As I made mention yesterday, the field of 64 has now been dwindled down to 44 teams going into the second week of the tournament. I wound up going to 2 games yesterday. The 1:00 Cherokee-Lenape game was sold out, but fortunately, Shawnee-Atlantic City was tipping off at the same time up the road in Medford. I was very impressed by Shawnee. They have the height, scoring and experience to claim a group IV title and perhaps even more. The second game I went to as a fan/support of the GMC and that was Cardinal McCarrick-Gloucester Catholic over in Gloucester City. As someone whose followed basketball for the past 12 years or so, that had to be one of the worst officiated games I've ever seen. The calls were about 35-2 in favor of Gloucester Catholic. They called jump balls which screwed McCarrick over way too quickly but when GC had the ball they took longer to call the jump balls. They walked a lot and there probably wasn't more than only 3 or 4 walks called against GC. The foul discrepancy was also pretty lopsided. The gym also was the biggest piece of shit I've ever seen for a high school gym. On both sides of the court, there was 4 rows of bleachers which were right on top of the court and on the left side was the student bleachers which were pretty big. Their fans were good and had several clever chants, to their credit. On the opposite side of them was the stage. But it was a piece of crap gym. This team has proven time and time again that they can't win without the help of the referees being highly beneficial to them. As I put it to the guy sitting next to me, the game we were watching yesterday wasn't basketball, it was bullshit. GC plays this stupid ass rope-a-dope game like most of these Gloucester County schools and rely on the horrendous reffing to try to win these absurdly low scoring games. McCarrick is a high scoring team. Then tell me why they mustered up 23 points in 3 quarters against a mediocre team? Obviously, reffing plays heavily into that. If the reffing was balanced yesterday, McCarrick would've won by about 30. What bothered me even more is the stupid fuck who was runnng the clock. Never have I seen a more egregious timer, nor may I ever see a more error-prone timer and it was more than bad, it was despicable what he did plain and simple. I was looking at the scoreboard yesterday and saw the score 12-2 and I'm thinking wow McCarrick's gotten off to a pretty impressive start. Then I look back a couple minutes later after a McCarrick parent turns back to me and says wasn't it just 12 a minute ago and I say to him yeah you're definitely right. They deducted 4 points off McCarrick's score which is a joke and really pissed me off as to how far this team had to go to try to win this game. They fucking cheated. Never should you have to go to that level. Period. And that was administrators or parents running the timer. What the hell is that teaching the kids? That's wrong, bottom line. The parent in front of me was really riding the refs the whole game and was really making a big deal about the timer, so much that he almost got thrown out, but he was right, say it was a close game and McCarrick lost by 3 or less, it would've been because of those stupid cheaters. At the end of the third was when I got heated at the scorekeeper. Kid inbounded the ball with 8 seconds left, crosses half court with 5 seconds left dribbles to the left, 2 more dribbles, shoots a 3 with about 2.5 seconds left no good. All of a sudden, a kid gets the rebound from Gloucester 5 seconds later and puts the ball up and in. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? HOW MUCH MORE OBVIOUS DO YOU WANT IT TO BE THAT THEY'RE CHEATING? That team's a joke and as I said before can't win without the help of the refs and I'm sure that's what happened when we played a couple years ago. I hope St. Joe's gets a second crack at them some point down the road becaue it'll get ugly, especially if we play them at our place. McCarrick still won convincingly but you know how bad the reffing was when I'm still writing about it to this length. The winner was going to have a whale of a game vs. Trenton Catholic so either way they're facing a daunting task so we'll see what happens. It'd be nice if McCarrick faced St. Anthony or Paterson Catholic for the B title.
On to my records for yesterday.
42-13 in Group I games
48-8 in Group II games
40-16 in Group III games
42-14 in Group IV games
14-5 in Non-Public A games
17-3 in Non-Public B games
18-2 in last nights games
203-59 overall
It's an off day for the State Tournament, tomrrow I'll be back with my sectional final predictions for Groups I and III, as well as my sectional semifinal predictions in Non-Public A. The field will be dwindled down from 44 to 32 teams after tomorrow.
For now, here's my college basketball predictions record and my picks for today's games.
4-0 America East Quarterfinals
4-3 Atlantic Sun
1-1 Big Sky First Round
4-3 Big South
5-3 Colonial Athletic Association Quarterfinals
4-4 Horizon League(Up to Semis)
5-1 Metro Atlantic Quarterfinals
6-2 Missouri Valley(Up to Semis)
2-2 Northeast Quarterfinals
4-3 Ohio Valley
3-1 Patriot League Quarterfinals
7-1 Southern Conference Quarterfinals
2-0 Summit League Quarterfinals
3-2 Sun Belt First Round
3-1 West Coast Quarterfinals
27-7 in last nights games
57-27 Overall
Onto my predictions for today. There's a lot of semifinal action going on across low-major and mid-major conferences and there's actually a couple of those games on TV such as American-Lehigh tonight at 8 on CBS College Sports, so it's a great opportunity to see some teams you don't get to see often and a lot of those times they are very exciting games.
America East Semifinals
#1 Stony Brook over #4 Boston U.
#2 Vermont over #6 New Hampshire
Colonial Athletic Association Semifinals
#1 Old Dominion over #5 VCU
#3 William & Mary over #2 Northeastern
Metro Atlantic Semifinals
#1 Siena over #5 Rider
#6 Niagara over #2 Fairfield
Mid-American First Round
#9 Ohio over #8 Ball State
#5 Buffalo over #12 Toledo
#7 Western Michigan over #10 Bowling Green
#6 Eastern Michigan over #11 Northern Illinois
Missouri Valley Championship
#2 Wichita State over #1 Northern Iowa
Northeast Conference Semifinals
#1 Quinnipiac over #4 Long Island
#2 Robert Morris over #3 Mount St. Mary's
Patriot League Semifinals
#1 Lehigh over #4 American
#3 Lafayette over #7 Holy Cross
Southern Conference Semifinals
#1S Wofford over #2N Western Carolina
#2S College of Charleston over #1N Appalachian State
Summit League Quarterfinals
#5 IPFW over #4 South Dakota State
#3 Oral Roberts ovr #6 North Dakota State
Sun Belt Quarterfinals
#1 Troy over #9 South Alabama
#4 Western Kentucky over #5 Arkansas State
#3 Middle Tennessee State over #6 Denver
#2 North Texas over #10 Louisiana-Monroe
West Coast Semifinals
#1 Gonzaga over #5 Loyola-Marymount
#3 Portland over #2 Saint Mary's
So there's all my picks tonight. My games to watch for today are the Missouri Valley Championship which should be a great one. I think Mount St. Mary's-Robert Morris is also on TV so that should be fun to watch as well and also some late night action over on the west coast with Portland playing St. Mary's at around 11 on the East Coast which should keep some people up watching that game. Should be a great day for ball and I'll be back tomorrow to pick some conference championship games over in the Colonial, MAAC, Southern and West Coast Conferences.
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