COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY (X-RATED) - MIKE IN DA

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 COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY (X-RATED)

Written by: Mike in DA
Date posted: 3/28/2011

HOW SWEET IT WAS!

If you watched college basketball over the weekend and did not enjoy the games, that can only mean that the school you graduated from lost or that you actually had a live bracket going and had it destroyed or you lost a big wad of cash betting on the games. Other than those kinds of misfortunes, it is hard for me to believe that a college basketball fan could not have had a great weekend in front of the TV. 

Looking at the Final Four teams, here is a lesson that ought to hold sway in the future, but certainly will not. VCU was deemed “unworthy” by many of tournament participation and their presence denied the rightful team, Colorado and/or Virginia Tech depending on your preference, a chance to play. However, not a single one of the critics back then would have said that Colorado or Virginia Tech was a viable Final Four candidate. Many forgot that VCU won the CBI last year, but the Crier rode them all the way to that championship last season going 5-0 ATS and is not as surprised about the Rams' recent run, especially since he is 5-0 ATS with them in this year's NCAA tourney. 

 The lesson here is that is why you play the games and why seedings and RPI rankings and the like are merely tools and not data that feed into the results.




And while I am at it, have you seen enough of Alec Baldwin already?

DID YOU KNOW HITLER WAS A MICHIGAN ALUM? 

SCREAMIN' GUS JOHNSON!

As the PG said Sunday (3/27), most sports talkers like CBS’ Gus Johnson as an announcer, but the PG doesn’t.

CBS continues to hand some of the biggest games to Johnson who tries to impose his will and ego on us, making terrific games hard to listen to.

In Saturday’s (3/26) Butler-Florida game. Johnson once again screamed his way all through regulation time and then into overtime. He once again tried to wreck a telecast by providing the TV audience with his hysterical radio calls. That included screaming calls of free throws. Gus also tried to force clever banter and jokes with his analysts, Len Elmore and Reggie Miller, that continually failed.


As stand alone analysts, Miller and Elmore are among the best. Working alone with a play-by-play man gives them an opportunity to develop their analysis. They don't have to rush making points, but working in a three-man booth they forced things. Miller and Elmore seemed more concerned with staying out of each other's way.

Johnson's presence made their job harder. He likes to talk and didn't adjust his game to accommodate his partners, as this was another exciting game that was sabotaged by Johnson screaming about almost everything. Even in the pre-game analysis, know-it-all Johnson told us that Butler’s Shelvin Mack is going to be a pro. This is the same guy who on Thursday night asked his broadcast partners if BYU should foul with less than 15 seconds left in a tie game.



Johnson continued with the exaggerated excitement when Mack hit a trey in the first minute. Johnson screamed that Mack is a pro. Johnson continued to shout a lot of nonsense for the next two hours plus. So what else is new?

With less than a minute left in regulation and Mack dribbling the ball, Johnson screamed that Mack was a senior. He’s a junior, so credit Johnson with a flub. Then in overtime, with less than 30 seconds left, and Butler up, 72-71, the Gators called a timeout. Johnson said that Florida coach, Billy Donovan, burned his last timeout. Burn a timeout? Why should he save it? Donovan’s team is down by one and trying to win the game, so he wants to make sure he has his best shooters/offensive players on the floor. I guess Gus didn’t think of that.

CBS continues to let Johnson do these big games. Can’t Sean McManus who is the president of CBS Sports or one of his underlings tell Johnson to cool it and reduce the screaming, shouting, hollering, etc. And as the game ended with the Butler supporters in a frenzy, Johnson couldn’t keep his mouth shut, but instead tried to shout over all the crowd noise. Whatever he was shouting, I couldn’t make out. And maybe that was a good thing.


And of course, Reggie Miller, Johnson’s partner didn’t sound too bright when Florida took a 2-0 lead in the first 15 seconds on Alex Tyus’ jumper. Miller said that it was important that Butler get off to a good start, as they play much better when they're ahead, as they don’t have the offensive personnel to come back in the game.


WTF! That's the opposite of what Butler has done in the tournament. The same thing can be said of last year’s Butler NCAA run. Last week, Butler came from behind to beat Pitt, and came from behind the game before that vs. Old Dominion. And with under ten minutes left in regulation on Saturday, they were down by 11, 51-40. So there goes Reggie's theory that it's important that Butler get off to a good start.

A SAD JAYHAWKER!

WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' FINAL FOUR THREESOME!

Except for Gus Johnson, there’s not much that you can belittle the CBS/Turner Broadcasting coverage of this year’s NCAA tourney for. However, next weekend, CBS will have a threesome of Jim Nantz, Clark Kellogg, and Steve Kerr for the Final Four and Championship Game.

As the idiom goes, “If it isn't broken, don't fix it”, so why does CBS need another guy on the Final Four broadcast team. Nantz and Kellogg have been a team for two seasons. They have developed their own chemistry.

In an attempt to get some experience with Nantz and Kellogg, Kerr worked with them on a couple of Big Ten Tournament games earlier this month. The results were not that good as analysts Kellogg and Kerr tried to "bogart" the mike as Ralph Cooper is wont to say, which caused Nantz to be a mediator, which he didn’t do too well. To expect this threesome to be rock solid during the Final Four and Championship Game is expecting a lot. It's strange that on college basketball's two biggest nights, CBS will be experimenting, using a broadcast team that's rarely worked together.

As mentioned above, CBS and Turner also merged mouths for the Sweet 16, adding TNT's Reggie Miller to the CBS team of Gus “Mr. Excitable” Johnson and Len Elmore. It wasn't a complete disaster, but it was definitely awkward at times.

However, I do understand the reason for these forced three-guys-in-the-booth arrangements and it's all about money. It has nothing to do with what's in the best interest of the viewers. Turner is shelling out a nice chunk of the $10.8 billion it and CBS are paying for tourney rights for the next decade or so. That means Turner has paid for the right to have its marquee NBA voices on air during the tourney telecasts, even if “three’s a crowd”.

THE PEANUT GALLERY BEATS OUT THE FOUR HOUSTON CHRONICLE “EXPERTS” IN THE BRACKET CHALLENGE!



Although the NCAA Tournament is not over yet, the bracket challenge is all over with the Peanut Gallery beating out the Houston Chronicle’s four experts (Jeffrey Martin, Richard Justice, Kevin Pender, and Jerome Solomon).

Jeffrey had none of his Final Four left after the first week and only seven of the Sweet Sixteen.


Richard had two (Ohio State and Kansas) of his Final Four left going into the Sweet Sixteen and nine of the Sweet Sixteen.


Kevin had two (Ohio State and San Diego State) of his Final Four going into the Sweet Sixteen and nine of the Sweet Sixteen.


Jerome and the Peanut Gallery both had all of their Final Four teams left going into the Sweet Sixteen with the PG having ten of the Sweet Sixteen and Jerome having eight of Sweet Sixteen.


Unfortunately, none of the above has any of his Final Four teams left, but the Peanut Gallery with the most wins and with all its Final Four teams alive going into the past weekend comes out on top.


Once again, the so-called “experts” fail.

IT'S ABOUT TIME SPORTS TALKERS JUMPED ON PLAYERS' BEHAVIOR THAT HELPS TO LOSE BIG GAMES!

It’s surprising how many basketball and football games, sometimes even some of the biggest games of the season are determined by stupid player behavior.

Put on your TV and you can see this happen at least once a day. Yet, the announcers and sports talkers seem to ignore this behavior, as though it is unpreventable and thereby more forgivable than missed free throws, turnovers, fumbles, dropped passes, wide-right FGs, etc.

For instance, last Thursday night (3/24) on CBS, SDSU (San Diego State University for the acronym-challenged) was a slight underdog, which lost to Connecticut in the Sweet 16. The outcome was determined by some very preventable and excessive player misconduct.

Kawhi Leonard, SDSU’s best player and a future NBAer, was called for a foul, then talked trash to a UConn player. After a referee warned Kawhi to cool it, but Leonard didn’t, so he was assessed a technical foul. That cost SDSU a giveaway point and just four minutes into the game, put Leonard on the bench with his second foul. Leonard who played over 45 minutes in SDSU’s double-OT win against Temple in the previous game, played just 29 minutes Thursday because of foul trouble, one for failure to shut the fuck up.

Then with about nine minutes left in the game and SDSU up by four, 53-49, and on a 21-9 run after falling behind by eight, Jamaal Franklin hit UConn’s Kemba Walker with a shoulder as both headed to their benches following a UConn timeout. Another technical. That cost SDSU another two points. Soon UConn would have the lead and a 74-67 win.



On CBS, the two announcers (Verne Lundquist and Bill Raftery) didn’t ignore either episode, but they didn’t make a big thing of what was a very big thing. And the next day on local sports talk, I didn’t hear our sports talkers make a big deal about the players’ behavioral problems. Here was a chance for our local sports talkers to scream about something worth screaming about, that is, the behavioral issues on the court and on the field. But once again, nothing on this subject.

But then, maybe they didn’t watch the game.

PLAY BALL!



For those of you who have been successful following the Crier and the SR Crew in football and hoops and wish to follow them in America’s pastime of baseball, you can get the selections at the SR website starting this Thursday.

You can use the same user name (astrosmike) as for hoops and football, but please note the password has been changed to “yankee”.

Good Luck!

CRIER'S CORNER

BASKETBALL ACTION


Yesterday’s Record ATS: 2-1

L - MIAMI* (-8.5) over HOUSTON

Newark, NJ (Prudential Center)
W - KENTUCKY (-1) over NORTH CAROLINA

San Antonio, TX (Alamodome)
W - VCU vs. KANSAS (TOTAL UNDER 146.5)

Cumulative Season Record ATS (excludes “pushes”): 574-347

Today’s Action (for reading purposes only):

NBA

MILWAUKEE at CHARLOTTE* (Over 177.5)
You never really know which Bucks team will show up. Will it be the one that put up 110 beating Cleveland early in the month, or will it be the squad that mustered only 56 three games later? Stephen Jackson still stirs the drink for the Bobcats, but D.J. Augustin has made good decisions distributing the ball all season. CHARLOTTE, 101-96

PHILADELPIA (+10) over CHICAGO*
Philly came into the Windy City in late December, but they were there only in spirit. Chicago won every single quarter, had a commanding lead going into the fourth stanza and this was without the services of starting center Joakim Noah. Ronnie Brewer is not only a lockdown defender, he gives the Bulls the ability to get out and run. CHICAGO, 99 -96

UTAH* (-11.5) over WASHINGTON 
The Washington players have to be tired. They will be playing in the fifth and last game of a road run and had to fly last night after playing the high-flying Golden State Warriors. The Wizards did beat this team in January, but there were reasons. John Wall had a tremendous game and the Jazz lost the war on the boards. That figures to change this time. UTAH, 100-80

PORTLAND (+3) over SAN ANTONIO*
As noted in the newsletter, Portland caught the Spurs when San Antonio was in a 10-game winning streak the last time the teams met. This time around, they catch the Spurs in the second of back-to-backs, off three losses, with Tim Duncan out and Manu Ginobili hurt in yesterday’s game. 'I'll get some rest and some treatment, and then we'll see how it feels tomorrow,' said Ginobili. How much rest and treatment can you get in 24 hours, when the last game was on the road? The guy’s gotta sleep and eat, right? PORTLAND, 98-94


COLLEGE HOOPS

CBI
OREGON (+5) over CREIGHTON*


MIKE IN DA


HMWCBI