Baseball season-long picks: Chad versus Josh

In preparation for baseball season (well, more accurately after the season got started) Chad and I decided to have a little draft. We rotated picking all teams and we’re having a little competition to see whose teams win more games, whose teams make the playoffs, and whose teams advance in the playoffs.

First, here are our playoff picks. In the AL Chad has the Yankees, Tigers, Mariners and the Rays as the Wild Card. I have the Red Sox, Indians, Angels, and the Blue Jays as my Wild Card. In the NL Chad has the Mets, Brewers, Diamondbacks, and the Braves as the Wild Card. In the NL I have the Phillies, Cubs, Dodgers, and the Padres as my Wild Card.

For non-playoff teams Chad has the White Sox, Royals, Athletics, Nationals, Reds, Cardinals, and Giants.

My non-playoff teams are the Orioles, Twins, Rangers, Marlins, Astros, Pirates, and Dodgers.

So, how easily am I going to slaughter Chad? I’d appreciate your feedback!

Is it too early to look at 2009?

Apparently, the answer is no. Just today, I have stumbled on two top-25 rankings for 2009. The first, from Rivals.com, assumes that all those players that have not announced their intention to leave for the NBA will return next year. And while this is completely unrealistic, how much fun would college basketball be next year if Tyler Hansbrough, Derrick Rose, Chris Douglas-Roberts, D.J. Augustin, Brandon Rush, Darrell Arthur, Hasheem Thabeet, Michael Beasley, O.J. Mayo, and Joe Alexander all return for more year? Since this is so unrealistic at this point, it would be a waste of my time to analyze these rankings, so I will spend the time I would have spent analyzing these rankings dreaming of what next year would be like if this did happen.

The other 2009 top 25 comes to us from ESPN's Andy Katz. Katz attempts to take a more "realistic" approach to his rankings, making assumptions that many of those individuals who have not yet declared for the draft will eventually do so. And since he is trying to be realistic, I feel justified in criticizing his rankings, or at least one of his rankings. Now, maybe it is my anti-KU bias rearing it's ugly head, but I see no way that Kansas is a top 5 team with the losses of Robinson, Kahn, Jackson, Chalmers, and Rush. Katz states, "And there is a good chance that Brandon Rush and forward Darrell Arthur declare for the NBA draft, but there is still enough left, even with all of that, for the Jayhawks to be a factor in the Big 12 and nationally. A backcourt of Sherron Collins and Mario Chalmers is as good as it could get next season around the country." So according to Katz, Collins + Chalmers = Top 5 team. Maybe this would be true if we were talking about a 2-on-2, 6'0" and under league, but last time I checked there were five players on the court at a time and there was no height restriction. Don't get me wrong, I think Collins and Chalmers are both very good but the only other returning player who logged any significant time this year was Cole Aldrich and other than a couple rebounds over Tyler Hansbrough, Aldrich contributed very little (2.8 points and 3 rebounds in 8 minutes per game) to the Jayhawks' success this year.

Late Game Defensive Strategy

I've had this thought in my head for some time, but this seems to be an appropriate time to ask it . Why doesn't a team on defense with the lead late in the game go to a full court 2-2-1 or a 3/4 trap defense? During the first 39 minutes of a game, those defenses are used to slow down the other team, but in the last minute, coaches insist on pressuring the ball with a man-to-man defense, which usually results in the ballhandler running past his defender and creating an advantage for the offense. If Calipari calls a time-out after the made free throw and then sets up in a full court of 3/4-court zone defense, there is no way Kansas gets that shot off. The most likely result in that situation is that Collins tries to split a double team and gets fouled; or Kansas turns the ball over making a high-risk pass trying to break the press. Instead Rose guards Collins 90 feet from the basket, Collins blows by him and Rose is chasing him and "trying to foul" (I put that in quotes, because it didn't look to me as if they were trying to foul).

Congratulations to Steven's Hello Bracket!!!

Steven's "Hello" bracket absolutely dominated Bizarro Joe Lunardi's bracket challenge. It's pretty ridiculous how not close this was as he beat second place by 34 points. So Steven, it is safe to say you know much more about college basketball than me and even more about college basketball than Chad (because I did beat Chad).

Once again, congratulations to Steven for running away with this bracket challenge!

So, there's a game Monday night or something

Obviously by the lack of posts my excitement level about the Final Four is historically low. I know I hear that some people are more intrigued by having highly ranked teams in the Final Four but I find it really dull. Memphis running past UCLA was not surprising because UCLA has been by far the worst of the Final Four teams the last month or so. In fact, I thought they were the worst of all Elite Eight teams (and despite the fact that they rolled against Xavier I stand by that decision). I still have no idea what happened in the late game. It was about as entertaining a game can be that has a 28 point first half lead in which that team ends up winning by 18. I'm not sure what that means but I'm not convinced it's good.


So, now we have a Memphis-Kansas final. Am I excited? No, but I do plan on watching. I am fairly surprised that Memphis is favored (I think the last line I saw was -2.5) despite the fact that they have been playing pretty well and as well as they've played all year. But I would have to say that Kansas is the best team that Memphis has seen possibly this year and at least recently. I figure that the final will be decided by the guard play as the bigs on both teams, while good, are not the primary focus for either team. I really like Chris Douglas-Roberts and Derrick Rose is pretty good as long as he's not eating pounds of gummy bears but I like the depth of options Kansas has a bit more. While I would say I see it being a pretty good game the last two weeks of this tournament have been pretty horrible so a blowout one way or another wouldn't shock me. This tournament might be destined to end in a dud.

So, who do I think will win? Kansas by five or so. Who do I want to win? I'd have a hard time caring less. The only potential upside for having a lot of one seeds in the Final Four is great games and we haven't had that. So, this has been boring and bad.