And so the excuses come thick and fast. We hear that they didn't play anybody in the regular season and got an unjustified seed:
My man @stlappas nails on Gonzaga. Great season, but 3 of their 6 top 50 wins vs St Mary's. Not a better resume than North Carolina.— Peter Yannopoulos (@PeteYannopoulos) March 12, 2017
The two laziest NCAA Tournament takes:— Mid-Major Madness (@mid_madness) February 28, 2017
1. Gonzaga will choke
2. You have to pick a 5-12 upset
Because the committee wants to help Gonzaga FINALLY get to the Final 4. A love letter to Mark Few. Hey, we love Mid-Majors! https://t.co/JnnZHEZF9M— Jason McIntyre (@jasonrmcintyre) March 12, 2017
Gonzaga road to Monday:— Jason McIntyre (@jasonrmcintyre) April 2, 2017
16 South Dakota St
8 Northwestern
4 WVU
11 Xavier
7 South Carolina
No conference champ
No conference tourney champ
No matter what happens tonight, there will be some who will find a negative angle for Gonzaga - there will still be whining about how easy of a path they had to get here. But if they defeat 1 seed North Carolina in a title game, it will be a fitting topper for an extraordinary nearly-two-decade run for Gonzaga hoops as one of the premier programs in the nation.
It's been a weird NCAA Tournament picking the spread, and easily my worst performance ever, but let's do this one more time:
Saturday ATS: 0-2-0
2017 Tournament ATS: 32-31-3 (51%)
2016 Tournament ATS: 36-30-1 (55%)
2010-15 ATS: 220-167-11 (57%)
Gonzaga (+1) over North Carolina: This is a "public" line, as they say. Most every computer rating, including Pomeroy, Sagarin, and BPI all have Gonzaga as a narrow favorite here. And Gonzaga has played better throughout the NCAA Tournament thus far.
As has been obvious for a long time, the way to beat North Carolina is to neutralize them on the glass, and if you can't do that then you need to shoot the lights out from deep (North Carolina was dead last in the ACC in defensive 3PA/FGA ratio, so if you get hot from behind the arc they won't do much to slow you down). Gonzaga certainly has the size to withstand North Carolina and they are a solid defensive rebounding team, though not a great one. The fact that North Carolina does not draw a lot of fouls should help Gonzaga's front line stay in tact more than it was during their foul-prone game against South Carolina.
Defensively, North Carolina certainly has the size to throw at Przemek Karnowski and Zach Collins. As noted above, North Carolina is far more vulnerable to outside shooting than paint scoring, and Gonzaga is a solid shooting team but hardly great. It's trite to say this, but if Gonzaga shoots well then they likely win this game but if they go cold then they probably won't.
In the end, I think Gonzaga is just a good value here. They are likely the better team, have been playing better over the last few weeks, and match up reasonably well in terms of personnel. They are my pick to win.
7 comments:
HHAHAHAHA. I knew you'd call this a "public" line. As usual you don't know what the fuck you're talking about when it comes to gambling. If you could blindly bet differences between the Vegas line and BPI/KenPom/Sagarin then we'd all be fucking rich. You are such a fucking clown.
With you on Gonzaga. Thanks for the write-ups this year.
What a thoughtful and well considered take. You should keep it up. You DEFINITELY do not sound dangerously insane.
nice post
This is obvi way off-topic and I'm not sure how soon you'll see it, but I don't really do Twitter, and since I don't trust the average sports media, I don't trust whatever Google would give me, so you are my best hope.
Why is Nairo racing Italy again? Has he given up on winning the TdF or something? And if he's not going to challenge Sky, will anyone? I like cycling (for an American at least), but there's gotta be more doubt to the final outcome than 'maybe he'll crash.'
While I generally like Chris Froome, I agree with you that it's way too boring when they just suck the life out of the Tour de France. That said, the young Frenchmen have shown some life, so it's possible that he gets challenged.
I don't know about Nairo for sure, but the 2017 TdF course does not really suit his skills. There's a lot of difficult descending, not many tough summit finishes, and a long individual time trial. Maybe he will try the Giro/Vuelta double instead.
Didn't realize that about this year's course, makes sense then. Thanks for the response!
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