Fake CBK Update

Here are the 48 teams who have automatically qualified for my fake NCAA men's basketball tournament (*-denotes a conference regular-season and tournament champion):

• Vermont*
• Villanova* 
• Montana*
• Michigan State* 
• UC Irvine* 
• Old Dominion* 
• Iona*
• Buffalo*
• Colgate* 
• Wofford*
• Prairie View A&M*
• Georgia State*
• New Mexico State*
• Houston
• Cincinnati
• Virginia Commonwealth
• Saint Louis
• Lipscomb
• Liberty
• Kansas State
• Iowa State
• Campbell
• Gardner-Webb
• Hofstra
• Northeastern
• Wright State
• Northern Kentucky
• Harvard
• Yale
• Norfolk State
• North Carolina Central
• Loyola (Illinois)
• Bradley
• Nevada
• Utah State
• Saint Francis
• Fairleigh Dickinson
• Belmont
• Murray State
• Washington
• Oregon
• Louisiana State
• Auburn
• Sam Houston State
• Abilene Christian
• South Dakota State
• North Dakota State
• Saint Mary’s

Here are the teams the real committee would consider for the 20 at-large berths:

• Arizona State
• Baylor
• Duke
• Florida
• Florida State
• Gonzaga
• Iowa
• Kansas
• Kentucky
• Louisville
• Marquette
• Maryland
• Michigan
• Minnesota
• Mississippi State
• North Carolina
• Ohio State
• Oklahoma
• Ole Miss
• Purdue
• Seton Hall
• St. John's
• Syracuse
• Temple
• Tennessee
• Texas Tech
• UCF
• Virginia
• Virginia Tech
• Wisconsin

Sports is so much fun.

Oh, Kentucky

First Street flooding https://t.co/koi7UwERxY

— The Morehead News (@TheMoreheadNews) September 10, 2018

 

NC2A #smh.

Well, this is terrifying.

Good jobs news from Ghent.

This week, the governor goes to the mountains.

Opines Bardstown's Kentucky Standard: "Rural Kentucky needs direction, plan for reversing economic lag behind cities."

"There's my brother." Nice feature in The Courier-Journal by Darcy Costello on a Georgia woman whose brother's footlocker was discovered in a Jtown school, more than 40 years since his death shortly after Christmas 1977.

The parking precedes the people, says a veteran inner-city Baptist minister, and so that's curtains for a couple of old homes in downtown Dayton. As per usual, Michael Monks brings the great meeting detail in The River City News.

Toward unity in Nicholasville.

Oh, Kentucky

A new monument in Madisonville (#FalconFabulous!)

Christmas parades: Irvington and Owensboro, Nov. 18; Danville, Nov. 25; Greenup, Nov. 28; London, Monticello and Richmond, Dec. 1; Barbourville, Beaver Dam, Fordsville, Georgetown, Hartford, Henderson, Madisonville, Murray, Somerset and Winchester, Dec. 2; Lexington, Dec. 5, and Elkton, Hanson and Hopkinsville, Dec. 9.

Good for Mr. Dennison's plan not to work so hard.

Baptist Health continues its expansion through acquisition.

NC2A ... #smh.

Oh, Kentucky

Rick Pitino ends press conference by saying the NCAA will not break him and that he still expects to win multiple championships at UofL. pic.twitter.com/9amBsD1rqU

— Spectrum Sports KY (@SpecSportsKY) June 15, 2017

GO, MUSTANGS!

"3 Days, 6 Distilleries, Beautiful Back Roads, Uniquely Kentucky. REGISTER NOW! Limited to the first 500 riders."

TAKE THAT, HOPTOWN!

The world's largest (remote-control) jet show comes to Lebanon next month.

Backyard chickens in Beaver Dam? Tabled.

The evening before Gov. Bevin traveled out to western Kentucky, he was praying and walking in Louisville's West End.

Rest in peace, Roy Jack "Todd" Preston, "a good friend, as good a friend as any man could have this side of Heaven." (And welcome to the HP, Burton Fork in Magoffin County.)

Oh, Kentucky

Christmas parades: Georgetown, Dec. 2, and Lexington, Dec. 6.

It's Burger Week, and Corbin's Travis' Cafe is blowing my mind with news of its "Quesadilla Burger."

The Henderson Farmers Market says "a big 'Thank You,' to the gentlemen in their lives."

Congratulations to the White House News Photographers Association’s 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award winner, J. Scott Applewhite, formerly of the College Heights Herald, The Gleaner and The Courier-Journal.

The Glasgow Daily Times' Gina Kinslow, another pro formerly of the Herald, sticks to just the facts, ma'am, in economically reporting the Cave City council session that resulted in the purchase of land from a member of the council.

Upon reading Darrell Bird's very interesting report for Cats Pause on Mitch Barnhart's experience on the NC2A selection committee for the men's basketball tournament, my feeling is now that the committee should, instead of meeting all season over which teams are selected for the tournament and how they're seeded, should meet all offseason over the mathematical formula by which the tournament is selected and seeded. And I believe those meetings should be open and streamed live at the NC2A website.

Placing Jefferson Davis in context, at long last.

Kuttawa is amping up its tourism game.

Good jobs news from Whitley County.

Here's the Hazard Bombers' jingle.

Seventy-six ANU-Pikeville Eagles are set to receive degrees and diplomas next week at the Church of Christ in Coal Run.

I didn't yet know to worry about this vinegar fly, but that's all over now.

2017 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament 4 Teams Left

Well we are down to the final four and it's an odd collection of teams.  We have four different conferences represented and the two coasts.  Here are the teams.

South Carolina vs Gonzaga
Oregon vs North Carolina

At this point in the tournament North Carolina will be the heavy favorites to win it all as they came in second last year and appear to be the best team standing, but people thought Kansas looked to be the best team and Oregon handled them with little problem.  Since we missed out on a final 8 entry let's cover what's happened since we last got up to date on the tournament. 

Florida and South Carolina met in the East championship game.  Not sure anyone except for diehard SEC fans thought that would happen.  In the West Xavier surprised everyone by knocking off Arizona, but then ran out of steam as they got rolled by Gonzaga.  In the Midwest we got Oregon and Kansas as expected, but then Oregon surprised everyone by beating Kansas and beating them pretty easily.  In the South Kentucky played a brilliant game to beat UCLA while UNC easily rolled over Butler, then managed to beat UK with a last second jumper and as you would hear from any UK fan a lot of help from the refs. 

Here is where I should talk a little bit about myself.  When I was a kid I had three big teams that I rooted for.  UK basketball, the Oakland A's, and the Miami Dolphins.  I rooted for other teams like the 76ers as a kid, but those were the big three for me.  The first big blow to me as a sports fan was the Dolphins loss to the Charger in the 1982 playoff game.  The second big blow was the A's first game world series loss to the Dodgers in 1988.  The last and final blow for me was the 1992 UK loss to Duke in the NCAA tournament.  I have never been the same kind of sports fan since that game.  Just can't sit and watch a game for a team I really like, makes me too nuts.  So with UK playing UNC yesterday I found myself constantly checking in on the score and hoping against hope that UK would pull it out.  I'm so glad I was not watching. 

I say all of this to say I wish I could write more in depth about the Kentucky game the way GoHeath did on this site in the past, but I can't.

Of course for me the NCAA is also an exercise in my programs' abilities to predict the tournament.  This has been a very bad year for me.  Here are where things stand. 

Sagarin 81 pts / 145 possible
Model4 79 pts / 95 possible
KenPom 76 pts / 140 possible
Model1 68 pts / 68 possible
RPI 61 pts / 61 possible
Model2 59 pts / 59 possible
Model3 58 pts / 106 possible

I've been doing this for 20 years, this is the worst Model1 has ever performed.  Luckily my latest model, Model4, the one I forgot about until after the tournament had started has performed well, but that model has Kansas winning it all over Gonzaga so that model cannot win the championship.  Model3 now is my lone hope.  That model has Oregon winning it all.  It should be noted that the Sagarin bracket has UNC and Gonzaga in the final as does the KenPom bracket so unless Oregon is the champion Sagarin will win. 

UKIT

Thursday's rounds of 64 and 32 will be played at home courts of 16 #khsbbk regional champions.

Friday's round of 16 and Saturday's of eight will be played at Murray State, Western, Eastern and Morehead.

Sunday's round of four and Monday night's final will be played at Kentucky State (if UK, U of L and Northern Kentucky advance), the Yum! Center (if UK advances but U of L does not), at BB&T Arena (if UK and U of L advance but Northern Kentucky does not) advances or Rupp Arena (if UK does not advance).

All of the conference regular-season and tournament champions are being invited (except for, of course, UNC), and they will be distributed among the 16 Thursday sites. At-large invitations will be extended Tuesday to the number of teams needed to reach 64, and they will be blind-drawn into the bracket.

Oh, Kentucky

Volunteers to start building Paducah's newest playground this morning.https://t.co/7gN2GyEQtx #WPSD pic.twitter.com/rmXw8aYJNJ

— WPSD Local 6 (@WPSDLocal6) June 20, 2016

Walmart is close to closing in Madisonville and reopening in Hanson.

Would a new prison help Letcher County SOAR?

Good jobs news from Elkton, Mount Vernon, Paducah and Pikeville.

Coach Cal also now has a voice in the NC2A.

Meanwhile, my new main man from Battletown, Stansdawg, has been beating the Barren County bushes.

Kentucky for sale:

U.S. Department of College Basketball Tournament

So the deal with this one is that each state gets to send one Division I state champion to the U.S. Department of College Basketball Tournament. That's 49 of the 64 slots right there, because only Alaska doesn't have any Division I teams.

Kentucky has seven such teams, and this year's Kentucky state tournament took place in Paducah. It takes place every year in one of Kentucky's towns without a Division I team. I used this site to create a Randomly Scrambled List of Numbers 1 through 7, so that shook things out where Morehead State got a first-round bye. 

In the first-round games--again, I'm playing all of these with WhatIfSports.com--Kentucky beat Eastern, 93-78 (Jamal Murray had 24); Northern Kentucky shocked Louisville, 71-67 (the Cards probably lacked focus, given that they were ineligible for the national tournament, anyway), and Murray State downed Western Kentucky, 75-66 (#Harpermania). That was Thursday. On Friday, in the semifinals, Murray had 25 more, and UK beat Morehead, 75-55. Then, Murray sent the Norse back to Highland Heights, 77-66.

Saturday must've been a giant day in Paducah, leading up to the UK-Murray state championship. Maybe they had some big affair down at the riverfront. And near tipoff, the traffic must've been horrendous off I-24 and back to PCC's gym. 

Next year, the tournament is in Frankfort.

I found a map of the United States cut into four regions at FairVote.org, and I thought it looked pretty good. So the Wildcats go to the South. Each of the regions get 12 or 13 state champions. Before any of the state tournaments, there were televised U.S. Department of College Basketball committee meetings all season long, and they worked out rankings of all the Division I teams that ended up looking like KenPom.com. Based on those rankings, then, each region gets either three or four at-large teams from one of the other three regions.

-- South: North Carolina, Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Miami, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt, Clemson, Georgia Tech, Arkansas-Little Rock, Mississippi, Louisiana State, Alabama, Iowa, Cincinnati and Notre Dame

-- North: Kansas, Michigan State, Xavier, Purdue, Iowa State, Wisconsin, Creighton, South Dakota State, Northwestern, North Dakota State, Missouri, Minnesota, Duke, Virginia Commonwealth, Saint Joseph's and Yale

-- East: Villanova, West Virginia, Syracuse, Seton Hall, Maryland, Connecticut, Providence, Northeastern, Vermont, New Hampshire, Delaware, Maine, Indiana, Stephen F. Austin, Butler and Florida

-- West: Oregon, Gonzaga, Arizona, California, Utah, Hawai'i, Colorado, Boise State, New Mexico State, Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, Wichita State, Baylor, Texas and Valparaiso

Those are listed in order of the U.S. Department of College Basketball rankings, but they're not seeds. Each region is bracketed by blind draw. Comments flow!

NC2A Tournament

OK, I'm getting sleepy, so I'm just going to go ahead and get this post started by saying that the following should've been the 64 teams in the NC2A men's basketball tournament.

America East Conference: Stony Brook*
American Athletic Conference: Temple, Connecticut
Atlantic 10 Conference: Dayton, Saint Joseph's
Atlantic Coast Conference: North Carolina*
Atlantic Sun Conference: North Florida, Florida Gulf Coast
Big 12 Conference: Kansas*
Big East Conference: Villanova*, Seton Hall
Big Sky Conference: Weber State*
Big South Conference: High Point, North Carolina-Asheville
Big Ten Conference: Indiana*, Michigan State*
Big West Conference: Hawaii*
Colonial Athletic Association: Hofstra, North Carolina-Wilmington
Conference USA: Alabama-Birmingham, Middle Tennessee State
Horizon League: Valparaiso, Wisconsin-Green Bay
Ivy League: Yale
Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference: Monmouth, Iona
Mid-American Conference: Akron, Buffalo
Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference: Hampton*
Missouri Valley Conference: Wichita State*, Northern Iowa
Mountain West Conference: San Diego State, Fresno State
Northeast Conference: Wagner, Fairleigh Dickinson
Ohio Valley Conference: Belmont, Austin Peay
Pac-12 Conference: Oregon*
Patriot League: Bucknell, Holy Cross
Southeastern Conference: Texas A&M, Kentucky*
Southern Conference: Tennessee-Chattanooga*
Southland Conference: Stephen F. Austin*
Southwestern Athletic Conference: Texas Southern, Southern
The Summit League: Indiana/Purdue-Fort Wayne, South Dakota State
Sun Belt Conference: Arkansas–Little Rock*
West Coast Conference: Saint Mary’s, Gonzaga*
Western Athletic Conference: New Mexico State, Cal State Bakersfield
At-large: Virginia, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Xavier, Purdue, Iowa State, Miami, Duke, Arizona, Maryland, Iowa

More later. I can also go ahead and say that Middle Tennessee State beat Austin Peay State, 73-57, in Lexington, Kentucky, in the first round.

#BBN 1969-70

Spoiler alert:

Hoping to lure him into providing some game reports over the course of the season, here’s the schedule in Go Heath style (home games in ALL CAPS):

12/01/1969: WEST VIRGINIA

12/16/1969: KANSAS

12/08/1969: North Carolina (Charlotte, N.C.)
12/13/1969: INDIANA
12/19/1969: NAVY (UKIT)
12/20/1969: DUKE (UKIT)
12/27/1969: Notre Dame (Louisville, Ky.)
12/29/1969: MIAMI (OHIO)
01/03/1970: MISSISSIPPI (conf.)
01/05/1970: MISSISSIPPI ST. (conf.)
01/10/1970: Florida  (conf.)
01/12/1970: Georgia (conf.)
01/17/1970: TENNESSEE (conf.)
01/24/1970: LOUISIANA ST. (conf.)
01/26/1970: ALABAMA (conf.)
01/31/1970: Vanderbilt (conf.)
02/02/1970: Auburn (conf.)
02/07/1970: Mississippi (conf.)
02/09/1970: Mississippi St. (conf.)
02/14/1970: FLORIDA (conf.)
02/16/1970: GEORGIA (conf.)
02/21/1970: Louisiana St. (conf.)
02/23/1970: Alabama (conf.)
02/28/1970: VANDERBILT (conf.)
03/02/1970: AUBURN (conf.)

03/07/1970: Tennessee (conf.)

There has been some disconcerting roster news during the offseason. This little item turned up in Hopkinsville's Kentucky New Era in July:

And then this heartbreaking followup showed in August:

Well, we'll just have to root for Shelbyville's Mike Casey in his recovery and see what happens.

The 1969-70 UK media guide is for sale at eBay, and here are a couple of images from thekentuckytraders' post:

I wondered what was going on with that big cake (I should've remembered), and so I got a little more serious about the Googling and discovered that Kentucky Digital Library has the whole 411:

The cover pictures on this season's Basketball Facts capture two historic moments in the history of the University of Kentucky and collegiate basketball. 

First, the front cover contains a picture of a Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame plaque presented Wildcat coach Adolph Rupp during induction ceremonies last April in Springfield, Mass. 

The "Baron of Basketball" has forged an amazing record of 810 victories and only 175 defeats during 39 years as head coach of the Wildcats and ranks as undisputed winning coach of all time. 

His victories form the bulk of the cause for cake-blowing as displayed on the back cover. 

The Wildcats, fresh from an 88-67 victory over Florida Jan. 11, 1969, in Memorial Coliseum, were feted for becoming the first collegiate basketball team to reach the magic Victory No. 1,000 mark. 

According to UK count, the feat had been accomplished five days earlier, when Rupp's forces blasted Mississippi State, 91-72, at Starkville. 

A small cake ceremony was held in the Wildcats' motel headquarters after that game, but the big blowout came after the Florida game, when players representing the different century victory milestones were special guests of honor. 

The Wildcat claim to 1,000 games against "legitimate" competition had one drawback. The National Collegiate Athletic Association, which had sent Rupp's forces to an International Tournament in Tel Aviv in August, 1966, refused to recognize the Wildcats' five victories en route to the championship. 

There was no argument about who was first to hit 1,000, however, after the Wildcats defeated Georgia, 104-73, Jan. 15, 1969, in the Coliseum, to satisfy the NCAA. ...

Hooray for jmuddcat of YouTube, Google, the Associated Press, thekentuckytraders of eBay, Kentucky Digital Library, the Internet and Christmas! And go, 1969-70 UK!