I'm not usually one to nit-pick on sports columnists, since it's kind of like shooting fish in a barrel, but this one by Andy Katz is particularly bad.
I didn't realize that Georgetown flew all the way to South Carolina the day after the Long Beach State game to beat Clemson. That makes the win doubly impressive.
I also liked his reference to Joe Lunardi as Professor of "Brackology", his exhortation to UAB, DePaul, Memphis to "proof" their merit in C-USA play, and this doozy: "Santa Clara: Has two quality wins over North Carolina in Oakland and Stanford but has lost too many games since like to Central Connecticut and Yale."
And then there's the fact that 10 of the 11 teams in the ACC are on the "bubble."
I was touched that Illinois' win over the Hoyas counted as "good," although to be honest, if I wasn't a G-town fan, I'd probably cite that as further proof of Katz's incompetence.
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You're forgetting that Clemson lost to us at "home."
Illinois beat us on "our" home court, which might improve the quality of the win, if not for the fact that there were more Illini fans in attendance than Hoyas.
Now that we've beaten Pitt (something I am still not fully sure occurred) does that change the character of previous wins and losses? Perhaps it lessens Clemson's "home" loss.
Speaking of which, do you think an idiot like Andy Katz will realize at some point after he has written something as stupid as that how wrong he was, and if so do you think it bothers him? My guess is, yes, he will realize it (probably because people email him to point out that the games were in Hawaii), and no, it won't bother him because he is Andy Katz, ESPN Hoops Guru extrodanaire. It's enough to make you want Fox Sports Net to become the dominant player (if only briefly) so as to take all the people that think Bristol is the center of the universe down a notch.
Nah, just a bad loss for Pitt, to lump in with Bucknell.
I think Jamie Dixon is in over his head. Defensive intensity was not there at all. I'll be surprised if Pitt finishes better than 5th.
Still, it's nice that we were able to beat a middle-of-the-pack BE team on the road.
And as for Katz, why should he care? He's being well-paid to watch basketball for a living, despite (as far as I can tell) a complete lack of qualifications. He obviously had to write a column, couldn't think of anything good, and mailed it in. If he were Bill Simmons, he would have run a mailbag column, but maybe Andy doesn't get enough mail.
If I were him, I'd be pissed at the editor for running my column on the front page of ESPN.com without proofreading or factchecking it or cleaning up some of the language, but what can you do?
Since Katz considers 10 of the 11 ACC teams to be at least borderline NCAA tournament teams, won't it set up a self-perpetuating system? If they're all NCAA-tournament caliber, any win is great, and any loss could be considered good.
I can see Katz in February: "How strong is the ACC? At 4-12 in conference, Clemson is legitimately on the bubble, with solid wins over fellow bubble teams Florida State (twice!)and Miami, and great losses against Duke, UNC, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, Virginia, NC State, Maryland, and Miami, all of whom are NCAA locks or on the bubble. Will the selection committee hold their bad home loss to Georgetown back in November against them?"
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