We’re going to preview the NIT quarterfinals tomorrow (Tuesday), so if you’re a St. Bonaventure person looking to read about how the Bonnies faithful are going to take over John Paul Jones Arena, please check back the next time you eat lunch (and maybe consider eating a late lunch, as time really got away from us here with the tornadoes and whatnot). Today (Monday), we’re going to talk about yesterday (Sunday), so if you’re a St. Bonaventure person looking to read about the Bonnies’ big upset yesterday, just keep doing what you’re doing right now: Read these notes.
Down Goes the Favorite
The Oklahoma Sooners, our latest NIT favorites, are done. St. Bonaventure beat them. Does this make St. Bonaventure the new NIT favorite? Not exactly. Joe tells me his simulations actually have the Bonnies with the worst chance of anyone in the field to win this tournament, but he does add, “Their fans might show up in Madison Square Garden, though, and that might actually make a little difference.” Still, he says Wake Forest is the best team left and BYU has the best chance to win, because Wake has to play Texas A&M on the road. So, we’ll go with it. BYU’s the new favorite. Our fifth favorite of the season. The fourth? OU. The third? Virginia Tech. The second? San Francisco. The first? Well, that would be St. Bonaventure.
As far as the game itself goes, absolute brilliance from the Bonnies. Jaren Holmes was the hero, going 4-for-4 from deep as SBU held off an Oklahoma rally in the first half, mounted one of their own to begin the second, then held off one final push from Umoja Gibson & Co. to get out of Norman and back to the Eastern Time Zone.
We’ve been talking about St. Bonaventure’s rough travel schedule—Boulder last week unexpectedly, Norman this weekend expectedly. One thing we haven’t mentioned is that having fewer people might be helping them here. When your rotation’s basically just five players, you can use a van instead of a bus, and that opens up a lot better fast food options. Just saying. Worth it to drive through Chick-fil-A in that situation, and the online order is not necessary, which adds precision to the digestive tract. Digestive tracts need precision, guys.
Down Go Four Other Teams
Not to be outdone, Vanderbilt and Dayton went to overtime, with the Commodores’ big man doing exactly what you’d expect from a guy named Robbins—showing up and showing out on the first day of spring. Dayton leaned heavily on Kobe Elvis, and you can’t blame them with a name like that. That man must be the coolest man in the world! Scotty Pippen scored 32, Robbins hit the game-winner and blocked the would-be-game-tyer, Vanderbilt’s moving on.
Virginia and North Texas really did end up being the Game of the NITe of the Year, with an even lower possession count than we were expecting. 61 possessions, and if you’re sitting back disappointed, please consider that this game went to overtime. That’s an average possession length of 22.1 seconds, which means on average, there were eight seconds on the shot clock when the shots were going off. In Gonzaga/Santa Clara back in January, shots were going up, on average, with 17 seconds left on the shot clock. Gonzaga and Santa Clara didn’t play the Game of the NITe of the Year.
Virginia won in overtime after Armaan Franklin played the second half of his life and Reece Beekman turned in another good game, while Abou Ousmane and Mardrez McBride each put in noble work for the Mean Green. Terrible possessions by both teams at the end of regulation, as a nod to the NIT’s eternal glory, and pretty good crowd in Denton (good crowd in Nashville as well, so who says the NIT can’t draw good crowds when there’s plenty to do), also as a nod to the NIT’s eternal glory. Well done, friends.
Xavier pounded Florida, shutting the Gators down on the floor while doing enough inside to make up for 18 turnovers and a 20% shooting afternoon from three. At one point in the game, I was on an airplane taking off, and the plane hit some turbulence, and I thought to myself, “It would be really funny if the thing I was doing while I died was watching Colin Castleton shoot free throws on his way to an NIT second round loss.” No Sean Miller sightings, but that’s what tomorrow’s for.
Finally, Washington State went to Dallas and came out victorious, with Efe Abogidi throwing down a monster slam late (it was a balls-to-the-face dunk, sorry, guys, but that’s what it was) to stop what was nearly a huge comeback for SMU.
Another great day of NIT hoops, guys. Another great day.
Texas Lost
In other college basketball news, Mark Adams outlasted Chris Beard in a certain other tournament, and as I said yesterday, I like Chris Beard, but that’s pretty funny, especially since while reasonable people would never use something as silly as the NCA* *********t as their only metric for evaluating coaches, Texas fans made clear last spring that it’s their rubric of choice.
Do Florida Fans Like Numbers?
Joe’s handling more of the coaching carousel news for us, but I did have a moment earlier today where I thought, “Are Florida fans going to be an analytics-friendly bunch?” My impression is that the SEC is not all about analytics, not because SEC fans are dumb or anything, but because SEC radio is intense and phenomenally dumb. Earlier this year, Todd Golden had his team intentionally foul a guy while leading by two points late. The guy was a bad free throw shooter. The math made sense. Do that in the SEC and you might receive a few death threats. Curious how this is gonna go.
Urban Meyer: Confirmed Bad
In other Florida news, Urban Meyer is, indeed, a bad guy. Big report from The Athletic today. D.J. Chark even went on the record for it. Bizarre stuff, and it’s the kind of thing where you hope Meyer starts getting some help. Maybe goes into a more private kind of life. Starts getting really into helping out at the food pantry. I’m being serious. The guy, by all indications, is unwell, and presumably pretty darn unhappy.
Kyle Schwarber: Still Great
Well and happy, meanwhile (from what we know), is the Schwarber family! New baby for Kyle Schwarber and his wife, and we can only hope that baby is the most tanked-up tank of the whole baby race. I would love to have a milk drinking contest with that baby. I would probably lose. Congratulations, Kyle Schwarber. We will always love you.
Joe Kelly: Still Number 17
Our guy threw his first side session of spring training today, and it sounds like it went well. Also, he’s wearing 17 still. Here’s a slow-motion video. He rocks those black alternates. Rocks them, I say.
NASCAR Did a Good Job with Atlanta
I don’t know if NASCAR themselves did this or if the Atlanta speedway brass did this, but the alterations to the track there seem to have paid off. Wild race yesterday, and while there were issues, more of those were with the tires (or the car, which then hurt the tires) than the track. There was polarization on this, yes, but overall…I don’t know, guys, superspeedways are pretty fun, and that really did run like a superspeedway.
William Byron got the win in what became a war of attrition, holding off Ross Chastain and others as a big wreck behind him consumed a lot of the field at the end.
On to Austin this weekend. Come on over, friends.
IndyCar Survived Fort Worth
No big disasters on the oval for IndyCar, where Josef Newgarden’s wild last-lap pass of teammate Scott McLaughlin gave Team Penske its second straight win to start the season and Jimmie Johnson broke through for his first top-ten finish, stoking talk of him contending at this year’s Indy 500 in his first year racing ovals in the series.
Now, IndyCar takes another big break. Next race on Palm Sunday in Long Beach. These goons.
WTF1
Do people use that as a hashtag? I hope they do. Feels like a fun thing to use when things get all craaaaaaaazy out there. I don’t know, just seems like something people would have fun with. Why are you all looking at me like I’m setting a trap. Be cool, guys. Be cool. There’s no way this’ll turn into a “this league” equivalent we can all make fun of.
If I have everything straight (was packing for the flight during the final laps), Charles Leclerc dominated from start to finish, most notably holding off Max Verstappen on a late restart after Pierre Gasly’s car caught fire, and when Verstappen pulled a DNF due to technical issues, Carlos Sainz gave Ferrari a 1-2 finish in its first race of the year. With Sergio Pérez also not finishing (spun out, might have been the same issue), Red Bull got zero points, while Mercedes slid up into third and fourth place, with Lewis Hamilton aside Leclerc and Sainz on the podium.
Next grand prix is next weekend, over in Saudi Arabia. Two races in two weeks, IndyCar drivers are fainting at the thought.
The Senators’ Trade Deadline…Happened
Pierre Dorion didn’t make any great big positive splash, aside from extending Anton Forsberg, which feels like the right move, but he did trade away Nick Paul, Zach Sanford, and Josh Brown, and those three trades made sense. Zach Senyshyn, who came back for Brown, is a 24-year-old former first round pick, providing some upside on the wing and bringing with him a slight upgraded draft pick. Sanford went for a draft pick, there was a fourth trade where the Sens got goalie Michael McNiven for cash, and Nick Paul was bittersweetly traded for Mathieu Joseph and a future fourth-rounder. Got a younger, cheaper player for a guy on his way out. Classic deadline move.
It’s the fifth trade that’s the weird one. Dorion gave up a third-round pick for Travis Hamonic, an older defenseman who seemingly only further loads Ottawa up with mediocre old defensemen at a time when we’d rather be seeing up-and-comers get some development at the NHL level (there’s optimism around all three of Erik Brännström, Jacob Bernard-Docker, and Lassi Thomson).
Overall, fine deadline turned a little sour by the Hamonic pickup, and the bummer of not extending Paul. On the bright side, it sounds like the Senators caused a problem out west purely on a clerical error. Evgenii Dadonov, who used to play for the Senators but was traded to Vegas in 2021, had a 10-team no-trade clause which included Anaheim, to whom he was dealt today. The Knights are claiming the Senators never told them who was on the list. His whole contract didn’t come over? Bizarre. Very Senators, though. Got ‘em all so good. Sorry you had to be caught up in it, Dadonov.
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Ok, that’s it for toNITe. Big day tomorrow. Two teams punch their tickets to New York. We’ll have the previews sometime comfortably before tipoff.
