Well yesterday was exhilarating. We had at least three stormed courts. We had six overtimes. We had three ejections, one expulsion of vomit, two middle fingers, and zero made three-point shots, all from NC State, who won. Nate Oats held his follow-through after pushing a Mizzou player in the chest. Rick Pitino contracted the novel coronavirus. Arkansas is back to being competitive, Utah State’s dam has cracked, Indiana is in freefall, and Maui’s best are reasserting themselves after a bunch of swoons. Clemson is coming back to Brad Brownell, UNLV is feisty, some A&M fans are trying to put Buzz Williams on the hot seat, and Achor Achor is carving up defenses like the Grinch taking a slice of roast beast. Dayton is a vibe wagon. Pitt sucks. Houston, BYU, and Cincinnati might all finish in the Big 12’s top five.
College basketball reached full swing last night. It did it without warning us it was going to do it. It did it without asking if we had a moment to glance its way. College basketball looked around, saw the Jim Harbaugh thing was taking a while, and started taking shots. They connected. Let’s dig in.
What’s the Deal With Kevin Keatts?
My personal favorite detail of last night’s chaos was that Kevin Keatts had a facemask dangling from his neck as he got himself tossed from the game. It felt like a tribute to Josh Pastner, which is kind of beautiful, because in our second NIT blog post ever (this was back at All Things NIT in April of 2017) we called Kevin Keatts the next Josh Pastner.
Josh Pastner got fired last year.
I get the sense some NC State fans would like the same fate to befall our friend Mr. Keatts.
The vibes are pretty good right now in Raleigh, but in a “ha ha oh no oh no this is going to explode” way. DJ Burns was barfing on the bench last night. It’s January. And for as fun as NC State and Wake Forest becoming one another’s nemesis can be, this does appear headed for NC State in the NIT. I personally am very much about that. I’m worried NC State fans are not. I’m worried we’re going to be right about Kevin Keatts and the venerable Josh Pastner. In the exact opposite way of what we meant.
Is Georgetown Going to Make the NIT?
Two consequential results last night that didn’t get all that much attention:
Xavier beat Butler.
Seton Hall beat St. John’s.
Xavier’s NIT case still looks solid. They’re 9–8 this early in the season? Great work. Keep it up. But they’ve been playing better of late, perhaps finally finding their groove without Freemantle, and while they did some dumb shit in November and December (It was the holidays!) they also beat Saint Mary’s and Cincinnati. Beating Butler helps pull the NIT Final Four hosts back down to earth, so there’s an angle of one–in–one–out here, but we’re getting worried about Xavier. We’re scared they’re too good to make the NIT.
Seton Hall, meanwhile, just will not lose. They’ve won five in a row now, they’re in first place in the Big East at 6–1, and they’re a win over Creighton this weekend away from having all three pieces of the Big East’s Deathly Hallows (deathly because they send you to the NCA* *********t). Again, St. John’s isn’t out of the NIT running themselves, but this is dangerous behavior from Seton Hall. They should not be doing this.
Why are we so worried about the Big East? Well, there’s that new automatic bid rule for the NIT, and as NIT proponents, we would like that rule to not make the NIT look silly. As HoyaMentality pointed out to us on Twitter recently, if eight teams from the Big East make the NCA* *********t, the ninth and tenth have to be allowed into the NIT. If the Big East becomes an 8-bid league up there, we will be stuck with the ninth team and then DePaul or Georgetown.
What are the chances? I’m not sure. We’re not getting UConn, Creighton, or Marquette, and I’d be shocked if we got Villanova. I’m feeling pretty good about Butler, but not spectacular. That leaves St. John’s, Seton Hall, Xavier, and Providence within reach. We should have Providence, but we don’t know if we’ll have Providence, and if we can’t get one of the other three, we absolutely must then have Butler.
If the NIT wasn’t under so much fire, Georgetown making it on a technicality would be fun and fine. Since it is, though, we should probably find a way to keep the Hoyas out. It might be time for this website to work on NIL deals with Quincy Olivari and Kadary Richmond.
Could Tylor Perry Repeat as NIT MVP?
We’re going to talk more about Kansas State in a minute, but the Wildcats are in a weird spot. Until last night, their only good win came over Villanova, and that was also at home, also in overtime, and right after beating Oral Roberts and North Alabama in overtime as well (K-State, in other words, made beating Villanova look like a problem at the time). They’re 3–1 in Big 12 play and 13–4 overall, but they might only be favored three or more times this regular season, and their NET ranking sucks (because they kept needing overtime). They have a few things going for them: Tylor Perry is the coolest and we all still think Jerome Tang’s a good coach. But that’s not a lot of things. The Wildcats might be NIT-bound, and while the threat of Tang leaving has been levied heavily in the wake of the Nae’Qwan Tomlin mess, schools—for reasons I’ve never understood—don’t exactly line up to hire NIT-qualifying coaches from high-major schools. In other words…
Kansas State is probably one of the NIT favorites right now, which puts Tylor Perry among the favorites to be the NIT MVP. Has anyone repeated as NIT MVP before? No. Never. Nobody in the entire world has ever won the NIT MVP twice, let alone in back-to-back seasons.
This is the biggest storyline in college basketball right now.
Let’s Rank the Court-Stormings by How Justified They Were
I love the court-storming/field-storming debate. I’ve had to choose to love it, though. It’s very easy to walk into the middle of that room and become overwhelmed. People are saying ridiculous things in there, and it’s a situation where nobody—including you and I—is correct. It’s important to take charge. You must define the argument before the argument can define you.
Should fans of Kansas State, Cincinnati, and Penn State stormed the court last night? Yes, of course, they’re college kids. Also: No. Have some pride. Also, yes! Those were big, exciting wins. Also: No. Someone could have gotten hurt.
The possibility of someone getting hurt is the lamest reason to not storm a court. We allow stampedes in movie theaters, museums, and the U.S. Capitol, and we’ve never worried about someone getting hurt by one of them there. In Oregon Trail, buffaloes stampede, and in what walk of like are we not teaching our children to behave like buffaloes?
We will focus here, then, on how exciting the wins were and on how big the upsets were.
Penn State over Wisconsin: Perfectly Justified
If you attend men’s basketball games at Penn State, you technically own the court. You get a piece of it. Attendance is so low in State College that there’s a program where student ID’s are tracked, and those who attended basketball games more than twice are shipped a floorboard upon graduating. (The two-game rule is key. It’s easy to drunkenly wander into the Bryce Jordan Center multiple times in your undergraduate career there. If you go into that building three or more times, though, you were there on purpose.) In this way, Penn State students always have a right to storm the court. Upsetting a legitimate top-15 team to get back to .500 overall and to breathe a little life into your NIT hopes is just icing on the cake. Also, it was a pleasing game to watch. Good offensive basketball was played. If the court was not to be stormed in State College last night, we shouldn’t have courts.
Kansas State over Baylor: Fair Play
K-State could maybe have a little more pride, but also, it’s the Octagon. It didn’t become the Octagon by being prideful. When in doubt, K-State should err on the side of being a little deranged, and the student body has leaned into that this year. If you’re going to hold a rally on the president’s lawn and have the player in question show up to that rally, you should 100% storm the court after beating a good team on a four-point play. This was a court-storm for the cameras. If K-State makes something of this season, last night is going to be the turning point in the championship DVD. Get your face on that screen, anonymous Wildcat sophomore.
Cincinnati over TCU: We’ll Allow It
There were two issues with Cincinnati’s stormed court. First, the Bearcats were favored. Second, the end of that game was a debacle. The teams each missed free throws with three seconds left in regulation. 3.7 seconds left? Cincy misses three throws. 3.2 seconds left? TCU misses one of its own. That is a mess.
Still, we can’t fault Cincinnati students for not knowing they were favored. It isn’t Cincinnati students’ fault that the AP Poll’s criteria isn’t, “Which basketball teams are good.” And while the ending was ugly, there were still big moments. It wasn’t ugly enough to suck the crowd out of it.
I’m sad for Cincinnati winning that game. That’s one that would have really helped them come back down to NIT territory. But the stormed court? Nothing wrong with it.
Is the Moon Made of Cheese?
Pivoting to football: There’s a waxing gibbous this weekend, which might be bad news for the Lions? I think that only applies to Thanksgiving games, but there’s a lot I don’t understand about the moon. For example: Is it made of cheese? Because while National Cheese Day isn’t until June 4th, a friend pointed out just now that National Cheese Lover’s Day is on Saturday. The last time the Packers played a game and I knew the moon was a waxing gibbous? That Thanksgiving game against the Lions. It might be time to bet a million dollars on the Packers moneyline.
Idea: Crotch Chop Credit Market
Something that’s popular in the financial world is to create carbon credits and let people sell them to polluters as a mechanism to “cancel out their carbon emissions.” A forester, for example, could agree to not cut down a certain swath of trees in exchange for a payment from an airline. The trees don’t get cut down, so they can still swallow carbon, and the airline can say they made it happen. Markets are created so sellers and buyers can figure out optimal pricing for these, one which gives society exactly as much of a carbon footprint as it wants to have.
As you may have guessed, it doesn’t quite work out that way. Kind of a fun idea, though. I would like to try it with NBA players and crotch chops.
Last night, Joel Embiid hit a savory crotch chop after drilling a big shot over the Nuggets. He will probably be fined for it. Why? Well, the NBA would like fewer crotch chops. They fined him $35,000 for doing this in October.
Presumably, the fine will be higher than $35,000 this time. That’s how fines often work in professional sports. The price for a certain behavior goes higher and higher until equilibrium is reached and the player stops doing the thing the league doesn’t want him to do. I wonder, though, if the NBA could redistribute the wealth a little. One would imagine everyone would be fined $35,000 for their first crotch chop. It doesn’t matter who chops. The first time, the price is $35,000. Why can’t Joel Embiid, then, buy the initial chop of someone unlikely to use it, like Kawhi Leonard? (Kawhi Leonard is the last person I can imagine chopping crotch.) Joel Embiid could pay Leonard $50,000, and then go chop his crotch, and when the NBA comes calling and says “Hey Joel we’re going to fine you $100,000 because $35,000 wasn’t enough to make you stop” he can say “No way that was Kawhi’s first, not my second.” The NBA will fine Kawhi $35,000, Kawhi will net $15,000, and Joel will more affordably be allowed to continue with his preferred celebration.
I think I might win a Nobel Prize for this.
ToNITe
Other matters:
- We had a number of contenders for Game of the NITe toNITe, but we went with Maryland at Northwestern. Chris Collins’s career record is only two wins above .500. He is the perfect NIT coach, but he has somehow never made an NIT. This troubles me and I also find it beautiful.
- Texas hosts UCF, and that’s a no-win for the Longhorns, which makes it a no-lose for the Longhorns’ NIT shot. One of the last Longhorn Network broadcasts. Can’t wait.
- The Sens blew a lead last night, of course, losing 7–4 to the Avalanche. Once the goals started, they didn’t stop. Kind of like an…you know.
- Our favorite tennis player, Ons Jabuer, got smoked by a 16-year-old, and credit to me for not accusing that 16-year-old of doping even though she’s Russian. In other Australian Open news, Novak Djokovic offered a heckler the opportunity to come down and heckle him to his face. The heckler passed. I’m less interested in what was said than I am in the nationality of the man who said it. I feel like a good Australian would heckle Novak Djokovic to his face. Maybe *that* is the real Australian Open visa question.
- In owners–with–bands news, 1) I guess Jim Irsay was found unresponsive last month at his own home, and 2) James Dolan is on the receiving end of some serious sexual misconduct allegations in a new federal lawsuit. Prayers up for Irsay. Prayers up for Dolan, too, but in a very different way. More prayers for his accuser. Is that ok? I feel like we’re just supposed to pray for everyone, and that it doesn’t have to be equal. God isn’t fair, you know. That’s why Chris Collins has never made an NIT.
