Posts by Andy Katzer at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

As Chas Rich pointed out earlier, The Tampa Trap was indeed a record-setting string of games. But the least surprising of the four contests that saw lower (much lower) seeded teams advancing was Siena's win over Vanderbilt. Now, it's easy to say in hindsight, but if you had a bracket that included Vandy advancing in the tournament, you must not have been looking at the Commodores' body of work this season.

Vanderbilt was unbeatable at home -- litteraly. The Commies ran through their home schedule unscathed, including their much-heralded win over then number-one Tennessee. But away from Memorial Gym was another story for the 'Dores as they were a pedestrian 7-7 (now 7-8) away from the TheatreDome they call a home court; apparently they feel handicapped when the benches aren't somewhere in the side orchestra section.

Had Vanderbilt beaten Siena, the Saints would have been the highest-ranked team Vandy beat away from home, according to RPI. Naturally there are ways other than RPI to judge a team, but the Commodores hadn't beaten anyone of note RPI-wise away from home all year.

If the tournament was held at Memorial Gym, Vandy would cruise to the championship. But for whatever reason, they just couldn't do anything away form their own floor. Looking back is easy, but it's clear: if you didn't have Vanderbilt losing, you hadn't been paying attention.

Conference: Ohio Valley
Record: 24-10 (16-4)
RPI: 84
How They Got In: Automatic
Seed/Bracket: #15/South

Mascot: Austin Peay is known as the Governors, as the school was named for local Clarksville (TN) favorite son Austin Peay, former Governor of the Volunteer State. While the mascot does allow you dust off you cockney accent and count how many times you can say "'Ello, Gov'nah!" before someone punches you square in the face, the school is also widely known for its cheer of "Let's Go Peay!," which is much more fun to say than read.

Big Wins: The Govs have two wins over a tournament qualifying school; unfortunately both came over fellow automatic qualifier Belmont (Atlantic Sun). Peay has no other wins against teams in the RPI top 100.

Player You Should Know: Senior Todd Babington was named OVC tournament MVP after nailing six threes in the championship game against Tennessee State. Since upsets are often built on hot three-point shooting, Babington will need a similar effort in the Governors' first round game, along with help from Peay's other two senior stars, Derek Wright (12 ppg, 41% 3-pt) and Fernandez Lockett (11 ppg, 7 rpg).

Outlook: As mentioned above, the Govs beat another team in the tournament, but not of the quality they'll see in the first round. The two best teams Peay played this year, Memphis and Vanderbilt, each handled the Govs easily. As a projected #15 or 16 seed, Austin Peay will need a magical night, and perhaps a bout of food poisoning for the favorite, to advance past round one of the tournament.

Conference: SEC
Record: 16-16, 8-12 in conference (4-12 regular season)
RPI: 108
How They Got In: Automatic bid from SEC
Seed/Bracket: #14/West

Mascot: Bulldogs. One of the most widely-used mascots in all of sport, Georgia overcomes the commonplace by reffering to themselves as Dawgs instead of just "dogs" and by trotting out the overfed, overbred, overcute solid white English Bulldog Uga (who also holds the distinction of being the only live mascot to attend the Final Four).

Big Wins: Georgia has six wins against teams in the RPI top 100, and four of those came in their improbable SEC tournament championship run. However, UGA did not beat SEC regular-season champion Tennessee. Just sayin'.

Notable Losses: Losing to South Carolina and LSU are bad conference losses, but can be easily dismissed by pointing at the banner Georgia just won as SEC champions. it's not as easy to wave off losses to East Tennessee State and Tulane.

Players You Should Know: Guard Sundiata Gaines is the team's star player, but fellow senior center Dave Bliss is the glue that held the Dawgs together in the SEC tourney. Bliss hit a game-winning three in the first round game against Ole Miss, and had the presence to finish against Mississippi State despite playing most of the second half with four fouls. The leadership of Gaines and Bliss will be key to any more wins for UGA.

Outlook: On Saturday, Georgia became the first team in modern basketball to play and win two games in one day. They became the first six seed to advance to the SEC championship since divisional play began in 1992. They won as many games in four days as they did in two months. Continuing this kind of momentum is highly unl;ikely, but getting this far was highly unlikely, too. If you want to say they can't win in the NCAA tournament, go ahead, but I'm not going to say it.

With two games remaining in the regular season, Florida's nine-year streak of NCAA tournament appearances is in serious trouble. The SEC, on virtue of being the SEC, will probably get at least five teams in the field, and Tennessee, Vanderbilt, and Mississippi State are the virtual locks. Conventional wisdom says that the other spots are going to come from a group made up of Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky, and the Gators.

Ole Miss helped themselves greatly Tuesday night by riding 54% second-half shooting to a 81-72 win over Arkansas. The Rebels and Hogs don't play any more interesting competition until the tourney starts in Atlanta next week -- they've got Georgia and Auburn (respectively) on Saturday. Meanwhile in the East, Florida and Kentucky play what may come down to an elimination game on Saturday.

But before then, Florida gets a shot at what would be a major resume-building win against the conference's highest-ranked RPI team, Tennessee. Even though the Gators are relatively inexperienced, freshman Adam Allen knows what this game means:

"We all know what's at stake. We know we've got to win some games to get in the tournament," he said. "Nobody wants to go to the NIT. It's like the champion of the losers if you win that. Everybody wants to play in the NCAA Tournament. ... Any year not in the NCAA Tournament is a bad year for Florida."

Tennessee has a lot at stake, too: they can win the SEC Championship outright, leaving just Ole Miss and Georgia as the only schools not to win a SEC title since the conference went to divisional play in 1992. But to do it tonight in front of a hostile crowd, the Vols will have their hands full. They've got to hope Wayne Chism can keep Marreese Speights in check, that Nick Calathes doesn't show the wizardry he's flashed at times this year, and that the physical play of Dan Werner doesn't get UT flustered as it almost did the first time these two met.

Florida's season wouldn't officially end with a loss tonight, but it would receive an incredible boost with a win. In the end though, I'll agree with The BruceBall Blog's prediction of an up-and-down game that eventually favors the Vols.

Of course, "ridin' dirty" has a looser definition in Alabama, where it can encompass having the audacity to put an Auburn license plate on the front of your cruiser while patrolling the Alabama campus, as seen here:



That picture comes from the blog Alabama Gameday, who also links to a thread on the TideSports fourm where a member says he emailed the Tuscaloosa chief of police and "addressed the issue of credibility (and the growing lack thereof), and asked that he check into it and have it removed if possible." The poster says the chief responded by having the tag removed from the unit.

Now, this all might seem kind of petty until you understand the growing unease of an Alabama fan base that has seen more players arrested (8) than wins (7) in the year since Nick Saban took over the program. Tuscaloosa seems to be one of the college towns where arresting a student-athlete is a trophy of sorts for the local po-po; a statement that anybody is fair game, but especially those who make headlines. That may or may not be a fair assessment, but it's a growing concern in places where high-profile students seem to get in more trouble than the average student.

Consider, however: if the Auburn-fan cop with the Tiger plate on his cruiser wasn't targeting Bama players before, he sure could be now that he's been singled out himself.

Remember back when Billy Gillispie was the most hated man in the state of Kentucky? I know, it's hard to go back that far... like a little over a month ago. But to listen to Wildcat fans now, it might as well be a lifetime past.

The axis of G-love is perhaps best epitomized in a Rupp Rafters thread about Gillispie's appearance at a fundraiser for UK's Children's Hospital (video here) at which the coach teared up at least four times talking about how much the children mean to him. Admittedly, it's sweet in its way, and at the end Gillispie announces a $10,000 gift for the hospital. But the beauty of it all for an outsider is in the message board thread:

I thank you coach for bringing joy back into my heart and for making UK Basketball fun to watch again. Have you guys ever heard of a coach here having so much heart. If there are fans on here that still does not like Coach G they must be sick in the head.

Yes, thanks Coach G for saving UK basketball, just weeks after ruining it for everyone. Memories of that San Diego loss melt quickly, yes? At the time of this posting, that thread has nearly 800 views and 25 replies, and not one of them come close to anything but outright praise for Gillispie. He's called "the real deal," "a great coach," and "a Wildcat legend." Billy Clyde's even got one fan so in love with him, the fan is questioning his own sexuality (not that there's anything wrong with that, natch).

Seriously, does nobody remember how much they reviled this guy just a few weeks ago?

Backup safety Antonio Wardlow and reserve linebacker Dorian Davis were both kicked off the Tennessee football team on Wednesday. Wardlow is best known for blocking a couple of punts in his career, including one in UT's 2006 blowout win at Georgia that landed him on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and for sealing UT's Outback Bowl win against Wisconsin with an interception (pictured). Davis is pretty well unknown, though he would have had a chance to compete for a staring job in spring practice.

The official university line on the players' dismissal is the ubiquitous "violation of team rules," but scuttlebutt amongst fans is that weed was the root of their problem. Now technically, it's just a rumor, and the comment linked is just the first on that site to bring up the drug thing (though none refute it, and similar comments can be found elsewhere). But if it is true, take into account LaMarcus Coker, an infinitely talented running back who failed the requisite number of drug tests to get himself kicked off the team (like 14 or something, I think), and Gerald Jones, an infinitely talented wide receiver who just got busted for possession like two weeks ago,and there's got to be a reason that Tennessee players keep risking their scholarships and athletic futures over getting high.

Is it brash egos that make them think they're above the law? Maybe. Is it plain stupidity? Possibly. But I think Occam's razor would say: Knoxville's got the stickiest icky around. Now I don't smoke, but in the five years I lived in Knoxville, had I known that I was living in some kind of ganja heaven, I'd at least given it a shot. You know, when in Rome, support the local economy, etc. But I digress.

So how do these losses affect Tennessee from a football standpoint?

When last we saw the Vols, they were making the scoreboard smoke in a hectic 104-82 win over Florida last Tuesday night. The only smoke seen around Tennessee on Saturday was coming out of Bruce Pearl's ears as his team barely scraped through an ugly two-point win against LSU, a game that was in doubt until JaJuan Smith's steal and layup with about 10 seconds remaining.

At halftime of Tuesday night's game, Tennessee trailed Florida by a score of 44-48, a margin that seems more significant now in light of a much closer 47-45 victory UT squeezed out against LSU Saturday. That's 92 points total for the game by both teams, the same total as Tuesday's game at halftime. Twelve less than the final the Vols put up by themselves against the Gators. Less than 10 points more than Tennessee's per-game average going into Saturday.

To put it simply, the Vols just weren't their usual high-octane selves against LSU. Oh, they took plenty of shots, but didn't make many, obvs. In fact, UT took 60 field goals, only hitting 19. They tried 19 threes, but made just five. And they were sorry from the stripe as well, going just 4-15. JaJuan Smith, who turned out to be the game's hero, made his only shot of the day on that steal and game-winning layup (otherwise missing all seven of his other shots, including five 3s). Only two Vols (Chris Lofton and Wayne Chism) Shot better than 39%.

All of this against the SEC's worst team in LSU: a team that had just fired it's coach and seemed to have no direction. The Jefferson Pilot Lincoln Financial Raycom announcers, though known for their hyperbole, might have been right when they repeatedly stated throughout the game the a LSU win would be the biggest upset in the program's history -- but it wasn't to be. So, on a day that the Tigers could have made a statement about the rest of their season, but didn't, the Vols are left hoping that this game doesn't say too much about them, either.

Mississippi State shot absolutely lights-out against Tennessee from behind the 3-point line, going 10-21 for the game. Even more impressively, though, State was 7-8 on threes in the last six minutes of the game, storming back from a 17-point deficit to scare the daylights out of Bruce Pearl's club. And still more incredibly, MSU had that 48% three-pointer night against a Vol team that had held opponents to just 21% from behind the line in the last six games.

And yet, Mississippi State lost to UT 76-71 in large part because they found a way to take the "free" out of free throws, going just 17-29 from the line (58.6%). Just six of the 12 points State left at the line would have won the game for them, and five would have sent the game to overtime, where they would have had a great chance at winning with their hot shooting in the last few minutes of the game. Maybe they should have backed up on those free throws.

Speaking of hot shooting, Chris Lofton continued his renaissance for Tennessee, leading the team with 20 points on 6-12 shooting -- including 4-9 from three and a perfect 4-4 from the line. Oddly enough, Lofton's improved shooting seems to have little impact on whether or not Tennessee wins, as the team was doing fine when he was stinking the joint up. Still, given the choice, I'm sure the Vols will take a full-strength Lofton heading into the heart of SEC play.

Hey, you know what college football doesn't have enough of? Government sticking its nose in. But the great state of Georgia is trying to fix all that. The Georgia state House of Representatives recently passed a resolution calling for the NCAA to implement a playoff system in college football. The bill states:

WHEREAS, the greatest disappointment of the 2007 college football season was the dysfunctional system, known as the Bowl Championship Series or BCS, the NCAA has implemented in order to determine a national champion; and

WHEREAS, the teams chosen to play in the various BCS bowl games are selected through mathematical computations, politics, and corporate and television influences that rarely relate to determining the best football team on the field;

The resolution is on its way to the state Senate, where somebody might want to work on the wording; because like the computers or not, mathematical computations used in the BCS rankings are, in fact, directly related to determining the best football team on the field. Also, the irony of politicians complaining about politics in sports is open to second-guessing, eye-rolling, and conjecture.

As a resident of the state of Georgia, my initial indignation that my tax dollars are being spent on passing such an inane resolution while the state grapples with a water crisis and overcrowded roadways has passed. Now I'm just amused at the thought of this legislation being a part of Georgia's (and not the state's, but UGA's) growing inferiority complex.