Jay Mariotti Is Starting To Piss Me Off

After last week's "conference tournaments suck and are greedy" column that turned into "what a wonderful lead up to March Madness," I have had my eye on Jay Mariotti when he talks about college basketball. I know I come off as a snob who thinks he knows everything about NCAA basketball, but this could not be further from the truth because you can check out my bracket and see I know nothing. I watch the games during the entire season though and I watch teams and try to see how they match up with other teams in different conferences. I like to see good reasons for why a person thinks one team will beat another in the NCAA Tournament. Especially from a sports writer. I hate articles that say, "this team will win because of x and y, but neither x nor y are viable basketball reasons." I am annoying in that way...and that is why no one likes me.

Basically I try to pay attention. Most sportswriters don't pay attention. They are too busy with football from November to February and then start paying attention to baseball. Around the beginning of March is when your typical writer starts writing about college basketball in depth. The problem is this type of writer, we will call him Jay Mariotti, then just picks the team that looks good at the moment or the team everyone else seems to be picking and tries to analyze why they will win the National Championship. Unfortunately there is no actual basketball knowledge used, just a rehashing of what everyone else has said. The outcome could be correct but the road Jay tries to take there is filled with potholes of wrongness.

Call Me Mr. Obvious, Louisville's the Pick

I will call you Mr. Follow the Crowd, because that is exactly what you are doing. I am not saying Louisville will not win the National Championship, I am saying EVERY announcer and analyst is picking them to win it. Jay is just following the crowd because he gives no good reason for believing this. Two weeks ago Louisville was under the radar and Pitt/UConn were the popular teams to choose to win the NCAA Tournament out of the Big East. It has been a shocking turn of events for me to witness to see Louisville as the new team to beat.

You don't have to like Rick Pitino and his white disco suit, which is something David Hasselhoff might wear to a rave.

He wore this one time that I can recall. This also has nothing to do with basketball.

You don't have to like the way Louisville -- "LOU-EEE-VILLE'' in any sensible phonetic context -- becomes "LUVVLLL'' in the natives' too-folksy attempt to shorten three syllables to one.

Space filler, space filler, space filler...must reach 1,000 words.

But I do happen to like the way the Louisville Cardinals play basketball this March, from their depth and guard play to the unselfishness and frenetic pressure defense that have been Pitino signatures since his hair was jet-black and gooed up.

I would bet $100 the only Louisville games Jay Mariotti saw this year was in the Big East tournament.

After the Cardinals wore down their exhausted opponents, whose faces looked more orange than their jerseys, the apple bandits revealed the party accessories to their teammates.

The Cardinals did not wear down Syracuse, it was probably the 7 OT's they had played over the previous two nights that wore them down. Good job Louisville in having the smarts to draw the most tired team in the country in the Big East Championship Game. I am not saying Louisville is not going to win the National Championship, I am saying they played Pittsburgh and UConn, the other top two teams in the Big East only once each, and they lost to UConn the one time they played them.

I realize the Cardinals won the Big East both outright and the Big East tournament, but I don't understand where the massive amounts of Louisville love has come from lately. They are great, but so great that nearly every analyst on the Selection Show picked them to win the Championship and for Jay to jump on the bandwagon as well? I am not sure about that.

Pitino's team avoided an upset in a conference tournament, adding the Big East tourney title to a regular-season title in what may have been the most relentlessly fearsome 10-week gauntlet in the college game's history.

I am not going to argue conference rankings or which conference is the most powerful, but the ACC and the Big Ten both got 7 teams in the NCAA Tournament. I feel like Jay is just parroting what every other person in the world has said as well. Not that I expect a different opinion from him or think every writer has to disagree with every other writer, but it seems Mariotti just seems to know enough to agree with everyone else at this point.

I know, it's way too easy a pick.

If you had solid reasoning, I could accept this. I realize Jay sort of predicted Louisville will win the championship in his "redo" column on Friday but I am not giving him credit for that because his reasons sucked...hence he gave no good reason other than they are hot right now...which is exactly what he is doing now.

But while it wouldn't shock me to see Syracuse or Florida State or Southern California continue recent hot runs, and while it's true the pool of potential title teams is deeper than usual

Yet he chooses the Louisville the number one seed overall to win the NCAA Championship. I guess this is his way of hedging.

I'll say Pitt survived its Big East tournament loss to West Virginia with minimal damage

Amazing! That is exactly what every other analyst is saying about Pitt. Actually, no other analyst is saying this, because no one knows what the hell this means. "Minimal damage?" If Jay is inferring that no one got hurt, then this is correct, otherwise I don't get it.

and has the easiest path of the four No. 1 seeds to Detroit, with soft-in-the-middle Duke waiting to be pulverized by DeJuan Blair and the monsters in the East Regional final.

Wow! Duke is soft in the middle? I would not know that if it wasn't brought up by every other analyst all year long. Oh and last year and the year before that. Thanks for saying it again though.

You know Florida State is not soft in the middle, I wonder how Jay's "Standard College Basketball Analysis for Dummies" book tells him to pick that game if it should happen in the Sweet Sixteen.

So, that's two Big East teams, maybe followed by UConn, which has had time to rest after its six-OT loss

So you are saying that UConn had time to rest and that was a good thing? I remember Jay Bilas and other talking heads at ESPN saying that maybe 400 times this weekend when talking about the Big East Tournament. It's all be done Jay, give us something new.

I realize I am being nitpicky with this stuff, but if you can't bring something new to the table when giving reasons the team you are choosing is going to win the National Championship and you are a professional writer, that's just sad. You have to do better than this. Say the loss of Jerome Dyson will doom UConn, that would work for me.

Jay lists his Final Four teams here, which seem to all be Big East teams, and doesn't explain what Louisville will do differently to beat UConn in the Final Four. That just irritates me. Anyone can name a team that will win. Every year some person wins a NCAA bracket contest, but that person is usually not a professional sports writer who is supposed to follow the sport.

Carolina can't reach the Final Four when its most important player, speed-burner point guard Ty Lawson, has a jammed toe. It's like asking Big Brown to complete the Triple Crown last June with a cracked left front hoof, which is why the horse finished last in the Belmont Stakes.

Thanks for recapping the Belmont Stakes for me. I had forgotten what happened and how pertinent it was to the NCAA Tournament.

Syracuse could rumble through the South, folks, which would give the Big East an unprecedented sweep of the Final Four berths.

Every team in the bracket COULD rumble through and get a Final Four berth...Jay will not tell us why he thinks Syracuse will do this. He leaves it as a cliffhanger.

Much as I'd rather gamble on a pick than be Mr. Obvious, Louisville is so good that I can't help myself. They have the master strategist in Pitino, truly one of the gold-standard coaches of his day and due for another championship.

I didn't know Pitino was "due" another championship. That completely changes my opinion. Here all along I thought what actually happens on the basketball court is what matters when really all that matters is whether the coach is "due" or not for a championship.

Why doesn't Jay just consult a Magic Eight Ball to see who is going to win?

They have size in Samardo Samuels, Earl Clark and Williams.

Yes, they do have "size" in that Clark and Samuels, who are both 6 foot 9 inches tall, but Terrence Williams plays point forward and they have shooting guards that are 5-10 and 6-2, which is not tall. I guess what I am saying is that Louisville does seem pretty good on paper but if Samuels gets in foul trouble, there is not a whole lot behind him.

Neither Clark nor Williams is going to be able to guard anyone in the middle and that will leave a trio of freshman George Goode, Terrence Jennings, and Jared Swopshire to guard the post, which makes me nervous. Granted, these are talented freshmen, but even Samuels is a freshman and I think relying on freshmen to stay out of foul trouble against some of the big guys like James Johnson and Cole Aldrich in the bracket could be Louisville's one Achilles heel. Louisville may very well win the Midwest bracket but the size they have is not with Earl Clark and Terrence Williams.

For all the talk about Griffin, Blair, Thabeet, Johnny Flynn and the Carolina talent, wait until you see Williams. Because Pitino is the star of the program, we haven't heard much about him,

Part of the reason we haven't heard much about him before this year was because Earl Clark was supposed to be the team's best player and he consistently underachieved compared to what scouts thought he was going to do and Williams stepped up this year.

Just because you haven't written about Terrence Williams, doesn't mean no one has heard of him. Any person who has watched college basketball this year has heard of him and know what he can do. I hate it when writers just assume because they have not written about a player, no one has heard of that player.

You can't ignore the Pitino karma.

Actually you can ignore the mythical "karma" and pay more attention to the actual basketball reasons Louisville will win the National Championship. These reasons have nothing to do with Pitino being "due," karma or even the "size" the Cardinals have that somehow includes their 6 foot 6 point forward and small forward who weighs 225 pounds.

I suppose, if the month is March, that Dickie V could stand on his bald head, logic could atrophy and someone strange could win it all.

I like Louisville to make the Elite Eight but what scares me is a 14 point loss at home to Western Kentucky, a 33 point loss to Notre Dame, and a 17 point loss to UConn. That tells me this team has a little bit of trouble focusing because they lost to two inferior teams this season, and lost badly. They have been focused over the last 22 games and they are winning. I think if their focus does not wane, they could make the Final Four but I think teams are going to look to get Louisville in a half court game and force them to run their offense in a half court set. Louisville likes to use their defense to dictate the tempo of the game and teams are going to try and take care of the ball against them.

As good as Louisville is, I think this type offense could give them problems and it did give them problems in the first half of both the Villanova and Syracuse games in the Big East Tournament, where they trailed at half time in both games. Then they came out in the second half and were able to dictate the pace of the game and force turnovers. Once they run into a team that takes care of the ball and can run the half court offense, I see Kansas, Michigan State, and Utah as teams this pertains to, they could run into trouble. I also really believe Wake Forest would be a tough matchup for Louisville in the Sweet Sixteen, they actually do have height and two good point guards in Smith and Jeff Teague. I think Wake Forest could run with Louisville more effectively than any other team in the bracket. Of course Wake is fresh off stinking up the ACC Tournament so they have to actually win a game to play Louisville, but that is a different story.

Jay Mariotti just makes his picks though, he doesn't actually need to think it through. When he does think it through it is all about karma and him following what other analysts have said. I expect more from a national sportswriter. I can respect that Louisville win the NCAA Tournament but I need more basketball related reasons other than they are playing well, they are tall and Pitino is due to win it all again.