2014 NCAA college basketball tournament - Where bias and mathematical nonsense against the ACC and in favor of the Big Ten and Big 12 will be laid to rest

"DEAN SMITH, legendary men’s basketball coach from 1961 to 1997, right front, is one of five basketball Hall of Fame coaches and players honored during halftime of the UNC-Virginia game in the Smith Center on Feb. 7. Standing beside Smith is Coach ROY WILLIAMS, who joined Smith in the Hall of Fame in 2007. Also present for the ceremony are, from left, unforgettable former Carolina players BILLY CUNNINGHAM, JAMES WORTHY and ROBERT MCADOO." 

Take all Hall of Fame coaches and players in the ACC and you can fill the stands behind these historic greats. It is hard to believe how good the ACC is and remains. A conference above all others.

Yet, in today's allegedly "mathematical" world, we have pundits who proclaim that picking teams is an art and they know how down the ACC has been for years. How the ACC is not going to the Final Four this year, apart from Louisville which is not yet a member. And how it will be that Syracuse and Pittsburgh have the best chances, along with perennial favorite Duke of course. How it is the Big East that rose above the ACC and remained there until the end.

The "science" of basketball reaches its zenith with "bracketology," where some unknown guy was able to market perhaps the biggest nonsense of all: "Bracketology." We now have "bracketologists" appearing everywhere. Specialists who claim to know college basketball so well they can tell you the last four out and in. Their bias is palpable.

And we have BPI, RPI and others that claim to gauge the strength of schedule (SOC) and other similar letters that mean less every year. It's all NPI (Nonsense Power Index).

Some pundits, like Jay Williams, are transparent in their efforts. They claim there are problems with their own conference. Yes, yet another down year for the ACC, while lauding their teams with just the right degree.

In Jay Williams' case, his mentor Jay Bilas has gained some respect by showing neutrality, which he does by constantly proclaiming the Big Ten the best conference and Michigan State the next champion. But Duke of course is always on top of the ACC. Where they both went to school.

There is safety after all in the Michigan State choice. They have almost all chosen MSU. They love their coach. And they love to chose them. From the game on an aircraft carrier to the last one in their stadium, they lose to UNC not due to coaching or players but because of the inability to adapt to moving decks and claimed losses of personnel.

The end result is that the claimed stronger conferences, where "strong" teams play each other, and a "tough" out of conference schedule as designated by the same people who "rate" teams, benefit and are able to proclaim themselves among the best even with nine losses.

Never in memory have nine losses merited a top ten finish in the polls. Yet, Kansas, playing in that great basketball conference the Big 12, does.

If I were Bill Self, this is major recruiting stuff. Come here, recruit. I want to tell you a story of how powerful our "basketball" conference is that we get our team in the top ten in the polls with nine losses. Yes, and almost all losses with their starting five playing.

Excuses abound in this nonsense world of claimed mathematical accuracy and pundit inflating "who have they played?" mentality.

NC State winning an hour from Xavier's home? Sure, because there were more Dayton University fans who booed Xavier than Xavier fans? Or maybe because NC State fans were so much better at shouting?

And again, Kansas. They play in such a superior league that a loss to one of the other "top ten" teams is perfectly alright. Understandable.

Let's not forget that the leaders of the media largely include those who are hellbent on getting the ACC as far back as they can.

The Bill Rafferty, Big East, New Jersey sportscaster and former Seton Hall coach (yes, that Big East team). The Joe Lunardi, St. Joseph's University, Big Four, Philadelphia connection whose team Villanova (another Big Four member) constantly was one of the top ten over-ranked teams in college basketball. It goes on and on.

And all of the coaches voting Roy Williams the most overrated coach in the land. Yes, his coaching has nothing to do with wins, as he so graciously states all the time. But his fellow coaches, including Coach K, the worst of all, will resort to "it" in order to show it had nothing to do with coaching that his team lost in Chapel Hill this year. Just "it." Sure Mike. Just it.

Brent Musburger is the man who compared Tommie Smith and John Carlos to Nazis, and who attended a Big Ten school (Northwestern) while driving illegally. He is the former Big Ten sycophant now relegated to SEC games. And he lorded over the broadcasts of Big Ten and ACC teams, almost single-handedly giving the Big Ten the best in the land designation.

The Big Ten is loaded. We hear this year after year.

An even more common refrain is that the Big Ten and the Big East are much better than the ACC. Even the A-10, to the pundits.

For twenty years, everyone has ganged up on the ACC. Why? Bad blood?

Well, ACC fans, it's time. In every neutral way, the ACC appears to be on the verge of breaking away again.

Not only do two of the top three recruiting classes this coming year come from the ACC (Duke and UNC), but the ACC's nine teams in the NCAA and NIT basketball tournaments will continue to show their stuff.

All winners so far, with the biggest win NC State's, we should remember that each time an ACC team beat an intra-conference foe it was the weakness of the foes and the ACC that provided a reason to demote ACC teams, precisely the opposite effect that all those losses in the Big Ten and Big 12 had on their teams' rankings.

Kansas? Top ten with nine losses. Belmont, which won at North Carolina and lost at Kentucky, both games played on the other teams' home courts, just too little in terms of wins, despite the same number of losses.

UNC, who beat Louisville, Kentucky, Michigan State and Duke, all preseason top four teams, a feat never achieved before? Just up and down. And doing this without all but one of its starters and its two best returning players? No consistency. They will go nowhere.

Perhaps it is the weight of UNC Tar Heels history in college basketball, as shown by Wikipedia, that leads to this bias.

NCAA Tournament champions
1957, 1982, 1993, 2005, 2009
NCAA Tournament runner up
1946, 1968, 1977, 1981
NCAA Tournament Final Four
1946, 1957, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1972, 1977, 1981, 1982, 1991, 1993, 1995, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2005, 2008, 2009
NCAA Tournament Elite Eight
1941, 1946, 1957, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1972, 1977, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1991, 1993, 1995, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012
NCAA Tournament Sweet Sixteen
1957, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1972, 1975, 1977, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012
NCAA Tournament appearances
1941, 1946, 1957, 1959, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1972, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014
Conference tournament champions
1922, 1924, 1925, 1926, 1935, 1936, 1940, 1945, 1957, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1972, 1975, 1977, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1989, 1991, 1994, 1997, 1998, 2007, 2008
Conference regular season champions
1923, 1925, 1935, 1938, 1941, 1944, 1946, 1956, 1957, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1993, 1995, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012

Or perhaps it is the whole conference's superiority over so many years. 

But now, we have a chance to see just how much the ACC will prove this to be all nonsense. The nonsense with Michigan State losing at home to UNC because they were not at full strength. Or whether UNC can come up with its best at the end. Or just how bad Roy Williams is as a coach. Or whether the Big Ten and Big 12 will reign supreme as the pundits know they should.

In the end, the teams have to play each other. Watch as they fall. And in the end, watch them eat their words. 

ACC in another down year? 

More nonsense.

Of scowls, frowns, faces, posturing and belittling - How Coach K and Duke talk about their opponents

Amid the biased people on the planet, with all the bias in today's silly at times idiotic act as if the pundits and absurd statistics can determine who is on the top line, and other ridiculous sports phenomena, we are presented with perhaps the very persons who have created it all. Duke's "hall of fame" coach Krzyzewski , or Coach K, and the Duke literati.

All year,  Krzyzewski has belittled his opponents, even so far as to add a new concept roundly reported by his sycophants, especially Jay Williams and Jay Bilas. Yes, they just did not have "it" when they lost. Yes, they should have won but were just off. Never, ever did they outplay Duke. So goes Coach K. And so goes his team.

As the ACC Championship game just ended with another Duke loss, we will have to hear from Coach K about how lopsided the free throws were.

Not how his teams traditionally hit, smash and thrash their way to the ball and basket. Not how his games often include substantial injuries to the other side by his punchers, maulers and brawlers.

But how it is that Coach K, the wonder who managed to win so many games, is just the best and he and his teams lose, the other teams do not win.

Leave aside his teams' talents, and believe that Coach K matters somehow whenever his teams win. And how the "nose in the air" attitude of Duke is how the university conducts itself, not how badly its coach with a "k" leads and how his teams always act so superior.

Terry Holland called his dog Dean Smith. Coach K never calls Coach Smith, and never has. Indeed, you will rarely hear Coach K talk about any coach other than those who are dead, and then only if it helps his image.

For the record, Dean Smith ruled Coach K and his Blue Devils according to a WRAL website. Something that was very hard for Coach K to take, so he constantly argued that Coach Smith got the breaks and other coaches lost because of bias.

• 1970-1979:  UNC 23-8
• 1980-1989:  UNC 16-9
•   1990-1999:  UNC 14-10

We have had a Duke majority in wins only in the last fourteen years.

Coach K was as unpleasant and rude to Dean Smith as possible, constantly claiming he was given liberties that were affecting him winning. A Coach K tradition that continues to this day. Also, Coach K has always tried to win through being physical. Check out the fouls. He told his players to play like this today. And they fouled and fouled and fouled. 

But perhaps the most significant war against a coach, other than Coach K's campaign against Roy Williams, is the following event that will always stand out in history.

In 1989, this became a reality when during the ACC Championship Coach K jumped off the bench in reaction to a foul on one of his players. He began scolding Carolina player Scott Williams for his aggressiveness and yelled, “Hey 42, that was a dirty foul!” Dean Smith was having none of it and yelled at Kyrzyzewski, “Don’t talk to my players!” As if reading off a script, Coach K turned to Smith and said with a face full of passion, “Hey Dean, Fuck You!” Needless to say, it was a polarizing moment in the Carolina Duke basketball history. In both the minds of both Carolina and Duke fans, there was now more than enough reason to hate their down the road counterpart. However the vibrant interactions between the storied coaches was not all that sparked the flame for the rivalry. The actual basketball games and the drama that unfolded within are also incredible to reflect upon.

It was hard for me to see Virginia out there instead of the Tar Heels. But the coach is new and a great guy. And his team is probably the top team in the US at the moment. In time, there is no doubt but that wins will do more than even out for him. 

And eventually, we Carolina fans will not need to see Coach K any more. For me, give me Tony Bennett any time. And leave Coach K to the rubble where he belongs.

Air France and Malaysian Air Disasters - Will we never update our most dangerous weapons of terror?

Flights 447 and MH370 seem so similar, it is hard to believe that there is no public outcry for better technology in our least advanced transportation systems on the planet. An article just referred to the mystery of Malaysian Airline Flight MH 370 as if it were the flight in 1942 when Carole Lombard was lost without the least trouble. After all, we still use the same technology, more or less, as was used in 1942.

What a marvel!

And in both instances, separate transmissions from equipment were checked and in one instance used to find the wreckage. But what about our sophisticated air systems?

They largely do not exist.

We learned with Air France Flight 447 that it was not even presumed lost until hours had transpired from its last transmission because it is essentially over ocean where our pre-1942 technology cannot transmit a thing. Lost to the world for hours. Every airplane over ocean like Flight 447.

Normally, we would not have thought of airlines as potential terrorist weapons. Yet, 9/11 changed all that.

And now, with this in mind, and two separate incidents in to boot, we have the incredible fact that the world needs six or more nations, searches costing tens of millions of dollars and potentially never-to-be-found planes and people in order to perhaps begin to think about getting more modern technologies into planes. Or will we?

Some of the other facts are equally bizarre and bear consideration.

Sure, we have updated the flight recorders, but pilots or anyone else in a cockpit can still turn them off. Why is this? For what reason would we want to give pilots that opportunity. For that matter, why aren't the black boxes in secure areas of the plane, operated only through third parties? Who knows?

For that matter, why can't we set up systems that transmit from a crashed plane no matter where it crashes. Even I could design something that would work.

Why are we so mysteriously absent? Because we like to play this game every time another airplane goes down?

Then we have the search itself.

In criticizing the Chinese for their poor resolution in their satellite images, and now for even suggesting that the debris its satellites found is from the plane, we in the mighty US instead are more interested in hiding what we can do with our own. And where our gaps exist in our satellites. So we stay silent, just as the heads of our security systems tell us that we must remain in the dark about most things, including what they do.

(Is Obama really preventing us from determining if the CIA violated the law? Sure. Because now it is a matter of the Department of Justice, reviewing its own government.)

So when will we begin to do more?

And for that matter, when will our heads of security for the country stop treating us like idiots for believing their tripe about the stolen passports used by two Iranians were just normal, business as usual?

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