Keefe To The City

Mar 28, 2014

Podcast: Kevin DeLury

Kevin DeLury of The New York Rangers Blog joins me to talk about the Rangers’ recent run that has them looking like contenders and why we don’t want but need a Rangers-Flyers playoff series

It hasn’t even been two weeks since I was petrified that the Rangers wouldn’t make the playoffs after their 1-0 loss to the Sharks at MSG. Since that devastating defeat, the Rangers have won five straight, Henrik Lundqvist has found his Vezina form, Ryan McDonagh has done everything except actually stitch the “C” on his jersey and Martin St. Louis has finally scored a goal. OK, so maybe the last part hasn’t happened, but it will. It has to.

The Rangers have provided their usual highs and lows this season, like a six-month Texas hold ’em game, with both emotional swings and standings swings. There have been times when they have made me believe they can compete with the Bruins and Penguins and other times when they have made me feel like an Islanders fan. Their current five-game winning streak has me thinking they can go on an extended playoff run and that scares me because it’s never a good idea to get too high on the Rangers.

Kevin DeLury of The New York Rangers Blog joined me to talk about the Rangers’ recent run that has them looking like contenders, if Martin St. Louis will ever score a goal as a Ranger and why we don’t want but need a Rangers-Flyers playoff series.

Podcasts • Yankees

Mar 28, 2014

Podcast: Erik Boland

Erik Boland of Newsday joins me to talk about whether the new and slim CC Sabathia can be trusted and how excited everyone should be for Michael Pineda to finally be healthy.

We are almost there. Baseball is almost back. The Yankees are almost back. After a disappointing 2013 season, a miserable October when it comes to baseball, a cold winter and now cold spring, Opening Day is long overdue. The Yankees certainly have their questions and concerns and unknowns this season, but after last year’s Murphy’s Law season, it can only go up from an 85-77 finish and a postseason-less fall.

Erik Boland, the Yankees beat writer for Newsday, joined me to talk about the feeling around the Yankees with Derek Jeter’s last Opening Day approaching, whether the new and slim CC Sabathia can be trusted and how excited everyone should be for Michael Pineda to finally be healthy.

Podcasts • Rangers

Mar 26, 2014

Podcast: Sam Carchidi

Sam Carchidi of The Philadelphia Inquirer joins me to talk about joined me to talk about how the Flyers have survived the gauntlet portion of their schedule and how everyone is pulling for a Rangers-Flyers playoff series.

The Flyers were supposed to be eliminated by now. After their 1-7-0 start, a coaching change three games into the season and a scoreless Claude Giroux through the first 15 games of the season, the Flyers were supposed to be eliminated before Thanksgiving. And then after getting back into the race, with a post-Olympic break schedule that included the Sharks, Rangers, Maple Leafs, Penguins (twice in two days), Blackhawks, Blues, Kings and Rangers twice, they weren’t supposed to make it. But here we are with three weeks left in the season and the Flyers trail the Rangers by one point and have two games in hand.

Sam Carchidi, the Flyers beat writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer, joined me to talk about how the Flyers have survived the gauntlet portion of their schedule, the similarities between Martin St. Louis and Claude Giroux’s seasons and how everyone is pulling for a Rangers-Flyers playoff series.

Blogs • Rangers

Mar 24, 2014

The Real Stretch Run for the Rangers

There are 10 games left in the Rangers’ season and the next three weeks will be the difference in the Rangers making the playoffs or in me hate-watching the playoffs this spring.

It seems like just yesterday I turned to the start of the Rangers’ season to console me after the Yankees ended the their season without a trip to the postseason and the Giants were off to an 0-4 start. The Rangers didn’t exactly make me forget about an 85-win Yankees team or a winless Giants team as they lost seven of their first 10 games and were shut out four times in those 10 games. But since that 3-6-0 road trip to open the season and the 2-0 loss to the Canadiens in the home opener in Game 10, the Rangers have been a pretty good team (they are 36-22-4 since the 3-7-0 start).

At times they have made me believe they are capable of competing against the Bruins or Penguins in a seven-game series and at other times they have made me think they will miss the playoffs in a Game 82-shootout setting like they did to finish the 2009-10 season. I have learned not to be surprised by the Rangers over the years and even with a team that rosters Henrik Lundqvist, Rick Nash, Martin St. Louis and Brad Richards, I’m still not surprised by the inconsistent efforts.

After losing back-to-back road games to Carolina and Minnesota (and scoring only one goal in each game), it seemed Rangers fans would have to endure the usual March charades from the Rangers that would force them to play for their season in the final week of the season. With Columbus continuing to win and Philadelphia laughing at the gauntlet portion of their schedule that was supposed to keep them from making a playoff push, the dreaded “Games in hand” phrase that always seems to work against the Rangers at this time of the year began to make its annual appearance on every TV graphic. But over the last five games, the Rangers have looked more like that team that is capable of competing with the Bruins and Penguins and less like the team that let their season come down to an Olli Jokinen shootout attempt.

Three weeks from today the 2013-14 regular season will be over, and three weeks from today there’s a chance the 2013-14 Rangers’ season will be over too. The Rangers have 10 games to earn their way into the playoffs and to make sure I’m not hate-watching the NHL playoffs during my favorite time of the year. In those 10 games, we will get the answer to a few questions I have about the state of the Rangers down the stretch.

Are We in the Middle of One of Rick Nash’s Patented Streaks?
Rick Nash has played 99 regular-season games for the Rangers. He has scored 44 goals in those 99 games. That looks like steady production and without watching him you might think he is a model for consistent goal scoring in the NHL. But while Nash’s final numbers will look the way his final numbers have looked since he entered the league over a decade ago, he is anything but consistent, which makes him the perfect Ranger.

Let’s look at Nash’s 2012-13 regular season:

In seven games from Jan. 19 to Jan. 31, Nash had one goal.

In 12 games from Feb. 2 to March 8, Nash had eight goals.

In eight games from March 10 to March 24, Nash had one goal.

In eight games from March 26 to April 8, Nash had seven goals.

In nine games from April 10 to April 27, Nash had four goals.

And now let’s look at what Nash has done this season:

In 11 games from Nov. 21 to Dec. 10, Nash had six goals.

In 11 games from Dec. 12 Jan. 4, Nash had one goal.

In 11 games from Jan. 6 to Jan. 26, Nash had 11 goals.

In 15 games from Jan. 29 to March 16, Nash had two goals.

In the last three games, Nash has three goals.

Nash has admitted he is a streaky goal scorer and this season, like last, has once again shown that. His 23 goals have come from two 11-game stretches with the rest of them coming in this current three-game streak. Nash scores in spurts and when he does, they aren’t usually in short spurts like three games. They are usually for a couple of weeks. The Rangers need an extended Nash scoring streak that continues through the end of the regular season and into the postseason, which is what didn’t happen last year. (More on that later.)

And how about Nash even deciding to mix it up in his Columbus homecoming? When I told David Singer, founder of HockeyFights.com, on our podcast last week that the Rangers were going to need to get tougher and some Rangers would need to appear on his site in the coming weeks to make the playoffs, I didn’t mean Rick Nash. But Nash has proven to be a leader for this team and it his decision to become one on the ice and the scoresheet couldn’t have come at a better time.

How is Anton Stralman Still in the NHL?
It’s scary to think if John Moore wasn’t currently battling a concussion that Antron Stralman would still be in the lineup. If you’re Raphael Diaz, who is only playing because of Moore’s concussion, you have to be thinking that you’ll never get into a game as long as Moore, Stralman, Ryan McDonagh, Dan Girardi, Marc Staal and Kevin Klein are healthy.

Prior to Moore’s concussion, Stralman was still dressing and still part of the Top 6 defensemen on the team despite doing nothing and I mean actually nothing to earn or deserve to be in the lineup. He has become the new Michael Del Zotto of the Rangers (who is having his own trouble staying in the lineup in Nashville) in that he isn’t an offensive defenseman (or at least he doesn’t produce like one) and he clearly isn’t a defensive defenseman since I would consider him the biggest defensive zone liability in the entire NHL.

Stralman hasn’t looked like an NHL player since the Olympic break and nowhere near the type of player that should be considered for an extension. He hasn’t even been the type of player that should be involved in contract extensions rumors (whether true or false) the way he was a few weeks ago. If Raphael Diaz is back out of the lineup once Moore is back and Stralman doesn’t see the press box for at least one game then there’s a serious problem. And if you see Diaz in line to buy beers between periods at MSG as a healthy scratch, let him know he’s doing the right thing.

Is Martin St. Louis Ever Going to Score?
In 10 games with the Rangers, Martin St. Louis’ production line looks like something Brian Boyle would post: 0-3-3. If you believe in being snake-bitten, then St. Louis is certainly that. And if you believe in being due, then St. Louis is certainly that as well.

During the playoffs last year, the Rangers got past the Capitals in the quarterfinals despite getting just two assists from Rick Nash in seven games. If the Rangers could overcome a 2-0 series deficit and eventually win a Game 7 without their best player scoring a goal, I thought they would be able to make another conference finals appearance and possibly even a Cup appearance once Nash got hot and started scoring, since he would have to get hot and start scoring eventually … right? Wrong. Against the Bruins, Nash had one goal and two assists in the five-game series loss and if it weren’t for Tuukka Rask giving the Rangers the weirdest/craziest goal of all time in Game 4 (and possibly betting against his team in the game), the Rangers would have been swept thanks to a lack of scoring from their pure scorer and too much scoring on his own net from Dan Girardi.

Now even though my theory about Nash eventually getting hot and carrying the Rangers never came to fruition last May, I’m putting it out there again, only this time it’s for St. Louis. At some point, St. Louis is going to get hot and start scoring. His 976 points in 1,051 regular-season games and 68 points in 63 playoff games tell us he’s going to. I just hope his “due” isn’t supposed to come in the playoffs and we never get to experience it because his lack of production over the final 10 games keeps the Rangers out of the playoffs.

Is Henrik Lundqvist Playing for the Rest of the Season?
Before the season, Alain Vigneault said he wanted to keep Henrik Lundqvist to 60 games. Lundqvist has played 55 games so far and that would mean he would only play five of the remaining 10 games, and that’s not going to happen. And I’m fine with it.

Here is how many games Lundqvist has played in each season of his career and how many he didn’t play in:

2012-13: 43/5
2011-12: 62/20
2010-11: 68/14
2009-10: 73/9
2008-09: 70/12
2007-08: 72/10
2006-07: 70/12
2005-06: 53/29

With 10 games left and the Rangers trying to make the playoffs let alone trying to not be a wild-card team, I’m not sure Vigneault can start Cam Talbot until the Rangers have the “x” next to their name in the standings representing a playoff berth has been clinched. And really how can you give Lundqvist a night off when he is 6-2-0 and has allowed just 11 goals in those eight games since March 7?

Maybe when Vigneault said he would try to limit Lundqvist’s starts he thought his Rangers team wouldn’t be fighting for a playoff spot over the final 10 games of the season (if he thought this then he clearly wasn’t in tune with what was going on in New York while he was in Vancouver). But now Vigneault has no choice but to play and ride Lundqvist down the stretch, and in his first season he learned you can’t try to plan ahead for how you will or won’t use Lundqvist over the course of a season.

Once again the Rangers getting to the playoffs will come down to Henrik Lundqvist. I guess I wouldn’t want it any other way since it’s the only way I know.

Blogs

Mar 19, 2014

Revising My Dirty Dozen Bracket Rules

It’s been three years since I wrote the 12 rules I follow when I fill out my bracket and now it’s time to look back at those rules and make revisions.

Three years ago I wrote My Dirty Dozen Bracket Rules. I can’t believe its already been three years since then. It’s actually kind of sad. It’s even more sad that I haven’t picked the NCAA Tournament champion correctly since then.

In 2011, I went with Kansas and they lost in the Elite Eight to VCU. In 2012, I went with Kansas again, and this time they lost to Kentucky in the championship. And last year, I went with … you guessed it … Kansas. This time they lost to Michigan in the Sweet 16.

As you can see, I clearly have a problem when it comes to picking Kansas. Going back to I would say seventh grade, I believe I have picked either Kansas or Duke to win the championship every year (there might have been a Syracuse in there somewhere, but not in 2003 when they won it). That means in the last 15 years, I have picked two schools that have won a combined three titles. It’s not because those two teams were always the best team entering the tournament, it’s just that they have always seemed like a safe, trustworthy pick with not a lot of risk involved. But this year, I’m not picking Kansas or Duke. This year I’m not picking a 1-seed and that’s because 1-seeds are no longer 1-seeds.

The committee threw everyone a curveball with their seeding and I’m talking about an El Duque-like 54-mph curveball. So much so that Joe Lunardi has probably been drinking heavily and doing advanced math since the bracket was announced on Sunday night and questioning whether he even wants to do Bracketology anymore. (I’m guessing the answer is he wants to continue doing it since he predicts teams that will make a basketball tournament for a living.) But you get the point: the committee made a lot of questionable decisions. And these questionable decisions were a product of conference realignment, mainly stemming from college football destroying the real Big East, stacking the ACC and creating an odd rogue conference with the American Athletic Conference.

So with the NCAA Tournament a day away and the start of two of the best days in sports a day away I thought I would look back at those 12 rules I created three years ago to help fill out the NCAA Tournament bracket and see what has changed and make revisions to the rules. Here are the 12 rules as originally written with my 2014 Revision following each rule.

1. The 1s and 2s Are Locks
I feel like DJ Pauly D talking about the 1s and 2s. This rule is obvious. Put the No. 1 seeds and the No. 2 seeds through to the Sweet 16. If they lose before then, just tip your hat to the team they lose to.

Don’t try to be a hero and predict the next Bucknell or Vermont upset. Chances are everyone else in your pool had them winning too, so you aren’t going to be missing out. Well, unless you had them in the Final Four or as your champion. If that’s the case, better luck next year, and hopefully you didn’t wager on your bracket.

2014 Revision: Yes, three years ago Jersey Shore was relevant. And it would still be relevant to this day if MTV had changed the cast every year because each new cast would have tried to one-up the previous casts to the point that it would still be must-watch TV.

This first rule still holds true and likely always will. The only thing that matters when it comes to the 1s and 2s early on is if they are going to cover their large double-digit spreads, which I tend to stay away from.

2. Trust The Big East But Don’t Trust Them Too Much
Since I’m from the Northeast, I favor the Big East. Usually I favor them to a fault. Every year I give the Big East way too much credit because there’s always a lot of hype around the conference and just about every year they don’t come through and let me down, and in the process, destroy my bracket.

This year I have six Big East teams in the Sweet 16, two in the Elite Eight and two in the Final Four. In the past it would have been much, much more, but I have taken off my Big East blinders.

2014 Revision: Considering the Big East is no longer the Big East, this rule is worth nothing. The Big East Championship came down to Creighton and Providence, one school who wasn’t a part of the Big East before (and rightfully so since they are from Nebraska and “East” is kind of in the name of the conference) and one school who has been a doormat for Big East competition. So while it used to make sense to trust the Big East to a degree, it’s hard to say you should trust them at all anymore since it’s hard to know just how competitive the league is with this being the first time they have been missing their most important teams heading into the NCAA Tournament.

3. Stay Away From ACC Teams Not Named Duke or North Carolina
There are few things more overrated in sports than ACC basketball. I don’t trust Clemson or Florida State. I don’t trust any ACC team that isn’t Duke or North Carolina.

2014 Revision: Thanks to college football, the conference I spent years putting down in support and defense of the Big East is now essentially the Big East. After taking Miami and Virginia Tech in 2004 and Boston College in 2005, the ACC stole Syracuse, Pittsburgh and Notre Dame this season and will have Louisville in the conference next year. Forget the ACC’s plans to move their conference tournament to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, they might as well kick the Big East out of the Garden and have it there since they have taken everything else from the Big East. So now I trust more than just Duke and North Carolina (and this year I don’t trust North Carolina at all and will be taking Providence) when it comes to the ACC and I trust their teams more than any other conference as a whole.

4. Remember Who Gave You The Middle Finger In The Past And Who Gave You A Prayer
“Hokie, Hokie, Hokie, Hi!” I will never forget the commentator screaming that when Virginia Tech rallied from 13 points down with eight minutes to play against the Illinois in the first round of the 2007 tournament. And if Virginia Tech had made it back this year I probably would have given them at least one win for helping me out in the past. (Even if it goes against Rule No. 3.)

You can’t forget the teams that screwed you in the past (ex: Marquette, Wisconsin, Vanderbilt) and the ones that kept you alive (ex: Kansas State, Louisville, Purdue).

2014 Revision: This year it’s actually hard to pick a lot of the first-round games (and by first round I mean the Thursday and Friday games since those are the first round, not the Tuesday and Wednesday games) according to this rule because a lot of teams I would usually advance without thinking are playing each other and the teams that I will always remember for screwing me over are also playing each other. Except for Ohio State, that is. I will be picking Dayton to pull off the in-state upset over the Buckeyes and show everyone why Ohio State won’t schedule regular-season games against the Flyers.

5. Give Xavier and Butler Respect
I put these two teams together because to me they are the same team. That probably sounds weird to people, but I can’t help it.

When I think of Xavier, I think of Butler and vice versa and I think of the black jerseys and I think of two teams that have produced some nasty daggers for me over the years. In the past I would have foolishly picked against them in the first round. Well, not this year. Not anymore. I have them both advancing this year. I have Xavier losing to Syracuse in the second round and Butler falling to Pittsburgh in the second round.

2014 Revision: Well, you can throw this rule out too. Xavier lost their play-in game against NC State on Tuesday night, so they’re out, and the only reason to give Butler respect in the past was because of head coach Brad Stevens (the original rules were written before the 2011 Tournament and before his second consecutive championship appearance, so this rule was valid), but he is with the Celtics now and Butler finished the season 14-17.

6. Don’t Go Overboard On Upsets
Every year I start to fill out the bracket and think, “What if this year there aren’t any upsets in the first round? Should I just pick the higher seeds and play it safe?” The answer is there are always upsets. I’m soft when it comes to picking upsets and determining upsets.

My friend Forman is the master at the upsets. His resume when it comes to picking Cinderella stories and making ridiculous predictions is scary. On the other hand, I’m always too worried about picking early upsets and then watching that team get smoked and thinking to myself that I should have just played it safe and gone with the higher seed.

The problem with me is that I usually play it too safe in the first round and second round, and then I turn into Joe Girardi trying to manage a bullpen late in the game in the Sweet 16 and later. I start getting fancy and changing and rearranging my picks and before I know it, my Final Four is full of No. 3 and No. 4 seeds, and that’s just not going to happen. Like Girardi I need to trust who got me to that point and just believe in the top talent.

2014 Revision: Like I said in the opening, this year it’s hard to evaluate true upsets rather than seed numbers because of realignment and because the committee seeded teams as if they were picking schools and corresponding seed numbers out of a hat.

As for Forman, he has still been picking upsets at an unbelievable success rate since the original rules were written (and really since middle school when we started filling out brackets). In order to document his upset picks, I asked him to send them to me for the first round. Here they are:

No. 12 Harvard over No. 5 Cincinnati

No. 12 ND State over No. 5 Oklahoma

No. 11 Tennessee over No. 6 UMass

7. Location, Location, Location
I never really gave this much attention in the past and that’s as stupid as a poker player not paying attention to where the button is. Venues are a huge part of this tournament. Playing on the road, switching time zones and playing against hostile crowds at what is supposed to be a neutral setting is a big deal for college athletes.

It’s why San Diego State seeing Anaheim as an eventual destination makes me believe in the Aztecs over Duke in the Elite Eight after thinking back to what happened to Duke at MSG against St. John’s. And you know what city isn’t far from Notre Dame? Chicago. Guess where the Fighting Irish are set up for the first weekend. That’s right.

2014 Revision: My girlfriend is a Colorado alum and bleeds black and gold and I’m pretty sure she would adopt a buffalo if she could and have it live in a Manhattan apartment. I’m picking Colorado to beat Pittsburgh in the first round because of her and because if I were to pick Pittsburgh and they were to win, I’m sure the locks would be changed when I got home. (I’m also picking against Pittsburgh because they destroyed my North Carolina -105 pick in the ACC Tournament.) But once Colorado gets by Pittsburgh, they have a second-round meeting against Florida in … Orlando. What’s worse than having to play the No. 1 overall seed, who happens to be a state school, in their home state? Nothing.

This year, no one appears to have a crazy advantage for the second weekend with the regionals in Memphis, Anaheim, New York and Indianapolis. If you think Villanova can get to MSG and bring their fans from Philly to New York to make it a home crowd on the road, don’t. Villanova is a bad, bad 2-seed, they won’t make it to MSG and even if they did, they just lost to Seton Hall there last week.

8. Pick That “One Game” Correctly
It’s hard to do, but if you can pick the one low seed that is going to go to the Sweet 16, you’re golden. Easier said than done.

Every week during the NFL season there’s one game (well, at least one game) that just destroys the spread, and if you pick it correctly, you can turn off the TV after the first quarter with a smile on your face knowing you covered the spread. The problem is it’s usually the game you don’t want to touch because it’s too scary to even think about. The same goes with the first round of the tournament.

I sat and looked at St. John’s-Gonzaga for much longer than I should be looking at any college basketball matchup. I thought about the rejuvenated St. John’s program and the loss of D.J. Kennedy and what it will mean to New York City for the Johnnies to make a run here. I thought about how much I hate Gonzaga, how I hated them when they played UConn in the Elite Eight in 1999, how I hated them when people thought Adam Morrison was better than J.J. Redick and how I still hate them for ruining my bracket the last 12 years.

I went with St. John’s though I’m fully prepared for Gonzaga to devastate me the way they always have and make a decent run in this thing. It was the hardest decision I had to make out of the entire 32 matchups in the first round.

2014 Revision: If you have a pipe dream about winning that $1 billion from Quicken Loans or coming in their Top 10 and winning $100,000, well you’re going to need to be perfect when it comes to Rule No. 8.

“Those” games in the first round this year to me are Connecticut-St. Joe’s, Gonzaga-Oklahoma State, Oregon-BYU, Kentucky-Kansas State. And those are the games that you absolutely have to get right in the first round because the winners of those games have the opportunity to upset the 1- and 2-seeds they would then play in the second round. Don’t eff those up.

9. When In Doubt, Find A Reason Or Make One Up
It’s weird. I’m usually a No. 8 seed guy (meaning I take the 8s over 9s usually), but I’m also a No. 10 guy (I take the 10s over the 7s) too. It really doesn’t make sense, but that’s just the way it is. A lot of time I have no idea who to pick in these matchups. So, when in doubt, I dig deep for a reason to pick one team over the other.

For example: No. 7 Temple vs. No. 10 Penn State. I have no clue. I won’t be confident with either pick. But over the weekend I went to a wedding in Washington D.C. Between the ceremony and the reception, I went to a bar with some other people from the wedding and at the bar a bunch of Penn State fans were watching the Penn State game. They were doing the “WE ARE … PENN STATE!” chants every 90 seconds and just going nuts every time Penn State scored. It was weird. Now it could have been a Penn State bar. It probably was. But when I see Penn State in this bracket I think of these kids getting excited about a team that enters the tournament with a 19-14 record and I can’t help but pick Temple. Great basketball analysis.

2014 Revision: There are plenty of games to make up reasons for this year aside from actual real analysis. Here are reasons for a few of my 8-9 and 7-10 decisions:

No. 8 Colorado over No. 9 Pittsburgh: My girlfriend.

No. 7 New Mexico over No. 10 Stanford: Someone I know, who I wish I didn’t, went to Stanford. They could start LeBron James and Kevin Durant against New Mexico and I would pick against them.

No. 9 George Washington over No. 8 Memphis: Aside from gambling losses this season picking for Memphis, I haven’t liked them since John Calipari coached them and watched them implode in the final minute and overtime to my Kansas pick in the 2008 Tournament.

No. 7 Texas over No. 10 Arizona State: Texas won me money this year. Arizona State didn’t.

10. Go With The Coach On Coin Flips
I like Rutgers coach Mike Rice (I know they’re not the in the tournament). He did a good job in his first season and seems like the right candidate to build Rutgers into a tournament team. But what I don’t like about Rice was how insane and demonstrative he acted in the Big East tournament.

Then I look at coaches like Coach K or Bob Huggins or Roy Williams — guys who have won silly amounts of games — and the only time you ever see them going nuts is when they are going nuts on one of their own players. I think the only thing scarier than having to witness a Red Sox-Mets World Series would be being a 19-year-old kid and having Bob Huggins or Bobby Knight back in the day just ripping into you. They have probably made more kids cry than some coaches in the tournament have total wins in their careers. And that’s why it’s hard for me to pick against the big names. I believe their kids will come through because they’re too scared to not come through.

2014 Revision: So about my thoughts on Mike Rice … (crickets, crickets, crickets)

His time at Rutgers really went over well. I couldn’t have been more wrong about him being the right choice for the future of Rutgers, but at least I was right about his “insane and demonstrative” actions.

Without my favorite coach (Brad Stevens) in college basketball anymore and without my second-favorite coach (Frank Martin) in the tournament, my underdog coaches to pull for in the tournament are Ed Cooley (Providence) and Greg McDermott (Creighton) even if the Bluejays are a 3-seed, they are still an underdog as far as I’m concerned.

11. Don’t Trust Teams Without Last Names On Their Jerseys
It’s always puzzling to me when Division 1 basketball programs don’t have the last names on their jerseys. You’re not the Yankees. No one knows your names. Put your names on your jerseys, please.

Most of the time it’s the low-seeded teams that don’t have their names on their jerseys and it feels like the Hawks playing the Ducks (in the first District 5 uniforms, of course). There’s nothing worse than turning on CBS and needing a 12-seed to win and finding out that they have to wash their own jerseys because they don’t have a team manager. Chances are you made the wrong decision.

2014 Revision: If you’re not the Yankees, it’s not acceptable to not have the last name on your uniforms. Not in 2014. That’s why if you’re thinking of taking Arizona State to beat Texas, just remember the Sun Devils still are nameless on their uniforms and their players are probably wearing the same uniforms worn by the players when I wrote the original rules three years ago. Deion Sanders said, “If you look good, you feel good. If you feel good, you play good.” Well, if you’re showing up to the NCAA Tournament with some ragtag uniforms, chances are you’re going to be back in class on Monday.

12. There’s UConn and Duke
UConn and Duke are two teams that always play essential roles for better or worse in my bracket. Let me explain.

I grew up in Connecticut where people love their Huskies and no one really cares how much money Jim Calhoun makes or what NCAA rules he breaks as long as the team wins. I have never once picked UConn to win it all. Rarely do I even pick them to make it past the Sweet 16, and I’m probably the only Connecticut native that doesn’t. I think the only time I ever picked them go to the Final Four was the year they lost to George Mason and I learned my lesson.

As for Duke, I have this weird love/hate relationship with Duke. I like what they represent: winning, tradition, prestige and the intimidation factor. I have always like that they are the Yankees of NCAA basketball. But at the same time part of me really hates them. It’s weird. Like I want them to lose, but nearly every year I pick them to win it all no matter their regular season or tournament, except for last year, obviously, and they won.

The first thing I do after putting the 1s and 2s through to the Sweet 16 is look at the paths for UConn and Duke and figure out how far I want them to go, or if I want them to go far at all. This year I have UConn losing to San Diego State in the Sweet 16, and Duke losing to San Diego State in the Elite Eight. I’m putting a lot into my rule about venues (Anaheim) and the fact that I saw the Fab Five documentary on ESPN the other night and have become a Steve Fisher fan.

2014 Revision: Three years ago I was wrong about UConn as they won the championship after winning the Big East Championship in memorable fashion. This year UConn is a very hard to team to read. They gave Florida one of their only two losses this year and went 3-0 against Memphis, but they went 0-3 against Louisville and were run out of Kentucky with a 81-48 loss not even two weeks ago. The Huskies cant certainly hang with top-tier teams and even upset some, and if they can get by St. Joe’s, they are set up to make a run to the Sweet 16, which is where I have them going and losing to Iowa State.

Duke is going to lose in the Sweet 16 as well and send Michigan to their second consecutive Elite Eight, but the Wolverines will send Louisville to their third consecutive Final Four and eventually their second consecutive championship.

Final Four: Florida, Arizona, Michigan State, Louisville

Championship: Florida vs. Louisville

Champion: Louisville