> win the ‘07 national championship:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It's usually easy to identify the best teams in college basketball. There always seem to be at least two or three teams that are significantly better than everyone else, and thus, seem like sure-fire bets to reach the Final Four. That's not the case this year.<br />
A lot of teams are pretty good, but nobody is really good. <br />
</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Ohio State and Wisconsin top the polls, but they just don't appear to be championship caliber teams. Ditto for for North Carolina and Kansas. The only team I can think of that has what it takes to win a championship is...Florida. <br />
</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Hmm, Florida...where have I heard...hey wait, didn't they win the championship last year? And, wow, it looks like they have everybody back from last year's championship team. </blockquote>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
So why haven't they played better this year? Oh yeah! Gainesville is a party town. Those players are rock stars on campus and...they know that they're better than every other team in college basketball. Florida will get serious once the Tournament starts.</blockquote>
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Drive and Dish published near daily for the next year or so, and in 2008, we began what would go on to become our now time-honored tradition of publishing our hand written NCAA Tournament brackets early in the morning of the first day of the Tournament (obviously before the games start).<br />
<br />
We also filled out handwritten NIT and CBI (and eventually, CIT) brackets just for the hell of it in those days. Oh, and Mark Buckets truly did yeoman's work back then by live-blogging every game of the Tournament (examples <a href="http://driveanddish.blogspot.com/2008/03/ncaa-tournament-liveblogging-its-go.html">here</a> and <a href="http://driveanddish.blogspot.com/2008/03/session-two-night-games.html">here</a>).<br />
<br />
Trouble started brewing, though, after Mark's Duke Blue Devils were upset in the first round by a then-unheralded Virginia Commonwealth team. As soon as Duke slinked off the court after having been stunned and humiliated by VCU, Mr. Buckets abruptly burned out on live-blogging NCAA Tournament games (gotta admit though, live-blogging's not for everybody!) and <strike>flaked</strike> began to waver in his commitment to basketball blogging altogether (damn Millennials and their flakey troubles with commitment!). <br />
<br />
By that point, yours truly had soured on trash talking and "hot take" styled "click bait" blogging, and had begun to publish longer, better thought out pieces (known today as "long form" writing). Mark Buckets left Drive and Dish for greener pastures and although yours truly kept pumping out semi-long form blog posts for some time, eventually it became clear that basketball blogging wasn't going to pay the bills (though in fairness, through this blog, we actually received some legitimate offers to write about basketball for well known websites). Drive and Dish began publishing more and more infrequently, until eventually, the only thing we managed to get up each year was the aforementioned annual handwritten Drive and Dish NCAA Tournament bracket .<br />
<br />
We <a href="http://driveanddish.blogspot.com/2017/03/blog-post.html">explained it pretty well</a> last year:<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: small;">Drive and Dish was established in March of 2007. In our ten years of existence, we've only undergone a handful of changes. First, after receiving some constructive criticism on our original, basic, plain-as-vanilla Blogspot design, we adopted a slightly more stylized design template (with a Duke Blue Devils-inspired blue, white and black color scheme in order to appease the late Drive and Dish co-founder, "Dukie" Mark Buckets)...</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">..Our second major change came when we began posting our hand written NCAA Tournament brackets on the eve of the 2008 Tournament. Later that year, our third big change occurred when Mark Buckets retired from sports blogging in order to spend more time with </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><strike style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial","tahoma","helvetica","freesans",sans-serif;">hookers and blow</strike><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif;"> his family. Thereafter, the Drive and Dish blog became a sole proprietorship.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial","tahoma","helvetica","freesans",sans-serif;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial","tahoma","helvetica","freesans",sans-serif;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif;">One of the biggest, and most unfortunate changes to Drive and Dish came after "life changes" * forced yours truly to curtail the amount of time spent blogging about basketball. This blog kept going in earnest, but its output slowed down to but a few posts per month.</span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif;">* "Life changes" can refer to any number of life events that can cause one to reorient one's life priorities, including but not limited to the following: running from unpaid child support payments, tax liens, gambling debts, lost savings in a notorious Ponzi scheme, faking one's own death to get out from under one's debts . . . plus hookers and blow...</span></span></blockquote>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif;">...The final change came about in 2013, when the blog went into complete radio silence, with the sole exception of posting the official Drive and Dish handwritten NCAA Tournament Bracket on the morning of the NCAA Tournament's opening day.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
Longtime readers know that we're all about tradition here at Drive and Dish, so we're certainly not going to disappoint our readership by neglecting to publish our 2018 NCAA Tournament bracket. However, this year we've added a twist -- Drive and Dish founder and longstanding Executive Publisher, Executive Producer and Assistant Associate Junior Copy Editor, "S.K." (formerly known around these parts as "T.S.", and sometimes still known as "yours truly") has accepted a challenge from "C.H." to publish dueling brackets in a no-holds-barred, all out battle to the death, handwritten NCAA Tournament bracket death match.<br />
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Neither "S.K" nor "C.H." has watched much college basketball this year, though yours truly has seen a few games throughout the season (mostly games from mid-major conferences though). So really, neither of us is well prepared for this battle. But we're looking forward to it nonetheless.<br />
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That much is tradition here at Drive and Dish.<br />
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Thus, in keeping with tradition, we submit our special 2018 Drive and Dish hand written NCAA Tournament death match brackets:<br />
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<b>SK</b> (aka, "T.S.")<b>: </b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2901zGSzzlQMSJZ8yJFbsroWQjBCem3c1bpleo_siDHfYFmvrhLO0sg8PVvSq0JU4N-nYA-T4pg5lDG_9kfCCh-Jlcb55535-B7UH1OnMUtD0aaCVk7Cx2VPI7ObT_zO6r1dzHloQro4/s1600/SK+2018+Bracket.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1250" data-original-width="1600" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2901zGSzzlQMSJZ8yJFbsroWQjBCem3c1bpleo_siDHfYFmvrhLO0sg8PVvSq0JU4N-nYA-T4pg5lDG_9kfCCh-Jlcb55535-B7UH1OnMUtD0aaCVk7Cx2VPI7ObT_zO6r1dzHloQro4/s320/SK+2018+Bracket.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>CH:</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoW2tJKgv2goUCR0Rz7wdAkQ-A5yo7MJmJdHp50flUX1wBen4GxeE122WWPTG09B7f8UsKzSMeMvxyEe__3xUPbLAbaQHKs02bvPvDOKIwpmmVR3dlgSvs0KAkTILKMbbctIBUC24teg8/s1600/CH+2018+Bracket.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1254" data-original-width="1600" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoW2tJKgv2goUCR0Rz7wdAkQ-A5yo7MJmJdHp50flUX1wBen4GxeE122WWPTG09B7f8UsKzSMeMvxyEe__3xUPbLAbaQHKs02bvPvDOKIwpmmVR3dlgSvs0KAkTILKMbbctIBUC24teg8/s320/CH+2018+Bracket.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>Bonus: </b><br />
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Just for the hell of it, here's S.K.'s official 2018 Drive and Dish hand written NIT bracket (there's no challenge, or no-holds-barred death match for this one though, because nobody really cares about the NIT):<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLKJpnO6TqgNQSzGwUxV5De82eE38sfho2gL9-M1h52YbjwUYQMRIK1FldV-JXs2DENSCycU9urNwYxUo4V8Y59esK2zy0n2Q2grXQGq5ez3tEOd-GVNet911Re7uszgqxi7xNGTuoBzQ/s1600/+2018+NITBracket.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1237" data-original-width="1600" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLKJpnO6TqgNQSzGwUxV5De82eE38sfho2gL9-M1h52YbjwUYQMRIK1FldV-JXs2DENSCycU9urNwYxUo4V8Y59esK2zy0n2Q2grXQGq5ez3tEOd-GVNet911Re7uszgqxi7xNGTuoBzQ/s320/+2018+NITBracket.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-9315162467192725502017-04-03T19:54:00.000-06:002017-04-15T20:10:31.932-06:002017 NCAA Championship Game: North Carolina (Who Else?!) vs. GonzagaNorth Carolina will play Gonzaga in tonight's 2017 NCAA Men's Championship game. North Carolina is appearing in its twentieth NCAA Final Four -- the most Final Four appearances of any NCAA Division I Men's basketball program -- and will be playing in its second straight NCAA title game (the Tar Heels lost the 2016 NCAA Championship game on a buzzer-beating three point shot by Villanova's Kris Jenkins). <br />
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Gonzaga, by contrast, will be playing in its first-ever NCAA Championship game, after having just made its first Final Four appearance in school history during Saturday's semifinal win over South Carolina.</div>
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So what's the official Drive and Dish prediction for tonight's Championship game?</div>
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Dunno. Hate to say it, but haven't seen enough of either team this year to have an informed opinion. This has been something of a "gap year" for Drive and Dish. It's the first year in decades in which none of the writers, editors or reporters associated with Drive and Dish have payed attention to college basketball during the regular season. Our interns didn't even watch college basketball this year (they didn't even watch their own colleges' teams)! For the 2016-'17 season, we've been more or less like the average sports fan in America, insofar as our viewership of college basketball only began in March. Accordingly, our Official Drive and Dish NCAA Tournament Bracket was the worst one we've ever posted.</div>
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In other words, you shouldn't listen to anything we say, and you're wasting your time if you read another word we write.</div>
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Having said that, we think that Gonzaga has its most talented team in school history, and as such, probably has an outside chance tonight against Head Coach Roy Williams' Tar Heels. But North Carolina is stacked from top to bottom with big, athletic and talented players . . . as they usually are. </div>
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Perhaps most importantly, the Heels are a veteran, experienced team. Having played for the NCAA title last year, they should know exactly how to handle themselves on the big stage that tonight's game will present. </div>
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North Carolina will probably come out and try to run Gonzaga off the court early in the game. </div>
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For Gonzaga, the first key to the game will be playing with poise and not letting North Carolina set the tone early on. A bigger key, though, for Gonzaga will be the play of 7'1" 300-plus lb big man Przemek Karnowski. Karnowski will have to stay out of foul trouble in order for the Zags to have a chance against the talented and experienced Tar Heels. Gonzaga has other good big men who should be able to keep pace with Carolina's bigs, but they're young and inexperienced. The massive Karnowski is Gonzaga's "X-factor." If he's able to play extended minutes, Gonzaga may be able to hang around in this game. But if the referees give North Carolina a little bit of "home cookin'" (as they've done in NCAA Tournament title games in the past), and blow the whistles early and often against Karnowski and his teammates, it will be a long night for the Zags.</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-62546458353045554202017-03-16T06:17:00.000-06:002017-03-17T08:13:51.154-06:002017 NCAA Tournament Bracket<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />
Drive and Dish was established in March of 2007. In our ten years of existence, we've only undergone a handful of changes. First, after receiving some constructive criticism on our original, basic, plain-as-vanilla Blogspot design, we adopted a slightly more stylized design template (with a Duke Blue Devils-inspired blue, white and black color scheme in order to appease the late Drive and Dish co-founder, "Dukie" Mark Buckets).<br />
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We made those adjustments early in 2008, and haven't touched a single element of this blog's layout since that time. So stylistically, Drive and Dish is stuck in 2008. Incidentally, we're probably stuck in 2008 in other ways too. For instance, we still have Young Jeezy, The Black Eyed Peas, Akon, David Guetta and Thirty Seconds to Mars on our official Drive and Dish iPod. And we're starting to get into an up-and-coming young cat from Miami called Pitbull. Don't sleep on Pitbull. We think he could blow up big this summer! <br />
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Come to think of it, maybe it's time we ditch the iPod for one of those new iPhones. We understand that the iPhone lets you play music on your phone! Our official Drive and Dish Blackberry Bold could finally be on its last legs!<br />
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Our second major change came when we began posting our hand written NCAA Tournament brackets on the eve of the 2008 Tournament. Later that year, our third big change occurred when Mark Buckets retired from sports blogging in order to spend more time with <strike>hookers and blow</strike> his family. Thereafter, the Drive and Dish blog became a sole proprietorship.<br />
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One of the biggest, and most unfortunate changes to Drive and Dish came after "life changes" * forced yours truly to curtail the amount of time spent blogging about basketball. This blog kept going in earnest, but its output slowed down to but a few posts per month.<br />
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The final change came about in 2013, when the blog went into complete radio silence, with the sole exception of posting the official Drive and Dish handwritten NCAA Tournament Bracket on the morning of the NCAA Tournament's opening day.<br />
<span style="text-align: center;"><br /></span><span style="text-align: center;">Longtime readers </span><span style="text-align: center;">know that we're all about tradition here at Drive and Dish -- thus, we present the official handwritten Drive and Dish 2017 NCAA Tournament Bracket (apologies for filling them out with a leaky pen):</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoZK8rOPlZAJCyMFDUy1zQY7VyLN6g_AlSLIzSsD6QYmQnzvCcjzmyMgPLaEn_4ygvpmsYLwViOYeGN4Y1m5sfe-DeDUWkGXSR3SIpoEwpteZJwB04TUgWwagEfBWdNFrAF_KW_p7uM88/s1600/NCAA+2017+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoZK8rOPlZAJCyMFDUy1zQY7VyLN6g_AlSLIzSsD6QYmQnzvCcjzmyMgPLaEn_4ygvpmsYLwViOYeGN4Y1m5sfe-DeDUWkGXSR3SIpoEwpteZJwB04TUgWwagEfBWdNFrAF_KW_p7uM88/s320/NCAA+2017+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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* "Life changes" can refer to any number of life events that can cause one to reorient one's life priorities, including but not limited to the following: running from unpaid child support payments, tax liens, gambling debts, lost savings in a notorious Ponzi scheme, faking one's own death to get out from under one's debts . . . plus hookers and blow.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-52718032952403678392016-04-04T17:52:00.000-06:002016-09-04T22:43:27.098-06:00When the 2016 NCAA Tournament began, we <a href="http://driveanddish.blogspot.com/2016/03/another-year-has-passed-since-last-we.html">published our handwritten 2016 NCAA Tournament bracket </a>right here on the front page of Drive and Dish (as has been our custom since the early days of this blog). We predicted that North Carolina would beat Villanova in the 2016 NCAA Championship game.<br />
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Screenshot:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilrZ2t_qp9FQyhvGo5_x5xv2VYthjVdTu7VxQD5Tu_M5S6Ow9CTLZdvvPnMixs45F7decK-KvZVcIXkJNllmKhtoxVXo9pZxsOiqCBh0UJT5cJsHN_HnFxVy7mbduqX0QaGnVzOzRgbhw/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-04-04+at+8.28.37+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilrZ2t_qp9FQyhvGo5_x5xv2VYthjVdTu7VxQD5Tu_M5S6Ow9CTLZdvvPnMixs45F7decK-KvZVcIXkJNllmKhtoxVXo9pZxsOiqCBh0UJT5cJsHN_HnFxVy7mbduqX0QaGnVzOzRgbhw/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-04-04+at+8.28.37+PM.png" /></a></div>
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Tonight, North Carolina and Villanova will, in fact, play each other for the NCAA Championship.<br />
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That means that we got the final two teams of the Final Four correct! So give us a gold star for our prescience, or something!<br />
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But do we still think that our prediction of North Carolina winning yet another NCAA Championship will come true? <br />
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Yeah, probably so.<br />
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In our NCAA Tournament bracket posting, we admitted that we'd viewed too little college basketball this year to consider ourselves experts on the subject of the 2016 NCAA Tournament. But we also mentioned that we'd seen just enough of the top teams in the Tournament to know which teams were for real, and which were mere pretenders.<br />
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North Carolina and both Villanova stood out as being the real deal. In short, they passed the cliched "eye test" with such flying colors that we forwarded them through to our bracket's National Title game without so much as even glancing at either team's respective Tournament r<span style="font-family: "linux libertine" , "georgia" , "times" , serif; line-height: 1.3;">é</span>sum<span style="font-family: "linux libertine" , "georgia" , "times" , serif; line-height: 1.3;">é or analytical profile.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "linux libertine" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 20.8px;">Our Championship Game synopsis is as follows: North Carolina is probably too big, too talented and too deep for Villanova to overcome. And their best player, Marcus Paige, also happens to be a savvy, experienced senior, which has become a rarity in big time college basketball. So they'll probably win. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "linux libertine" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 20.8px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "linux libertine" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 20.8px;">But Villanova is an outstanding team in their on right, and we wouldn't be at all surprised if they were to pull off what would be a major upset. That said, talent, size and depth win NCAA Championships. North Carolina has more future NBA players than Villanova does. So in the end, North Carolina will probably win.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "linux libertine" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 20.8px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "linux libertine" , "georgia" , "times" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 20.8px;">But despite the presence of North Carolina alums in the family of one of Drive and Dish's editors, we'll be pulling for Villanova.</span></span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-68970117203947305432016-03-17T05:00:00.000-06:002016-03-27T00:40:18.148-06:00Our Bracket Was So Bad Last Year That We Took the Rest of the Year Off From Blogging ... So Here's Hoping We'll Do Better This Year!Another year has passed since last we corresponded.<br />
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Our bad.<br />
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The last time we posted on this blog was to continue the longstanding Drive and Dish tradition of publishing our handwritten NCAA Tournament bracket . . . for 2015!<br />
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Regrettably, we've let another year slip through our grasps without publishing so much as a random thought, inane joke, half-cocked prediction, or expletive laden, late night drunken rambling about the game that we (still) love. But as inattentive and incompetent as our blogging has become, we'd nevertheless be loathe to permit the NCAA Tournament to begin without at least keeping up the Drive and Dish tradition of sharing our handwritten bracket with our readers (however many, at this point, remain).<br />
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Come to think of it, managing to merely dribble out but a single, poorly thought out, and meagerly argued post per year has probably become a Drive and Dish tradition in and of itself.<br />
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But we're all about tradition, so here's our bracket:<br />
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We have North Carolina beating Villanova in the National Championship game, and we have three teams from the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) in the Final Four.<br />
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Hopefully, we'll be a little more accurate than we were last year, though that's probably unlikely, since we watched just about as little college basketball as we did last year ... which, incidentally, is why we've been so negligent in our basketball blogging.<br />
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Nevertheless, we've seen enough mid major basketball this year to know that there are some good teams from the obscure conferences that will score first and second round upsets. And we've seen just enough of the big boys' games to have a good feel for which teams are for real and which teams are pretenders.<br />
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So while we're not as up-to-speed about college basketball as we have been in years past, we're still fairly confident in our opinions of those teams that we <i>have</i> seen play this year, however few they may be.<br />
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Or maybe we're just cocky and full of hubris (again).<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYtTFR-KU_7o36eFmVRpuFDjvHaaHdCDhhNXSnESJeIGmYMBxF63HG5O89wElxK18kS3pwrPb7MwnXkuuaiuWCT1TrUQxr7mhhYrXh4h1EfLjWScQZXYavuiAbFr71q-oR2dw9q9m32jA/s1600/Scan+khb+2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYtTFR-KU_7o36eFmVRpuFDjvHaaHdCDhhNXSnESJeIGmYMBxF63HG5O89wElxK18kS3pwrPb7MwnXkuuaiuWCT1TrUQxr7mhhYrXh4h1EfLjWScQZXYavuiAbFr71q-oR2dw9q9m32jA/s640/Scan+khb+2.jpeg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Official Drive and Dish 2016 NCAA Tournament Bracket</td></tr>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-83774041713891992742015-03-19T07:31:00.000-06:002015-03-19T22:32:24.693-06:00Drive and Dish Goes Old School (Again), Fills Out 2015 NCAA Tournament Bracket By Hand (Again)It's been a long time. Drive and Dish has been silent for the last year. The last time we posted new content on this blog it was to release our handwritten 2014 NCAA Tournament Bracket to the world... and it appeared exactly 364 days ago.<br />
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We didn't even continue our long-running tradition of posting a thorough scouting report on Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.<br />
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We probably owe our readers (those who remain) an explanation for our protracted absence. But most likely, nobody cares about that. <br />
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So what do our readers care about? <br />
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Well, assuming anyone still cares about the Drive and Dish take on basketball, our readers want to see the official handwritten Drive and Dish NCAA Tournament bracket.<br />
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Thus, we're obliged to deliver (even though we haven't delivered a damn thing else this year):<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht8GBUiq2b0KUGrMZJHxc6_xGnXNv-q3O1MYaC2ClBITQ3CmxOdWmCi_DcG_Ko0mADSiDeAmy0K5QmhMd8nwDYV8LG_ztdIEr7SG1c02qMg_BQNl4x5mo4EhfDrPH_lVqgj3u4lRkDl30/s1600/2015+Bracket+-+-+NCAA+Tournament.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht8GBUiq2b0KUGrMZJHxc6_xGnXNv-q3O1MYaC2ClBITQ3CmxOdWmCi_DcG_Ko0mADSiDeAmy0K5QmhMd8nwDYV8LG_ztdIEr7SG1c02qMg_BQNl4x5mo4EhfDrPH_lVqgj3u4lRkDl30/s1600/2015+Bracket+-+-+NCAA+Tournament.jpeg" height="244" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-30513796012508394002014-03-20T07:06:00.000-06:002014-03-20T11:33:11.084-06:00Drive and Dish: Return of the BracketDrive and Dish has been inactive since last year's NCAA Tournament title game.<br />
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Sorry about that. <br />
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But just as the city of Chicago's dearly departed rise from their resting places each election day in order to fill out their straight-party ballots, we've returned in order to publish our annual handwritten NCAA Tournament Bracket.<br />
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Disclaimer: It's been a long year, and your humble author has viewed a grand total of *four* college basketball games this season. So our picks are based on nothing more than our general impressions of each team's roster, coaching staff, strengths, weaknesses, health, potential position-by-position match ups against potential opponents and record since the second week of February. <br />
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So even though we have something resembling a general formula for making our picks -- it's a "formula" that's served us pretty well in the past, by the way -- we're completely "winging it" this year.<br />
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Thus, without further ado, we issue our 2014 NCAA Tournament Bracket:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0sDameEeQO0sMe6rZyjlKqRXudr4BABfeEtRfQTCEwKROzmLDDl0LP7O9Tjdv-HvFqrGsWAbBNpSTHOtpuI2cyXWPd7QjBu90LnylsYETnTjiVdO8q2dA1W3cDk5K6Ssz39OravAcVzU/s1600/BRACKET+NCAA+2014.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0sDameEeQO0sMe6rZyjlKqRXudr4BABfeEtRfQTCEwKROzmLDDl0LP7O9Tjdv-HvFqrGsWAbBNpSTHOtpuI2cyXWPd7QjBu90LnylsYETnTjiVdO8q2dA1W3cDk5K6Ssz39OravAcVzU/s1600/BRACKET+NCAA+2014.jpeg" height="248" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-50848403574096328892013-04-08T17:47:00.000-06:002013-05-03T23:55:25.542-06:002013 NCAA Championship Game PreveiwTonight, Louisville will play Michigan in the 2013 NCAA Basketball Championship game. Nobody at Drive and Dish is a gambler, so we haven't checked the Las Vegas lines for tonight's game. But we're reasonably certain that Louisville is the heavy favorite.<br />
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Drive and Dish didn't fare so well in predicting the Final Four in our 2013 NCAA Tournament <a href="http://www.driveanddish.blogspot.com/2013/03/drive-and-dish-fills-out-ncaa.html">bracket</a>. To our credit, we correctly anticipated Syracuse's surprising (at least to the "experts") upset of Indiana en route to the Final Four. But we expected Duke to get to Atlanta instead of Louisville, and expected Ohio State to get there instead of Wichita State.<br />
<br />
We actually weren't terribly surprised by Wichita State's surprising Final Four run. We've been paying attention to the Missouri Valley conference for a long time, and we've long been aware that head coach Gregg Marshall and his Wichita program are top notch. Of course, we didn't pick them to get to the Final Four in our bracket, but we definitely considered them to be a team that could make a deep Tournament run.<br />
<br />
We picked Kansas to win the Championship, and of course, they lost in overtime to Michigan in the Elite Eight. When filling out our bracket, we tried to anticipate how each team would match up against each other. We thought that Michigan was the real deal, but we expected Kansas to cause match up problems for the Wolverines.<br />
<br />
And we weren't wrong. Kansas <i>did</i> give Michigan all kinds of problems. In fact, Michigan had to put together a herculean comeback effort just to tie Kansas at the end of regulation (which they with a dramatic buzzer-beating three pointer courtesy of Trey Burke). <br />
<br />
Kansas did everything in the book to beat Michigan, but in the end, they got upended by a performance for the ages by Burke -- the eventual college basketball player of the year.<br />
<br />
So what do we expect to see in tonight's Championship game?<br />
<br />
We expect a very close game that goes down to the wire. Neither team is clearly superior to the other. They're both extremely well coached, they've both got size, and they're both loaded with talent and depth. <br />
<br />
Louisville has four players who will be on NBA rosters in the near future: Peyton Siva, Russ Smith, Chane Behanan and Gorgui Dieng. But Michigan has three players who are clearly certain to be future NBA first round draft picks: Trey Burke, Tim Hardaway, Jr. and Mitch McGary.<br />
<br />
Louisville will apply full court pressure defense on Michigan for the entire 40 minutes of regulation, and when they have the ball, their lightning-quick guards will relentlessly attack the lane, drawing Michigan defenders in and creating easy layups and dunks for the Cardinals' big men, and open three pointers for perimeter players off of kick outs. All Rick Pitino coached teams do those things. <br />
<br />
But Michigan has an electric offense as well. If Burke can break down Louisville's tough defenders, it will open up good looks from the three point line for Michigan's talented three point bombers.<br />
<br />
The "X" factor for Michigan will be freshman big man McGary. If McGary can establish himself from inside and out on offense early, it will force the shot blocking Dieng to focus on trying to stop McGary, and draw him away from swatting other Michigan players' shots. Perhaps more importantly, if McGary and Michigan's big men can get Dieng into foul trouble, the lane will open up for Michigan.<br />
<br />
And since we expect tonight's game to be so close, we think that it will probably turn on fouls. The team that gets in foul trouble first will probably be the team that comes up short.<br />
<br />
We think these teams are so closely matched, that neither team will get much more than a 4-6 point lead. Thus, fouls will be critical. The team that loses players to foul trouble first will probably lose. Concurrently, the first team that gets to shoot foul shots in the bonus will probably win.<br />
<br />
Drive and Dish is usually pretty certain about who we expect to win, but we think this one will be so close that it could go either way. Louisville probably should win, but we think Michigan has the guns to bring home the Big Ten's first Championship since 2000. <br />
<br />
We'll go out on a limb and take Michigan ... with the caveat that Michigan will be massively screwed if either Burke or McGary finds himself in foul trouble early. If that happens, Louisville will be too much for Michigan, and Rick Pitino will have coached his second school to an NCAA Championship (Pitino won an NCAA Championship at Kentucky in 1996).<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-92231130176861881862013-03-21T07:52:00.000-06:002013-03-21T22:40:55.067-06:00Drive and Dish Fills Out NCAA Tournament Bracket, 2013 Edition<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br /></div>
Drive and Dish was launched one week before the start of the 2007 NCAA
Tournament. In 2008, we began publishing our handwritten NCAA
Tournament brackets. The night before our <a href="http://driveanddish.blogspot.com/2008/03/drive-and-dish-fills-out-ncaa-brackets.html">first brackets</a>
appeared, Mark Buckets and yours truly spent the wee hours deliberating
over our picks in a then-24 hour Kinko's in the western suburbs of
Chicago. Mr. Buckets abruptly retired from sports blogging during
Duke's upset loss to West Virginia in the second round of that year's
Tournament. He came out of retirement to pen a post or two later in the
week, but left blogging for good after the 2008 Final Four.<br />
<br />
Drive
and Dish Senior Editor Trashtalk Superstar took sole responsibility for
handwriting and publishing the annual Drive and Dish NCAA Tournament
bracket in <a href="http://driveanddish.blogspot.com/2009/03/drive-and-dish-reveals-2009-ncaa.html">2009</a>.
Like a monk who spent years copying the Bible by hand during the Dark
Ages, Mr. Trash Talk devoted himself to handwriting and publishing the
Drive and Dish brackets for the remaining years.<br />
<br />
The 2010 Drive and Dish <a href="http://driveanddish.blogspot.com/2010/03/drive-and-dish-2010-ncaa-tournament.html">NCAA bracket</a> proved to be our most prescient. Drive and Dish eschewed the conventional
wisdom (we were among the few who didn't pick Kansas that year) and
correctly predicted that Duke would win it all. To be sure, we never envisioned that the
Blue Devils would meet then-unheralded Butler in the Championship game, but our selection of Duke was a bold pick at the time. Believe
it or not, virtually nobody picked Duke to win it all that year.<br />
<br />
We had previously predicted an eventual NCAA champion that most "experts" missed when we <a href="http://www.driveanddish.blogspot.com/2007/03/random-thoughts.html">picked Florida</a>
to win its second consecutive NCAA Championship in 2007, even though
the defending champs' lackluster regular season performance had caused
most of those "experts" to write them off (we didn't publish our
brackets that year, so readers will have to work their way through the
bullet points in the linked post to find the Florida Championship prediction).<br />
<br />
Duke in 2010 and Florida in 2007 seemed fairly apparent to us because we make our picks based on how we expect teams to match up against each other. By the time teams get deep into the Tournament (i.e., past the Sweet Sixteen), match ups become the most important factor in determining the outcomes of games. Put simply, teams don't get to the Elite Eight unless they're talented and are playing well, so games played deep in the Tournament turn on match ups and momentum swings. <br />
<br />
When filling out an NCAA Tournament bracket, it's not to hard to pick winners by envisioning how the various winning teams in your bracket figure to match up against each other at each position on the floor. <br /><br />
Of course, predicting winners based on match ups doesn't guarantee that you'll be right every time. Drive and Dish picked Duke to win it all again in <a href="http://driveanddish.blogspot.com/2011/03/drive-and-dish-2011-bracket.html">2011</a>,
even though the Blue Devils lost some key starters from the 2010
Championship team to graduation. That year, Duke fell
short as Connecticut came out of nowhere to win head coach Jim Calhoun
his third NCAA Championship.<br />
<br />
And last year, we ended <a href="http://www.driveanddish.blogspot.com/2012/03/drive-and-dish-2012-ncaa-tournament.html">picking North Carolina to beat its mortal enemy Duke</a> in what we expected to be hyped up to be an NCAA Championship game <span style="font-style: italic;">for the ages</span> (because it would pit bitter conference rivals North Carolina and Duke against each other). Instead, Coach John Calipari's freshman-laden Kentucky team <a href="http://www.driveanddish.blogspot.com/2012/04/kentucky-wins-championship.html">won the Championship</a> and forever discredited one of Drive and Dish's long-held "ironclad rules": namely, not to expect championship caliber play from teams that rely on freshmen at several key positions.<br />
<br />
But envisioning potential match ups is still the preferred way of filling out our brackets here at Drive and Dish.<br />
<br />
So we employed that method when we filled out our 2013 bracket. It needs to be stated, though, that our 2013 bracket should come
with the following disclaimer: the current proprietors of Drive and Dish eschew watching television. So the Drive and Dish 2013 bracket has been completed in spite of Drive and Dish writers'
relatively limited exposure to televised college basketball in the 2012-2013 season. We've viewed select games online, but our focus has been on Notre Dame, the Missouri Valley conference and the Big Ten conference. We've probably seen enough of Notre Dame and the Big Ten, though, to know the Irish and each Big Ten team inside and out. That said, we're not as well acquainted with the entirety of NCAA Division I basketball as we have been in years past.<br />
<br />
That was the case last year and in 2011 as well (which, come to think of it, could well explain why we didn't see Connecticut coming in 2011 or see Kentucky coming last year). <br />
<br />
Still, it wouldn't feel like March without Barack Obama sitting down with the media to discuss the finer points of his bracket in an Obama Bracket Unveiling Special on national TV, and without Drive and Dish publishing its hastily assembled, hand-written bracket a few short hours before the first Thursday game of the Tournament tips off.<br />
<br />
Thus, without further ado, we present our 2013 NCAA Tournament bracket:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN793mpUc2S6MfKa75g382uZyUoOA2f2mqS0gw7vIosEc_93E3ybp6HHqcaANgDnrbFjckGlOdJJ5QCCBLIIO616MdLSb1ZBgdXqBfC9VwQOtGzycEthevyxSThGh_mHvUUvoGDsuzqPE/s1600/2013+tournament+bracket.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN793mpUc2S6MfKa75g382uZyUoOA2f2mqS0gw7vIosEc_93E3ybp6HHqcaANgDnrbFjckGlOdJJ5QCCBLIIO616MdLSb1ZBgdXqBfC9VwQOtGzycEthevyxSThGh_mHvUUvoGDsuzqPE/s320/2013+tournament+bracket.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-83701510261374806602012-12-24T22:52:00.002-06:002012-12-25T11:57:42.425-06:00Scouting Report on Santa, Christmas Eve 2012<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP510pAt1oaXVWtFbgdDd9iKeQpBRhTfG39LVNlNYq11xV7LGONzGOmM3Y8iMEItL7ODI86GBPO10tKxOs5yfJ_Vgs4yiQCykyP4ZlSz_kMsVH8c9OyuP20GEynwq9PDAFRKeLK2pNZT0/s1600/SantaDunksBasketball2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP510pAt1oaXVWtFbgdDd9iKeQpBRhTfG39LVNlNYq11xV7LGONzGOmM3Y8iMEItL7ODI86GBPO10tKxOs5yfJ_Vgs4yiQCykyP4ZlSz_kMsVH8c9OyuP20GEynwq9PDAFRKeLK2pNZT0/s1600/SantaDunksBasketball2.gif" /></a></div>
<br />
Ever since Drive and Dish began its run in 2007, we've published an annual Christmas Eve scouting report on Santa. In 2009, personnel losses, as well as business, work and life demands forced the Drive and Dish proprietors to cut back on our hoops blogging. As a result, Drive and Dish went from being a blog that published on a daily basis (at least during basketball season), to a blog that published only a few times per week.<br />
<br />
<br />
Over time, Drive and Dish devolved even more -- we eventually reached the point where even multiple posts in a single week became the exception, rather than the rule. But while output went down, the quality of our writing probably went up. After all, if our writers found some issue or occurrence to be so compelling that they (we) moved heaven and earth to blog about it, the resulting Drive and Dish post was likely to be well thought out and, accordingly, at least fairly well-written.<br />
<br />
Without a doubt, though, the posts that we most enjoyed writing were our annual Christmas Eve scouting reports on Santa. Year after year, the scouting report was more or less the same. In the interest of saving time and space, here's the ultra-truncated, Cliff/Spark Notes-style version of the annual scouting report: Santa is old and fat, but since he can still pilot his flying sleigh to every corner of the globe (minus Saudi Arabia, Iran and most of Pakistan) in a single evening and sneak into and out of your house to leave presents by sliding down your chimney and jumping back up to the roof, it's fair to say that he hasn't lost a step, that he can still sky, and that he's still got his hang time.<br />
<br />
This year, we've let the blog go more than ever before. Without doubt, it's been the most stressful and trying time for our remaining writers/editors since the blog was founded. Since the start of basketball season in October, Drive and Dish editors have been involved in the liquidation of two corporations and the sale of the corporations' commercial real estate. We've also been trying to lay the groundwork for the start-up of something new (but more on that later). It's been a chaotic time around here, and as such, we've neglected our blogging duties. So this year, we don't have a new scouting report on Santa to post. We're just referring our readers to <a href="http://www.driveanddish.blogspot.com/2011/12/christmas-eve-scouting-report-on-santa.html">last year's scouting report</a>.<br />
<br />
But if you must know the truth, we'll probably be able to slide by with last year's scouting report because we've heard that even though Santa is a year older and a few pounds fatter, he can still pilot his flying sleigh to every corner of the globe (minus Saudi Arabia, Iran and most of Pakistan) in a single evening and sneak into and out of your house to leave presents by sliding down your chimney and jumping back up to the roof, it's fair to say that he hasn't lost a step, that he can still sky, and that he's still got his hang time.<br />
<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-55988660434816302022012-07-04T18:12:00.000-06:002012-07-14T20:57:13.754-06:00Happy Independence Day/4th of JulyDrive and Dish wishes all our American readers and friends a happy 4th of July/Independence Day. Of course, we hope that all our non American readers and friends have a great day too, but since Americans celebrate their nation's birth every July 4th by picnicking, drinking alcoholic beverages and watching fireworks (sometimes setting them off too), our 4th of July "shout outs" are targeted at our American friends.<br />
<br />
Last night, one of the Drive and Dish editors finished playing basketball at a gym in Burr Ridge, IL, and walked out into the gym's parking lot as the Burr Ridge firework show was starting. So he took a video of the show.<br />
<br />
The camerawork gets a little shaky at times (as does most handheld video), but it's nothing major, and it doesn't detract much from the video. We hope you enjoy it:<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VITmsQgP7HY" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
Of course, Drive and Dish officially endorses leaving the July 4th pyrotechnics to the professionals. People who set off their own July 4th fireworks are asking for trouble ... especially if they're drunk. You don't want to end up like one of these guys:<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/D5jI92Ht99Y" width="560"></iframe><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com33tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-87654757317505861772012-06-22T17:44:00.000-06:002012-07-04T22:52:12.150-06:00Gang-Related Violence Explodes In Upscale Chicago Locales: Is Chicago Becoming Detroit?<div class="tr_bq">
University of Cincinnati Professor Emeritus of Political Science, and native Chicagoan, <a href="http://www.uc.edu/news/intellig.htm">Abraham Miller</a>, writes at the conservative PJ Media about the <a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/author/abrahamhmiller/">recent eruption of violent, gang-related crime in some of the most affluent parts of Chicago</a>:</div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="color: #666666;">
<i><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.explorechicago.org/city/en/neighborhoods/streeterville.html">Streeterville</a></span>
is a quiet, upscale part of Chicago that encompasses the Magnificent
Mile and is just south of the Gold Coast. Northwestern University’s Law
School is in Streeterville, as is its hospital. Oprah has an apartment
in Streeterville. A close friend of mine once lived in Steeterville, and
I spent many a late night walking off jet lag on its streets. After
all, if you’re not safe in Streeterville, where are you safe?</i><br />
<br />
<i>As a physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital learned the other
night, you’re really not safe in Streeterville. Accosted by a “flash”
mob of black teenagers, the physician was repeatedly hit and beaten. He
wasn’t robbed. He says the <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-met-kass-0613-20120613,0,5725691.column">motive wasn’t racial</a></span>,
as he’s Asian. But typically such mobs are black and their victims are
whites, who are abused with racist insults while they’re being injured.</i><br />
<br />
<i>The physician observed that the teenagers had accosted others before
they attacked him. The teenagers were simply looking to have fun by
hurting someone, and the next someone was him. And, of course, this is
not the first instance of such mob behavior flowing out of the
deteriorating inner city into the city’s wealthier areas. It isn’t even
the <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=8172554">first foray</a></span>
into upscale Streeterville. The criminals now have done what any
species does when it exhausts the resources of its immediate
environment. They have moved on to another habitat.</i></blockquote>
<br />
Streeterville, and Northwestern Memorial Hospital in particular, are relatively frequent haunts for some the proprietors of this blog. So we know both the area, and the institution well.<br />
<br />
And as bad as it may sound, when the Drive and Dish proprietors initially heard that there had been an attack on a young, male Northwestern physician, we more or less assumed that he was probably, well, <i>Asian</i>. <br />
<br />
That's not to say that the roving bands of teenaged and pre-teen thugs who have been venturing into posh Chicago neighborhoods from their ghetto stomping grounds aren't on the hunt for white guys to beat down.<br />
<br />
They most certainly are.<br />
<br />
But Northwestern is full of young Asian doctors. And on the whole, Asian-American males tend to be smaller, and tend to appear less threatening than their white American male counterparts.<br />
<br />
Is that an unfair stereotype? Sure, but, like so many stereotypes, it's rooted in a level of truth. <br />
<br />
Of course, most of the time the teenage thugs (or "youths," as the media prefers to call them), hit upscale, urban white guys -- most of whom appear as soft as tapioca pudding to thugs from the 'Hood. But just as in nature, where predators tend to prefer hunting the weakest (i.e., easiest to catch) prey, 13-15 year old up-and-coming ghetto thugs will hit the softest-looking target they can find.<br />
<br />
Up-and-coming "shorties" from Da 'Hood tend not to care that stereotyping people by their race or ethnicity violates the principles of political correctness. And since even 13 year old ghetto thugs know that most young Asian-American doctors don't know to fight like Bruce Lee and didn't work their way through medical school by busting kneecaps for the Yakuza ... well ... do the math. <br />
<br />
That the young Asian-American Northwestern physician would be so hopelessly naïve as to actually assume that a throng of black, teenaged ghetto thugs would leave him alone simply because he's not white ... well, again, do the math. <br />
<br />
But if the clueless, Asian-American physician from Northwestern has his head planted firmly in the sand, so too does most of Chicago. Miller hits on a couple of largely unspoken factors that have been quietly enabling Chicago's dysfunctional inner city street gang culture for years -- indifference and the reliance on smug, <i>bien-pensant</i> politically correct tropes:<br />
<div style="color: #666666;">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="color: #666666;">
<i>Sure, Chicago, like most major American cities, has its crime-polluted
neighborhoods where going out on the street at night is about as safe as
going out in Baghdad. We all know how to avoid those, unless our
economic circumstances regrettably compel us to live in such
neighborhoods. Last week, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-06-13/news/ct-met-schmich-0613-20120613_1_safe-city-violent-city-gold-coast">53 people were shot in Chicago</a>.</span>
Most of us will dismiss this as an irrelevant statistic. After all, we
know without reading the papers where those people live: in the south
and west sides. There, the population is largely black or Latino,
gangs fight turf wars over the drug trade, and getting a gun is not
only a rite of passage but also is more common than getting a high
school diploma...</i><br />
<br />
<i>We assume that because people who look like the victims are also the
perpetrators, it’s not our problem. Our continually reinforced ethnic
tribalism really comes down to: we don’t give a damn about
black-on-black violence or what happens in the deteriorating parts of
our city. We can be smug about gun control because none of our neighbors
are shooting each other. We can be self-righteous about microscopic
adherence to due process because none of us will have to testify in open
court against people who belong to vengeful criminal organizations.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Such delusions are part of what makes us not only smug but also
hypocrites. We invoke the notion that poverty causes crime. If only
we’d have greater redistribution of income and wealth, all this would go
away. We take comfort in the idea that there is a solution to the
problem. Why not? It’s ingrained in our psyches, pontificated as one of
the few real “laws” of social science, and comes to us as strongly from
the classrooms as it does from the bar stools. We can, thus, avoid the
thought of 53 white people being gunned down on our streets over a few
days.</i></blockquote>
<br />
Miller then raises a critically important question and challenges one of the aforementioned longstanding politically correct tropes: does poverty cause crime (as we're always told), or is it the other way around?<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="color: #666666;">
<i>(The) late James Q. Wilson so artfully pointed out decades ago, it
might be that poverty causing crime is just another logical fallacy.
Wilson challenged us to think that maybe it’s the other way around: <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/past/politics/crime/wilson.htm">crime causes poverty</a>.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="color: #666666;">
<i>My brother drove a chemical tanker in Chicago. He was a big, powerful
man who had been an amateur boxer. One day, while he was setting up his
hoses on the south side to pump chemicals into a factory’s tanks, a
group of teenagers surrounded him and demanded his money. He carried a
spiked billy club for such purposes and instead of producing his wallet
produced a lesson in night stick justice. When he returned to his yard,
he told his dispatcher that he’d never deliver to that business again.
Next time, he said, the kids might have guns and a shot would explode
the flammable chemical truck and take out a city block.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="color: #666666;">
<div>
<i> Eventually, no driver would deliver to the business. The business
moved to the northern suburbs and with it went the neighborhood jobs.
Repeat this by tens of thousands of times encompassing all types of
crimes, and you get a snapshot of an environment where few are eager to
invest capital or write insurance. Add to that a demographic of low
education and criminal conviction, and you have a labor force no one is
eager to hire.</i></div>
<div>
<i></i></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i style="color: #666666;">As gangs of black teenagers roam the streets of places like
Streeterville looking for nothing else but to hurt people, we need to
realize that the social order has changed. More important, we need to
disabuse ourselves of the notion that if we just pump more money into
the inner city, the problems of teenage violence will be solved</i><span style="color: #666666;">.</span></blockquote>
<br />
<br />
Last night, mere hours after Dr. Miller's PJ Media piece was published, there was a <span class="comment-link" title="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-man-shot-on-mag-mile-2-others-shot-across-city-20120621,0,195874.story"><a class="comment-link" href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-man-shot-on-mag-mile-2-others-shot-across-city-20120621,0,195874.story" rel="nofollow">gang-related shooting</a></span> on Chicago’s <i>famed</i>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mag_mile"> Magnificent Mile</a> at Michigan Ave. and Ontario St. That’s the most
high-end and high profile location yet to get a taste of Chicago’s
burgeoning citywide explosion of violent crime. <br />
<br />
For years, Chicago got a bad rap, as most people around the country —
conservatives in particular (especially after the advent of Chicago’s
own Barack Obama) — mistakenly thought of the Windy City as some sort of
impoverished, post-apocalyptic <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_Belt">Rust Belt</a> war zone inhabited by
gang-bangers, project-dwelling “welfare queens,” mustachioed blue collar
fat guys in Bears jerseys from an old <i>Saturday Night Live</i> skit
(Da Bears!) and … well, Eskimos. But Great Lakes locale aside, Chicago
never actually suffered much from the kind of decline that sucked the
life out of nearby crumbling Great Lakes cities like Detroit (and to a
lesser degree, Cleveland) over the past 35-45 years.<br />
<br />
That’s not to say that Chicago didn’t have its share of God-forsaken,
hell hole neighborhoods that were overrun with poverty, gangs and
violent crime. Chicago, in fact, had those in spades. But what people
outside of Chicago often didn’t understand is that Chicago proper was,
is, and has always been, home to <i>both</i> areas of great wealth <i>and</i>
areas of great poverty, and that Chicago’s notorious crime-infested
precincts have largely been confined to sections of the South and West
Sides — two areas that were/are more or less isolated from the rest of
the city. <br />
<br />
The heart of Chicago, though, with its pedestrian-friendly lake shore
and canyons of skyscrapers, has traditionally been as safe, as clean
and as crime-free as the central part of any big city in the country.<br />
<br />
Unbeknownst though it’s apparently been to much of the country,
Chicago’s center core became so gentrified that, for years, it’s been
safe enough to walk alone at night through great swaths of the city,
including its bustling downtown business district, its fashionable Near
North Side (Streeterville, River North, the Gold Coast, Magnificent
Mile, etc.), its North Side Yuppietopia (Lincoln Park, Wrigleyville,
Ravenswood, Roscoe Village, Andersonville, etc.), and even its
trendy/hipster regions on the ever-gentrifying Near West and Near
Northwest Sides (Greektown, Fulton Market, West Town, Ukrainian Village,
Wicker Park, Bucktown, Logan Square, etc.).<br />
<br />
Contrary to the
widespread perception of Chicago as some kind of gritty, hardscrabble,
post-industrial wasteland, the aforementioned areas have heretofore
mostly served as urban versions of the kinds of upscale, safe,
Caucasian-dominated hamlets that the professionally angry black journalist
Richard Benjamin disparagingly terms “<span class="comment-link" title="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1929729,00.html"><a class="comment-link" href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1929729,00.html" rel="nofollow">Whitopias</a></span>.” <br />
<br />
Chicago’s central location, no doubt, accounts for much of its
up-to-now mostly unfounded bad reputation. Opinion makers from the East
Coast don’t typically set foot on non-coastal real estate unless they
have to. So Chicago usually doesn’t figure very prominently in their
collective consciousness ... unless, of course, it’s being used to fulfill
some kind of unflattering regional stereotype (i.e., violent racist crackers from
the South; dumb, "Bible-thumpin'", "gun-totin’" hillbillies from Texas; fat,
blue collar rustics from the Midwest, etc.).<br />
<br />
Thus, it’s been easy for people to conflate Detroit and Chicago, and to
lazily assume that Detroit’s problems are Chicago’s. After all, they’re
both older, industrial cities in in the upper Midwest…<br />
<br />
But perhaps more so than any American city (other than New York, of
course), Chicago has, over the past 20 years, come to resemble a
European city of sorts, replete with a wealthy, expansive and largely
white central core, and with poor, high-crime areas that have been pushed
ever farther to the city’s far-flung edges (not unlike the Paris and its crime-infested <i>banlieues</i>).<br />
<br />
The bulk of Chicago’s crime,
however, has historically been contained to neighborhoods which are best described as being in "the ‘Hood," and thus, it never much figured in
the lives of people in the heart of the city. That general attitude of indifference to crime was even prevalent during the much-hyped crime wave of Summer 2010, when a rash of gangland shootings grabbed headlines and figured prominently on the Drudge Report
(thus, “confirming” the preconceived notions so many conservatives had
of Chicago as a Detroit-style ghetto hell hole).<br />
<br />
The big secret that everybody in Chicago intrinsically understood —
and which, of course, could never be acknowledged in polite company —
was that as long as the crime and violence stayed in the ghettos on the
South and West Sides (well, at least crime and violence of the non-white
collar variety, non-Italian “wise guy” variety and non-City Hall
“Corruptocrat” variety), the rest of the city didn’t really give a rat’s
a** about who shot whom.<br />
<br />
And even though the city has become so <i>overextended</i> (err,
broke) that it’s slashed 3000 officers from the police force since 2007
(those curious as to why violent crime has been on such an dramatic
upswing in Chicago might start by pondering that fact), the mostly good liberals
of Chicago’s fashionable parts can be forgiven if they adopted a “see
no evil” attitude. <br />
<br />
If it’s not in your back yard, it’s not your problem. <br />
<br />
Of course, that all changes the minute that it comes to your back
yard. And with gang shootings and gang-related violence having suddenly
moved downtown and into ever more upscale sections of the city since
last summer, it’s everybody’s problem now (even if a lot of wealthy
downtown liberals are uncomfortable acknowledging the ethnicities of the
perpetrators). <br />
<br />
None of that is likely to register in the national consciousness,
though. For most, Chicago’s recent troubles will just confirm what they
already knew (or thought they knew) … that Chicago is just like
Detroit.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com108tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-19375248970414648622012-05-07T23:36:00.001-06:002012-05-18T10:25:47.230-06:00A Date Which Will Live in InfamyToday marks the tenth anniversary of an event that forever lives in infamy. We're referring, of course, to Allen Iverson's infamous <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47323925/ns/local_news-philadelphia_pa/#.T6hTL45Gg7B">2002 meltdown</a> over the question of whether or not he was exerting enough effort in practice (practice!?!). <br />
<br />
Just one year removed from having led his 76ers to the NBA Finals and being awarded the NBA's Most Valuable Player award, Iverson and the Sixers were knocked out of the playoffs in the first round by the then-unheralded Boston Celtics. When asked about then-coach Larry Brown's suggestion that he hadn't taken taken practice seriously enough throughout the 2001-'02 season, Iverson lashed out at his questioner with a ... uh ... philosophical tirade against the merits of exerting oneself in practice. <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="color: #444444;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/d29VsG35DQM?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
(Video: <a href="http://espn.go.com/">ESPN</a>)<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="color: #666666;">
<b>Iverson:</b> "Iz easy to sum it up when you just talk about practice. We sittin' in here, I
supposed to be the franchise player, and we talkin' about
practice. I mean, it, listen, we talkin' about
practice, not a game, not a <i>game</i>, not a game, we talkin'
about practice. Not a game. Not a ... not a... not da game dat I go out dere and die for and
play every game last itz my last. Not da game, we talkin' about
practice man..."
</blockquote>
<br />
Over the past decade, that tirade has become the stuff of legend.<br />
<br />
In the category of sports tirades that center on one word which begins with the letter "<i>P,</i>" Iverson's "<i>practice!?!</i>" tirade ranks second only to former Indianapolis Colts head coach Jim Mora's "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJhSX0C_JSE&feature=related"><i>playoffs</i></a><i>!?!</i>" tirade. And with Mora's aforementioned "<i>playoffs!?!</i>" tirade and Dennis Green's "<i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWmQbk5h86w">the Bears are who we thought they were</a>!</i>" tirade, Iverson's "<i>practice!?!</i>" tirade comprises one third of the Holy Trinity of 21st Century sports meltdowns.<br />
<br />
Of course, Mora, Iverson and Dennis Green have nothing on former Chicago Cubs' manager Lee Elia, whose <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZYuO1KmFdI">infamous 1983 post game meltdown</a> still occupies its own wing of the Pantheon of post-game meltdowns. <br />
<br />
And although it doesn't count as a <i>post game</i> meltdown, former Baltimore Orioles' manager Earl Weaver's legendary 1970s era rant on his <i>Manager's Corner</i> segment of the Orioles' pre-game show still ranks as, perhaps, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWQbN0jFo_k">the most colorful sports tirade of all time</a> (¡Cuidado!: audio = "NSFW"). <br />
<br />
Compared with Elia's and Weaver's tirades, Ted Nugent's recent, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ted-nugent-cbs-interview-2012-5">much-hyped</a> rant on the CBS news comes off as pretty weak sauce. <br />
<br />
<b>Update:</b><br />
<br />
We've heard from some readers who objected to the absence of former Indiana basketball coach <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw7KijRfU-c">Bob Knight's infamous 1993 warning to his Hoosier team about the perils of losing to Purdue</a> (NSFW, of course). We didn't include Knight's tirade because it was a closed-door speech given to a team that Coach Knight believed to be under-performing (and because the speech was secretly recorded by somebody with a mini-recorder!), rather than an interview given to the media for consumption by the public. Knight didn't know that there was a tape recorder in the room; his team was the only intended audience for the speech.<br />
<br />
The other tirades in this post all occurred during interviews given to media by the ranting athlete or coach. Knight's tirade wasn't supposed to be heard by anyone but his team. For that reason, it shouldn't be classified as a "meltdown." It was, instead, a motivational speech. And an effective one at that.<br />
<br />
For that reason (and a few others) Knight's rant should probably be designated as the "Official" Drive and Dish basketball motivational speech (it's certainly our favorite).<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-66201256974152801242012-04-08T15:57:00.000-06:002012-04-08T23:36:12.304-06:00Happy Easter<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwCNnW1ryScqziuxqCnODgprCDU7b8u525mN2XI0qht6p5gut-MsbMRbMwd4yCuxu7Y9K0wEKEL2nM47Nce_-Hb339QmPx0jKVwzqD2xStAzxaIY-jMh53EGfE6ehOtymzfyhqUATmRiw/s1600/thumbnail.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 265px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwCNnW1ryScqziuxqCnODgprCDU7b8u525mN2XI0qht6p5gut-MsbMRbMwd4yCuxu7Y9K0wEKEL2nM47Nce_-Hb339QmPx0jKVwzqD2xStAzxaIY-jMh53EGfE6ehOtymzfyhqUATmRiw/s320/thumbnail.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729269460121515682" border="0" /></a><br />Apropos of the cartoon above, budget cuts have forced Drive and Dish to cut back on our use of words. So we'll keep this post short and cut to the chase: Happy Easter.<br /><br />(Cartoon: <a href="http://cartoonaday.com/">CARTOONaDAY.com</a>).<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-14405378803604393762012-04-04T23:36:00.008-06:002012-04-09T05:09:36.835-06:00Kentucky Wins Championship<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ7YwoSdAb9qBY_QOuMafOOf0pfrqq345Dx_XqqNSrnt3dUTkGvrYDYFyVzTJZ9qs_gWOijf4FxnX0BnD-GWxVsaJp__jy9g7OwWbSeh0OkT-EM6xj1emV-bNW6t8zed0_jj0T0PTWeKU/s1600/CaliKentuck.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 208px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ7YwoSdAb9qBY_QOuMafOOf0pfrqq345Dx_XqqNSrnt3dUTkGvrYDYFyVzTJZ9qs_gWOijf4FxnX0BnD-GWxVsaJp__jy9g7OwWbSeh0OkT-EM6xj1emV-bNW6t8zed0_jj0T0PTWeKU/s320/CaliKentuck.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729273824902591986" border="0" /></a><br />(Picture: <a href="http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-04-03/news/31276920_1_kentucky-coach-john-calipari-brandon-knight-eric-bledsoe">New York Daily News</a>).<br /><br />As was widely expected, <a href="http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-04-03/news/31276920_1_kentucky-coach-john-calipari-brandon-knight-eric-bledsoe">Kentucky</a> won college basketball's National Championship on Monday night, overpowering Kansas 67-59. Kentucky now owns eight overall NCAA Championships in men's basketball. Interestingly, controversial head coach John Calipari got his first NCAA Championship by leading the "blue blood" Wildcats past Bill Self's "blue blood" Kansas Jayhawks (Kansas and Kentucky--along with North Carolina, Duke, Indiana and UCLA--are frequently referred to as college basketball "blue bloods" because, like the old East Coast <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Anglo-Saxon_Protestant">WASP</a> blue blood elites who dominated the American institutions of <a href="http://mondoweiss.net/2011/08/wasp-society-is-disintegrating.html">yesteryear</a>, they're the privileged, elite ruling class of college basketball). In 2008, Calipari's Memphis Tigers <a href="http://driveanddish.blogspot.com/2008/04/kansas-wins-national-championship.html">narrowly lost</a> in the NCAA Championship game to Kansas and Self.<br /><br />Drive and Dish editors were at a wedding when the Final Four games were played on Saturday. As such, we missed Kentucky's win over Louisville, and only managed to catch the last ten minutes of Kansas' win over Ohio State. Our editors got off a plane and only returned to the Drive and Dish viewing room in time to catch the second half of Monday night's Championship game. So we don't have much to say about the game itself.<br /><br />We do, however, think that college basketball is very watered down these days, and although we would have preferred to have been able to watch the Final Four, we weren't particularly thrilled about the prospect of watching Kansas and Kentucky in the Championship game. John Calipari has put together an impressive assortment of NBA-ready talent on each of his three Kentucky teams (Calipari left Memphis for Kentucky in 2009). But the main players on his teams only stick around college for one year before they bounce to the NBA. Thus, watching Kentucky has more or less become akin to watching the <a href="http://www.ask.com/wiki/NBA_All-Star_Weekend_Rising_Stars_Challenge?qsrc=3044&oo=41647999">NBA Rising Stars Challenge</a>.<br /><br />Sorry, but it's just hard to get excited about that. We'd be hard-pressed to disagree with the following <a href="http://www.nola.com/newsflash/index.ssf/story/national-championship-rightly-goes-to-kentucky-calipari/215411e0586fd60e96c463c6872c2418">commentary</a> from the Washington Post/Bloomberg News:<br /><p></p><blockquote style="font-style: italic;"><p>In a very real sense, the ending of this game and this season was a microcosm of what college basketball is in 2012. As soon as the final buzzer sounded, the Super Dome was filled with sound, not from celebrating fans, but from the Hollywood-like pyrotechnics the NCAA insists on bombarding people with in its attempts to glitz up an event that doesn't need to be glitzed up.</p> <p>Nowadays, though, all the sound and noise fits because the national title game has the feel of an NBA all-star game, and most of the players who make it to the Final Four dream first of that game and the billboards and shoe deals that come with it rather than the game Kentucky won on Monday night.</p> <p>Perhaps it is time for the NCAA to change it's cheesy post-championship theme song. Instead of "One Shining Moment," a new song: "One Moment and Done," words and music by Calipari, might be more fitting.</p> </blockquote><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-90607318858974802942012-03-25T20:49:00.004-06:002012-03-25T21:16:51.953-06:00Final Four: Kentucky, Louisville, Ohio State, Kansas<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib30miS-NhJLx29p_mAHLryQWmzDQJirCwmWtTm_D8DDXzXIUeZEfAXp0W7L_LhG7lbz0QxDWlspAKb2FH_GsZPDb5TBOhBWY0YFoSm6_xguGhtssorcA3wmWxIUP3P4kGwkpDOdDbQp4/s1600/final-four-2012.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 246px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib30miS-NhJLx29p_mAHLryQWmzDQJirCwmWtTm_D8DDXzXIUeZEfAXp0W7L_LhG7lbz0QxDWlspAKb2FH_GsZPDb5TBOhBWY0YFoSm6_xguGhtssorcA3wmWxIUP3P4kGwkpDOdDbQp4/s320/final-four-2012.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5724033130204199698" border="0" /></a><br />The Final Four is set. Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio State and Louisville won their Regionals and advance to next weekend's Final Four in New Orleans. Unlike 2010 and 2011, when mid-major "Cinderellas" Butler and Virginia Commonwealth shocked the world and advanced to the Final Four, the 2012 Final Four field is comprised entirely of the usual suspects. <br /><br />Louisville competes in the Big East Conference, but geographically, the East Coast is entirely shut out. Three of the four teams come from schools within 100 miles of Cincinnati, Ohio. The fourth, Kansas, comes from the heart of the heartland. It's an entirely Midwestern and Mid South Final Four. <br /><br />Syracuse was the top-seeded team in the Tournament, but Syracuse alumni who work in the national sports media (in other words, most of the national sports media) will have to content themselves by pulling for Louisville to defend the Big East's honor. Casual fans who've enjoyed rooting for Cinderella "Davids" (i.e., Butler) to knock off college basketball "blue blood" "Goliaths" (i.e., Duke and Connecticut) in the last two NCAA Championship games will be faced with the likelihood of watching "blue blood" Kentucky play "blue blood" Kansas for the right to hand yet another NCAA Championship banner in the rafters. <br /><br />On a more personal level, Drive and Dish editors will be stuck at a wedding in south Georgia while Saturday's games are being played. But if we get the chance, we may try to hit Interstate 10 on Sunday morning and see if we can get to New Orleans by evening. If so, we'll be hanging around the Final Four for Monday's Championship game.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-62372733934218765182012-03-15T05:58:00.005-06:002012-03-15T17:13:47.000-06:00Drive and Dish 2012 NCAA Tournament Bracket<h3 class="post-title entry-title"> </h3>Drive and Dish was launched one week before the start of the 2007 NCAA Tournament. In 2008, we began publishing our handwritten NCAA Tournament brackets. The night before our <a href="http://driveanddish.blogspot.com/2008/03/drive-and-dish-fills-out-ncaa-brackets.html">first brackets</a> appeared, Mark Buckets and yours truly spent the wee hours deliberating over our picks in a then-24 hour Kinko's in the western suburbs of Chicago. Mr. Buckets abruptly retired from sports blogging during Duke's upset loss to West Virginia in the second round of that year's Tournament. He came out of retirement to pen a post or two later in the week, but left blogging for good after the 2008 Final Four.<br /><br />Drive and Dish Senior Editor Trashtalk Superstar took sole responsibility for handwriting and publishing the annual Drive and Dish NCAA Tournament bracket in <a href="http://driveanddish.blogspot.com/2009/03/drive-and-dish-reveals-2009-ncaa.html">2009</a>. Like a monk who spent years copying the Bible by hand during the Dark Ages, Mr. Trashtalk devoted himself to handwriting and publishing the Drive and Dish brackets for the remaining years.<br /><br />The 2010 Drive and Dish <a href="http://driveanddish.blogspot.com/2010/03/drive-and-dish-2010-ncaa-tournament.html">NCAA bracket</a> was particularly noteworthy. Drive and Dish eschewed the conventional wisdom (we were among the few who didn't pick Kansas that year) and correctly predicted that Duke would earn head coach Mike Krzyzewski his fourth NCAA Championship. To be sure, we never envisioned that the Blue Devils would meet unheralded Butler in the Championship game, but we deserved some credit for what was (at the time) a bold pick. Believe it or not, virtually nobody picked Duke to win it all that year.<br /><br />Our 2010 Duke pick was reminiscent of when we <a href="http://www.driveanddish.blogspot.com/2007/03/random-thoughts.html">picked Florida</a> to win its second consecutive NCAA Championship in 2007, even though the defending champs' lackluster regular season performance had caused most of the "experts" to be Gator skeptics (we didn't publish our brackets that year, so readers will have to work their way through bullet points to find the Florida Championship prediction).<br /><br />Drive and Dish picked Duke to win it all again in <a href="http://driveanddish.blogspot.com/2011/03/drive-and-dish-2011-bracket.html">2011</a>, even though the Blue Devils lost a few key starters from the 2010 Championship team to graduation. We ended up being wrong: Duke fell short and Connecticut came out of nowhere to win head coach Jim Calhoun his third NCAA Championship.<br /><br />This year, we ended up with North Carolina beating Duke in an NCAA Championship game <span style="font-style: italic;">for the ages</span>. To be clear, we don't actually think the game will be that good. North Carolina should waltz to the Championship . But if our prediction comes to pass, the game will be deemed a "game for the ages" simply due to the novelty of having the two biggest conference rivals in college basketball face each other for the third time this season while playing for the championship.<br /><br />Of course, our 2012 bracket should come with the following disclaimer: yours truly hasn't had a TV for two years. So like last year's brackets, the Drive and Dish 2012 brackets have been completed despite the fact that Drive and Dish writers' exposure to college basketball in the 2011-2012 season has been limited to internet viewing of select games and to catching a few minutes of games here and there while out and about (come to think of it, maybe that's why we didn't see Connecticut coming last year).<br /><br />Our 2012 bracket:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimQJiJ_CYxqg1EfupbdBmLLZDOhVMk9_ekfJAtuSar243zuxoAVtGPguKTcQAcv4MoMP-Y4-S6wfWYsKammO1Smj1-6ypfqpK_IexMSMitm9Sy_zgGvqjNXHncTtyAKT2xvl8j9mo8SgY/s1600/Drive_and_Dish_2012_Bracket.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 238px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimQJiJ_CYxqg1EfupbdBmLLZDOhVMk9_ekfJAtuSar243zuxoAVtGPguKTcQAcv4MoMP-Y4-S6wfWYsKammO1Smj1-6ypfqpK_IexMSMitm9Sy_zgGvqjNXHncTtyAKT2xvl8j9mo8SgY/s320/Drive_and_Dish_2012_Bracket.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5720092375375866834" border="0" /></a><br />Normally, we list several things to watch for below our brackets. But this year, since we haven't seen many games, there really isn't much that we can say with much authority. But we have seen St. Bonaventure play and we think they could surprise people. Of course, they play Florida State in the first round, and the Seminoles have beaten Duke and North Carolina. A few more things:<br /><br />* Everybody seems to have Kentucky winning it all, but we're skeptical (as we always are of John Calipari's teams). Kentucky has the talent, but do they have the mental toughness and experience that teams with upperclassmen typically have? Toughness and experience are two essential ingredients that National Championship teams must have.<br /><br />* We picked Virginia Commonwealth to beat Wichita State (primarily because we're so sick of witnessing Illinois fans salivate over VCU coach Shaka Smart that we figure his team will go on a tear that forces us to put up with two weeks more of Illini fans' slobbering), but Wichita State is good enough to make it to the Sweet Sixteen, and maybe beyond.<br /><br />We've seen Wichita St. a couple times this year and have been pretty impressed. Gregg Marshall is an outstanding coach. He turned tiny Winthrop into a perennial NCAA Tournament participant before bolting for Wichita, and he's got the Shockers' on the national map. Marshall will be pursued by several BCS conference schools that have coaching openings.<br /><br />* We picked New Mexico State to surprise Indiana. Indiana should win the game, but NMSU is the type of off-the-radar team that can give the big boys all kinds of trouble in the first round Tournament games.<br /><br />* Nobody has impressed us in 2012 more than Notre Dame. Most of the games we managed to watch online were Fighting Irish games. This was supposed to be a rebuilding year for the young Irish, but when senior Tim Abromaitis was lost for the season after tearing his ACL, it looked like the season could turn out to be a disaster. But Mike Brey's team knocked off ranked Big East team after ranked Big East team and wound up back in the Big Dance ™.<span style="display: block;" id="formatbar_Buttons"><span class=" down" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Link"><img src="http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" alt="Link" class="gl_link" border="0" /></span></span>Brey won national coach of the year in 2011. He probably deserves it even more this year.<br /><br />That said, we have Xavier beating Notre Dame in the first round. We think Xavier's toughness could give the Irish trouble.<br /><br />* Ohio University is a dark horse team that a lot of people like to make some noise. Head coach John Groce is a rising star in the game. If the Bobcats make a run in the Tournament, he'll have plenty of opportunities to go to bigger name schools (although he probably won't find a nicer campus than the one where he works now -- Ohio University's campus is gorgeous).<br /><br />We don't think Ohio will beat Michigan though. The Wolverines aren't very big, but they're tough and they can score. We do, however, expect Ohio to give Michigan a run for their lives. But in the end, coach John Beilein's Wolverines should pull it out and advance to play another day.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimQJiJ_CYxqg1EfupbdBmLLZDOhVMk9_ekfJAtuSar243zuxoAVtGPguKTcQAcv4MoMP-Y4-S6wfWYsKammO1Smj1-6ypfqpK_IexMSMitm9Sy_zgGvqjNXHncTtyAKT2xvl8j9mo8SgY/s1600/Drive_and_Dish_2012_Bracket.jpeg"></a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-32305865184578134672012-03-08T07:12:00.005-06:002012-03-09T01:41:52.482-06:00Nerds vs. Jocks: Mapping Out NBA Shots Taken Since 2006In the classic 1984 comedy <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088000/">Revenge of the Nerds</a>, the affable, but tormented <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3njjD41f48">nerds</a> of the Lambda Lambda Lambda fraternity marshal their superior brainpower to get last laugh on their dumb jock tormentors from the Alpha Beta house. In the years since <span style="font-style: italic;">Revenge of the Nerds</span> became a hit, the "nerds outsmart the dumb jocks" storyline has seemingly been recycled <span style="font-style: italic;">ad infinitum</span>.<br /><br />Keith Olbermann essentially built his sportscasting career -- and helped build the ESPN <span style="font-style: italic;">SportsCenter</span> empire -- by taking a page from the <span style="font-style: italic;">Revenge</span> storyline: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR2MlyS9Uns">nerdy</a> ethnic <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/23/080623fa_fact_boyer?printable=true">oddball</a> uses his wit and verbal acuity to <strike>enact revenge for a lifetime of being tormented, "wedgied" and stuffed into lockers by cool jocks at school</strike> poke fun at the college and professional athletes he covers (Olbermann co-hosted <span style="font-style: italic;">SportsCenter</span> with Dan Patrick on ESPN prior to his better-known career on MSNBC as America's favorite foaming-at-the-mouth liberal political talking head).<br /><br />But ESPN didn't retire the "nerds outsmart the dumb jocks" schtick (or at least the "<a href="http://espn.go.com/espnradio/show?showId=mikeandmike">clever non-athlete outsmarts the big dumb ex-jock</a>" schtick) when Mr. Olbermann was shown the door in 1997. ESPN radio -- and other sports talk stations from coast to coast -- regularly employ the oft-drawn-upon <a href="http://espn.go.com/chicago/radio/show?showId=cjh">formula</a> that pairs a quick-witted and sardonic "smart guy" with a big, "dumb" former professional athlete (or at least one who <span style="font-style: italic;">plays</span> "dumb"). The joke is that the smart guy who never played sports actually knows a lot more about sports than the dumb buffoon who played the game!<br /><br />These days, the "nerds know sports better than jocks" narrative has become the conventional wisdom, thanks in large part to the runaway success of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1210166/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Moneyball</span></a>.<br /><br />The 2011 film <span style="font-style: italic;">Moneyball</span>, starring Brad Pitt, is based on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lewis" title="Michael Lewis">Michael Lewis</a>' 2003 bestselling book on baseball economics, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneyball" title="Moneyball">Moneyball</a></i>. Both book and film tell the story of Oakland Athletics' General Manager <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Beane">Billy Beane</a>, a former major league player who turned to advanced statistical analysis -- known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabermetrics" title="Sabermetrics">sabermetrics</a> -- to evaluate players when he found himself saddled with a limited budget upon taking over as the Athletics' GM.<br /><br />Beane's early A's teams won on the cheap. So he was touted as a genius and his abandonment of traditional methods of player evaluation in favor of advanced numbers crunching became the order of the day in Major League Baseball. In practically no time, all the other teams revamped their player evaluation processes to incorporate Beane's statistical models.<br /><br />That Mr. Beane was no nerd before he turned to statistics -- a former major league player and scout can hardly be called a nerd -- is irrelevant. So, apparently, is the fact that the A's haven't returned to the playoffs since 2006. We're living in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Moneyball</span> era. Statistics rule and number crunching nerds are ascendant: the pencil-necked pencil pushers and their equations have once-and-for-all triumphed over the wisdom of the dumb jocks (or so the smart people say).<br /><br />Now it seems like every nerd and numbers guy under the sun is citing statistics to show that they know more than the dumb jocks. And it's not just baseball: everybody from the former star University of Chicago and Harvard Law professor and current Obama administration Regulatory Czar who (allegedly) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_%28book%29#Fallacies_and_biases">debunked</a> the concept of the "hot hand" in basketball (multiple academic studies exist which purport to debunk the myth of the hot hand) to the FedEx<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204880404577225562995441868.html"> deliveryman and basketball statistics enthusiast</a> who predicted that Jeremy Lin would be a star NBA point guard back in 2010 is seemingly in the game.<br /><br />So it makes sense that the lefty political nerds at <a href="http://salon.com/">Salon</a> would get into the game too: "<a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/03/06/mapping_the_nba_how_geography_can_teach_players_where_to_shoot.html?wpisrc=twitter_socialflow">What Geography Can Teach Us About Basketball</a>":<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpz1JS-34YXpu8m4jBXb3EFh1cKmhSRJgSvOalsABpcacu9IKnj-7uPtfgImiCQIjM_FV1DPmy6CSENYONJd1lMUmyBvt4CNl1-PuXdMi8vhnPLzXN3QHYpr6DgwMTsDlOXlfCRC1z41E/s1600/All_Shots_Taken_%252706%257E%252711_Graphic.tiff"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpz1JS-34YXpu8m4jBXb3EFh1cKmhSRJgSvOalsABpcacu9IKnj-7uPtfgImiCQIjM_FV1DPmy6CSENYONJd1lMUmyBvt4CNl1-PuXdMi8vhnPLzXN3QHYpr6DgwMTsDlOXlfCRC1z41E/s320/All_Shots_Taken_%252706%257E%252711_Graphic.tiff" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5717548285089867122" border="0" /></a> <div class="text"> <p></p><blockquote style="font-style: italic;">The annual <a target="_blank" href="http://www.sloansportsconference.com/">Sloan Sports Analytics Conference</a>, created in 2006, has become something like Bonnaroo for sports nerds. And if there was a breakout star at this year's gathering, held at MIT this past weekend, it may have been Kirk Goldsberry, an <a target="_blank" href="http://www.geo.msu.edu/faculty/goldsberry.html">assistant professor of geography</a> at Michigan State (and currently <a target="_blank" href="http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/%7Ekgoldsberry/research.htm">a visiting scholar at Harvard</a>). At Sloan, Goldsberry—whose dissertation "investigated real-time traffic maps" and who has also used geography to examine "access to nutritious foods in urban areas"—considered the ways that sophisticated statistical mapping can illuminate the game of basketball, in a paper called "<a target="_blank" href="http://www.sloansportsconference.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Goldsberry_Sloan_Submission.pdf">Court Vision: New Visual and Spatial Analytics for the NBA</a>."</blockquote><p></p><blockquote style="font-style: italic;"><p>You only have to glance at the maps Goldsberry produced to know that stat-friendly teams will pounce on these things. As the <em>New York Times</em> basketball blog Off the Dribble <a target="_blank" href="http://offthedribble.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/mapping-the-n-b-a/">noted</a> over the weekend, "about a third of the league’s arenas have recently installed camera systems that capture and log the position of every player on the court 25 times a second." As a result, many teams now have incredible amounts of data they can visualize in some of the ways Goldsberry suggests.<br /></p><p>For the map above, for instance, Goldsberry divided roughly half an NBA court (from the baseline to just past the 3-point line) into 1,284 "shooting cells." Then he plotted every shot taken in an NBA game from 2006 to 2011, and color-coded the results. The areas which yielded the most points per shot appear near the red end of the color spectrum; those that yielded the fewest are at the blue end.</p></blockquote><p></p></div><blockquote style="font-style: italic;"><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"> </div> </div> <div class="text parbase section"> <div class="text"> </div> </div> <div class="text parbase section"> <div class="text"> </div> </div> <div class="text parbase section"> <div class="text"> <p>If you've read anything about scoring efficiency in basketball, the resulting image will not surprise you (though its elegance is striking). But it conveys far more quickly and powerfully than a set of numbers can what kind of shot distribution an NBA team should be going for, generally speaking.</p></div></div></blockquote><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p></p> </div> </div><br />The takeaway: If you ever needed confirmation that the mid-range game is a relic of the past, you've got it now. Most shots taken in the NBA from 2006 to 2011 were either layups, dunks or three pointers. The baseline jump shot no longer exists.<br /><br />Gone are the days when post players like Adrian Dantley, Kevin McHale and Mark Aguirre would beat you with post moves inside, and then beat you with post-up turn around jumpers when you tried to push them off the block. Gone too is Karl Malone's 15-20 foot jumper that forced opposing big men leave the lane and chase him out into no (big) man's land.<br /><br />Scottie Pippen's bank shots from between the elbow and the baseline? Yeah, they're gone too. But if you've been paying attention to the NBA over the last few years, you probably already knew as much.<br /><br />Kevin Garnett is one player who still takes a lot of mid-range shots (Garnett idolized Dantley and McHale while growing up), but he's a definite outlier. Kobe Bryant takes a lot of mid-range fade aways, but since he shoots whenever he has the ball (regardless of where he is on the court), it doesn't count for much against the larger statistical pattern.<br /><br />The NBA has gone the same way that college basketball has gone over the last 15 years: nobody wants to take a shot that's not a layup, a three pointer or a dunk.<br /><br />Rick Pitino changed college basketball when he was coaching at Kentucky in the early and mid 1990s. Pitino decided that shots outside of the lane, but inside of the three point line were a waste of time. He figured that if you're going to take an outside shot (any shot taken from beyond 5-10 feet from the basket), you might as well take one that's worth three points if it goes in, rather than two.<br /><br />So that's what Pitino's Kentucky teams did. And after they made back-to-back Final Fours in 1996 and 1997 (which included a National Championship in '96), other teams around college basketball started adopting a similar style.<br /><br />The mid-range game disappeared from college basketball in the late 90s. It took a little while longer for it to disappear from the NBA, but the disappearing act is all but complete now.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1836164121345959749.post-84029560841971319122012-03-04T21:58:00.004-06:002012-03-05T14:59:53.806-06:00Northwestern Gets Closer to First NCAA Tournament, Michigan State Loses Key Player to InjuryNorthwestern kept its NCAA Tournament hope alive beating Iowa <a href="http://www.suntimes.com/sports/colleges/10999739-419/nu-70-iowa-66-cats-keep-tourney-hopes-alive.html">70-66</a> in the last game of the regular season today. Northwestern has never been an NCAA Tournament participant. Last week, Drive and Dish <a href="http://driveanddish.blogspot.com/2012/02/road-to-first-ncaa-tournament-berth.html">examined the</a> recent history of Northwestern basketball and the significance of the Wildcats' pursuit of their first NCAA Tournament bid.<br /><br />Northwestern now has an 18-12 overall record, and an 8-10 record in Big Ten conference play. As we explained in last week's aforementioned Drive and Dish post, we weren't optimistic about the Cats' chances for getting their first NCAA Tournament invitation after they fell just short of upsetting No. 10 Ohio State on Wednesday. But with the end-of-season collapses of other Big Ten teams that were on the NCAA Tournament "bubble" (we're looking at <span style="font-style: italic;">you</span>, Illinois, Minnesota and Iowa), NU's chances quickly got a lot better.<br /><br />Northwestern finished the regular season in seventh place in the Big Ten. Since the Big Ten has been widely regarded as the most competitive conference in college basketball this season, it's likely that seven Big Ten teams will get into the NCAA Tournament. If Northwestern beats Minnesota in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament later this week, they will almost certainly be rewarded with their first Tournament invitation.<br /><br />Drive and Dish believes that Northwestern could be dangerous in the NCAA Tournament. Northwestern has run the famed Princeton offense since Bill Carmody implemented it when left Princeton to become the Wildcats' head coach in 2000. The Princeton offense is notoriously difficult for opposing teams to prepare for, and teams that run it have had a great deal of success playing the role of "Cinderella" in the NCAA Tournament.<br /><br />This year, Drive and Dish wouldn't be surprised to see Northwestern wearing glass slippers in the "Big Dance."<br /><br />The news isn't as good for Michigan State though. Star freshman small forward Branden Dawson tore his ACL in today's <a href="http://www.mlive.com/spartans/index.ssf/2012/03/michigan_states_branden_dawson_3.html">72-70 loss</a> to Ohio State. Dawson will undergo reconstructive knee surgery and 6-9 months of rehabilitation.<br /><br />Obviously, he won't be able to play in the NCAA Tournament.<br /><br />Until today, Drive and Dish had expected Michigan State to be a serious contender for the 2012 National Championship. We thought they had an excellent chance to make it to the Final Four, and at least a decent shot at giving head coach Tom Izzo his second Championship. But Dawson's season-ending injury makes that considerably less likely.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>S.K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15820860177527096826noreply@blogger.com2