NIAGARA FALLS, NY – Happy Monday! A bit like football season, during March Madness, I can’t help but talk about it, as I am first up after the weekend’s games. So, I have to let the Jets trade for Hassan Reddick go and I wont touch the Mets getting swept by the Bruins to start the season. Today will be all about basketball. Here are the topics for today: Men’s March Madness, Women’s March Madness, Deuce McBride.
Men’s March Madness
UConn has a chance to be back to back NCAA Champions since Billy Donovan’s Florida Gators of 2006 and 2007. UConn was a powerhouse during the 2000s before a decline and came back mid-2010s and now are back again. They have the talent and coaching to repeat but as we all know, the tournament requires just one bad game and you are going home. The Huskies are joined by NC State who beat ACC Rival Duke for the ticket. The 11th seed wolfpack won a big upset over the 2 seed Blue devils, which can be attributed to this great run but it helps to play one team 3 times in the same season. Alabama basketball which is distant to football made their first NCAA final four after outlasting Tennessee in an overtime game. The final team in the field is Purdue who seem to be the most consistent of the final four in performances all season long.
Women’s March Madness
The NC State Women were much better ranked than the men and continued their run with strong showing over #1 seed Texas. Onlookers would have thought Texas was the lower seed. Powerhouse South Carolina is back in the final four after dispatching a strong Oregon state team, with greater ease than many expected. The remaining two spots for the final four will see a rematch of last year’s final as Caitlin Clark’s Iowa take on Angel Reese and LSU. On the other Elite eiht game, it will be Paige Bueckers, Connecticut’s senior star, against USC’s freshman phenom JuJu Watkins. We will see whose teammates step up to help their superstar.
Rise of Deuce McBride
I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this. Deuce came into the season as the 4th guard on the depth chart. Knicks had Jalen Brunson as the clear #1 PG, with Immanuel Quickly as the backup and Queinton Grimes as the 1 and 2 guard. So he was averaging 2 minutes a game in December. No he is averaging 40 minutes, which is an insane increase in workload. This increase was a result of the Knicks trading Quickley to Toronto and then followed with Grimes traded to Detroit. All of sudden with those two gone and an injury to OG Ananouby, McBride is now logging major minutes as the Knicks try and get the 3 seed to avoid facing Boston and do this while being without Mitchell Robinson, Ananouby and Julius Randle for almost a quarter of the season. McBride has done all that has been asked and seems, Tom Thibideou was right in his decisions to make those trades.
Thanks for reading and come tomorrow to hear from the Where In The World Is Carmen Santiago? Fan Club Interim President, Ben Whitney.
