Tuesday, 12 March 2013 15:08

Written by Paul Zeise

First of all, I’m not sure I understand some people – you are upset with Michael Vick because he was violent towards animals so your response is to threaten him with violence against his family?

Makes sense to me – either you hate violence or you don’t and more importantly. I don’t know of anyone who condones what that guy did but he paid his debt to society in the form of going to jail (for longer than most guys who commit that crime go, by the way) and he has by all accounts changed his life around and has been championed by the Humae Society and other groups for his volunteer work in trying to help educate people about this horrific crimes so maybe it is time to let it go.

What is done is done – nobody feels good about what the guy did but death threats? Really?

We live in a sick society.

That being said, let’s talk about something much more positive – college hoops.

If you are a college hoops junkie, this is your time of the year as every game from here on in is “one-and-done” basketball meaning, winner advances and loser goes home.

Now, in the case of the conference tournaments, going home in a lot of cases means going home for a week until you find out where you go in the NCAA or NIT Tournaments (or the CIT, CB4, CBI, FBI, CIA and all the other alphabet soup tournaments out there) but still, the intensity level of these games is much higher than regular season games because it is indeed win and stay in the tournament, lose and go home.

I think one of the things that people don’t understand is how different one-and-done basketball is than regular season games or even the series format of the NBA.

What the one-and-done format does is ratchet up the pressure on both teams and increase the significance of every single possession. Both teams are scraping, clawing and fighting for every inch of the court and as a result a lot of these games are much closer than they should be.

Pressure changes things – some guys handle it, some coaches thrive on it and other guys buckle and other coaches freeze up. It is why you see teams that get smoked in the regular season come back and win in conference tournaments.

A prime example – Liberty upset Charleston Southern Sunday to win the Big South Tournament. Frankly, I’ll say it – I thought Charleston Southern played like a heavy favorite who knew it and was afraid to make mistakes and lose the game.

So as you watch these games this week, recognize that the reason the team you picked or the team you think should win is having such a struggle is because pressure changes the game and makes it far more interesting to watch.

And then next week – when some school that sounds like a railroad or an airport is beating a major conference team in a first round game understand this – all of those smaller schools from smaller conferences are for the most part champions, teams that are winners and know how to win and are very good.

That is significant – yes, they are nobodies from nowhere but they have won (for the most part) 25+ games and have survived a conference tournament so they aren’t just going to lay down and die.

Tomorrow on this blog I will try to handicap the Atlantic 10 and Big East Tournaments as well as some other conference tournaments to get you ready for the weekend.

Oh wait – I forgot – I better handicap the two Big East games tonight as they are very important to the tournament……(flpping coin) South Florida will beat Seton Hall and Rutgers will beat Depaul.