Top Level Sports: February 2015

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Bracket Breakdown (2/26/15) PODCAST ON YOUTUBE!

This is my new college basketball podcast where I go over an updated version of my latest Bracketology! Please like, comment, and subscribe to my new channel if you enjoy!

Connor

Top Level Sports on Youtube! And Google+!

Hello, everyone. This is just a quick update to let everyone know that Top Level Sports now has an official Youtube channel and Google+ page. The Youtube channel will now be used for the Top Level Podcast and other future videos, and the Google+ page will share every new post on the blog and Youtube channel!

Here are the links to both:
Google+: https://plus.google.com/b/100709382562572455331/100709382562572455331/about
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHYtY8Zi7h2evN1fjgJ7t2Q (a podcast is coming VERY SOON, if it isn't out already by the time you see this).

Please like the Google+ page and subscribe to the Youtube channel so you don't miss out on anything I release!
Additionally, I just created both the page and Youtube channel, so they look a bit rough, but I guarantee I'm working on the creation of a logo right now.

Thanks,
Connor

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Connoracketology Week 16 (Feb. 24)

*This edition of Connoracketology seeds team based on games played through Feb. 23

For my full explanation of the bracket and the bubble, be sure to check out my podcast, which will be released tomorrow. For now, here's the bracket. Bold teams are division leaders, italicized teams are in play-in games, and numbers in parentheses represent a team's seed in the last edition of bracketology. No number means no seed change. Teams are ranked left to right within a seed, and an asterisk represents a new team.

1s: Kentucky, Virginia, Duke, Gonzaga

2s: Wisconsin, Villanova, Arizona, Notre Dame (3)

3s: Kansas (2), Northern Iowa (4), Iowa State, Wichita St (4)

4s: Utah (3), Baylor, Maryland (5), Oklahoma (5)

5s: Louisville (3), North Carolina (4), Arkansas (6), West Virginia

6s: Butler (5), Providence, VCU, Georgetown

7s: SMU, Michigan St (9), Ohio St, San Diego St

8s: Oklahoma St, Ole Miss (9), Indiana (7), Georgia

9s: St. John’s (10), Xavier (8), Texas A&M (10), Texas (8)

10s: Iowa (11), Colorado St (11), Dayton (9), Stanford

11s: Cincinnati (10), LSU, Temple (9), NC State (12), Purdue (12)

12s: Oregon*, Tulsa*, Murray St, Iona, Harvard (13)

13s: Wofford (12), Stephen F. Austin*, Valparaiso, Louisiana Tech

14s: Central Michigan*, Georgia St*, UC Davis, South Dakota St*

15s: Northeastern*, NC Central, High Point, New Mexico St (16)

16s: Florida Gulf Coast (16), Albany (15), St, Francis, Sacramento St*, Bucknell, Texas Southern

Teams that Left the Field

Auto Bids: Eastern Washington, William & Mary, Bowling Green, Sam Houston St., North Dakota St, UL Monroe

At Large Bids: UCLA, Illinois

Teams that Entered the Field

Auto Bids: Sacramento St, Northeastern, Central Michigan, Stephen F. Austin, South Dakota St., Georgia St

At Large Bids: Oregon, Tulsa

On the Outside Looking In

First Four Out: UCLA, Illinois, Boise State, Davidson

Next Four Out: BYU, Pitt, Old Dominion, Miami

Barely Hanging: Rhode Island, Stephen F. Austin, St. Mary’s, Massachusetts

Bids by Conference

Big Ten: 7

Big 12: 7

ACC: 6

Big East: 6

SEC: 6

American: 4

Pac-12: 4

Atlantic 10: 2

Mountain West: 2

Missouri Valley: 2

22 Conferences: 1

Monday, February 23, 2015

Vacating Wins and Titles is Wrong

In 2014, the Jackie Robinson West Little League in Chicago won the U.S. Championship. Oh wait, no they didn't. It was Mountain West Little League from Las Vegas. In fact, the Jackie Robinson West Little League didn't win any games. They lost six times by a score of 6-0, even though it's a double-elimination tournament. Wait, I'm getting word in now that Jackie Robinson West never even went to the Little League World Series in the first place. Oh right, it was New Albany, Indiana. How could I have forgotten?
If the opening paragraph sounded strange to you, good. It should have. In actuality, Jackie Robinson West (I'll call them JRW from now on) did win the U.S. title, and they were the team which fell to South Korea in the championship game. However, because of an investigation which resulted in Little League claiming JRW used ineligible players from outside their district (which they deny was done purposefully, but let's be real). The punishment? All of their wins at the LLWS were vacated, their title was stripped, and even their LL qualification title to play in Williamsport was taken away. But there's one catch: it wasn't the players' faults.

These kids are between 11 and 13 years old. They have no idea what the district requirements are, and their parents probably don't either. The responsibility falls on the people who run JRW, those behind the scenes, for cheating and placing more emphasis on winning than teaching fundamentals and sportsmanship. The goal is always winning, but doing so through legal means and teaching kids the correct way to play the game. Because of their inability to follow established rules, an entire team of young ballplayers and their families now suffer.

This team had a great story. JRW was the first all African-American team to appear in the LLWS in decades, and it was really enjoyable to see the team having a blast and continuing to win as the tournament went on. These kids were even able to go to the White House and meet President Obama, an experience they surely will never forget. Why take away from their accomplishments by stripping them of a title they clearly won. Little League can try to rewrite the record books any way they want, but it doesn't change what we have on video and in our memories, that JRW won. We all know it, and that fact can't go away, so why put an asterisk next to their accomplishments or try to hide them? They won. Period. The means by which they won were illegal, and although we have to focus on eliminating all forms of cheating, you can't erase what's already been done.
Sure, this is can be a touchy subject for people. Nobody wants to advocate cheating, as it is the worst offense in competitions. However, does the many really need to be punished for the actions of the few? I'm sure we've all been in a classroom where a teacher allows the students to talk quietly, but when two or three people are loud and can't lower their voices, everyone loses the speaking privilege. Remember how much you wanted to protest, "It's not my fault!", and how much you hated those two or three kids at the moment? Well that's the situation we're putting these kids into. Except this time it's the adults ruining it for everyone, the ones that should've already grown up. Just as every kid wants only the trouble-makers to be punished, I say the Little League should have just given life-bans to those responsible.
The only reason I can somewhat understand this punishment is because it is they used an ineligible player, which I guess gives them some slight unfair advantage. But then again, the same can be said for the Patriots in Deflate-gate (and probably most other games they played), but we don't see the NFL vacating the Patriots' wins and taking back the Lombardi Trophy, now do we?
Win and title vacation isn't just an issue in Little League. Usually, the idea of vacating wins comes from the NCAA, where numerous teams have been issued punishments which include taking away some of their victories. In fact, 42 schools have had college basketball wins vacated, and while many of them have interesting stories, I want to focus on a football case: namely USC's 2004 title and 2005 season. Long story short, USC, led by Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush, went undefeated in 2004, and whooped Oklahoma 55-19 in the Orange Bowl for the National Championship. They then had another undefeated season in 2005, but lost to Texas in the Rose Bowl by a last second Vince Young scramble, ending their quest for back-to-back national titles. However, after an investigation, Bush was found to have received gifts, illegal for college players, and the 2004 title and entire 2005 season were vacated, along with a two-year postseason ban and 30 lost scholarships (only a bit excessive...).
This is generally seen as a travesty, and for good reason. The only people responsible for the actions that led to the NCAA's consequences were Reggie Bush and his family. It should have been enough for the NCAA to strip Bush of all the awards he won (including a Heisman Trophy), but instead the entire team, school, and fan base suffered from Bush's actions. Now no mention of the National Championship or the 2005 season as a whole exists, and it's almost as if Bush never went to the school.
The final example I'll use of a team having a title vacated is the 2002 NCAA Men's Volleyball Championship, won by Hawaii. After winning, it was revealed that four-time All-American Costas Theocharidis played professionally in Europe before attending Hawaii, and although he was never paid, playing professionally takes away one's NCAA eligibility. Take a wild guess what the NCAA did. Oh hey, Hawaii. Remember that title we just gave you? Well, we're taking it back. Take that, cheaters. Again, I'll make my point clear. Try to stop cheating earlier (in this case the rules were a bit fuzzy on international semi-professional sports), remove the accolades/positions of offenders, but let the schools keep their titles. They did win, after all.
I think it's outrageous for titles to be removed from their rightful owners, but I also think taking wins away is generally wrong. Derrick Rose had someone take his SAT for him, which made him ineligible for college athletics. However, this was only discovered after he played at Memphis. The NCAA then proceeded to vacate all wins from the 2007-08 season which saw Memphis lose in the National Championship game to Kansas, finishing the year 38-2. Due to the vacation, the team went 0-1. Joe Paterno had over 100 wins stripped away for the Penn State scandal (they were eventually returned), even though the scandal had nothing to do with football. Even the Fab-5 received illegal gifts. However, none of it takes away their accomplishments on the court.
The NCAA seems to believe that if any team violated any rules whatsoever they can just vacate wins and the problem will be solved. That's not how it works. You crack down on cheating by making promises of banning players and coaches and those responsible for LIFE. Is that excessive? Maybe, but it's the right kind of excessive. It forces institutions to run tight ships and it might be able to eliminate cheating. Maybe then we can stop worrying about fair play and put all our focus on the games.

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Slow Down the Hype Train 2: Teams

So a week ago I was talking about how quite frequently sports fans tend to exaggerate and blow things way out of proportion, especially in calling players the "best" and comparing them to the greatest players of all-time, usually when the comparison is inappropriate. In case you missed it, here it is. http://toplevelsports.blogspot.com/2015/02/slow-down-hype-train-problem-with.html. However, we make this mistake with more than just players; we do it with entire teams. Here are some more examples of why we need to Slow Down the Hype Train.

Let's take a look at the Philadelphia 76ers, the team that couldn't win a game. They started the season with 17 consecutive losses, and when a team loses that many games in a row, everyone starts wondering,"will they ever win again?" Herein lies the issue. There were seriously people that thought the team would ranked 82 games and go winless, or at least have the worst record ever. There were even many that claimed that they would lose to the University of Kentucky. Man does that get me fired up.

Now where are they? The team currently stands at 12-41, meaning they've gone 12-24 since their horrendous start, winning one game out of every three. That's not horrible. Sure it's not good, but that's usually good for not being one of the five worst teams in the league. Even with their 17-loss start, they still have a better overall record than the Timberwolves and Knicks. How can you call them worse than a college team when they're not even the worst NBA team?

I get really angry whenever someone tries to call a college team better than a professional one. It's happened in basketball as well as in football, where over the last few years people have questioned if Alabama would beat the Jaguars or the Raiders or Bucs, depending on who was the league's worst team that particular year. I want to very quickly respond to these questions. There is no college team better than a pro team. Period.
Could a college team feasibly beat a professional one? Of course. Neil Paine of Fivethiryeight does a good job of summing up my points here: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/kentucky-would-lose-to-the-76ers-at-least-78-percent-of-the-time/. The main idea is that while any team can get lucky and beat a better one (upsets happen all the time), especially in basketball where any one player getting a hot hand can drastically increase his team's odds of winning, over the long haul any professional team would win a large majority of games against college teams because only the very best college players make it into the pros. Over the last five years, 19 Kentucky players have been drafted into the NBA, or 4.8 a year, which we'll call five. So Kentucky usually has about five NBA caliber players. An NBA team has 12, and they've all proven themselves in college and have had additional years of experience, training, and maturation in the NBA, along with playing more frequently and playing much, much higher levels of competition. That's what Kentucky would be going up against. Alabama football has had 37 players drafted per year, so for them we're talking 7.6 pro-level players up against 53, again with even more conditioning and experience. It's a tough task for anyone, that's why its the pros. It's why they make so much money.
As far as calling teams the best ever, here's my main rule: don't do it while the team is still playing games. It shouldn't be hard to understand why. If you want to compare a team to the best of all-time, you have to wait until their season is over to really be able to gauge how good they are. If Michael Jordan's 1995-96 Bulls are considered by many to be the best NBA team ever. They are the only team to win 70 games in a season, going 72-10, and 15-3 in the playoffs, with the season culminating in Jordan's fourth ring. The team featured three Hall of Famers (Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman), possibly the greatest coach ever in Phil Jackson. However, if they didn't win the championship, their accomplishments would not be seen in the same light. No team can be the best ever if they don't even win the championship in that season.
Going back to Kentucky, a lot of people have been calling them the greatest college basketball team ever. They have some good reason to believe that this may be possible. The team has at least six or seven for sure draft picks next year, and is an undefeated 26-0 currently. If they become the first team to have a perfect 40-0 year, they would have a pretty strong case to being the best team ever. But that hasn't happened yet, and until it does, we can't give them that accolade. They've been taken down to the wire several times in SEC play, including overtime twice, so they haven't been dominant every game. It's not that hard to see them slipping up.
Just as I stated in part 1, I have no issue with people getting fired up about teams that are really good. I simply want everyone to being reasonable with the claims they make, and not to blow things too out of proportion. It's usually best to make judgments after you have all the facts.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Connoracketology Week 15 (2/17/15)

*This edition of Connoracketology uses games played through Feb. 16, 2015 to determine its rankings.

The last eight days have been unreal. The bubble has completely blown open, and at this point there are dozens of teams that could end up in the last few spots. No, this isn't because teams are getting quality wins. Quite the opposite. Everyone is losing, and losing to bad teams, which means that squads that weren't even in the first dozen teams out of the tournament a week ago technically stand a chance. More on that tomorrow, though. For now, let's see where our broken bubble has left us.
Bolded teams are conference leaders and have an automatic bid. Italicized teams will be playing play-in games to make the field of 68 and are the last four in and worst four auto-bids. Teams remaining in the same seed will receive no extra marks, but teams with a different seeding will have their previous seed in parentheses, and new teams in the tournament will have an asterisk. Within seeds teams are ranked from left to right.

1s: Kentucky, Virginia, Duke, Gonzaga

2s: Wisconsin, Villanova, Arizona, Kansas

3s: Utah, Louisville, Notre Dame (4), Iowa St

4s: Northern Iowa, North Carolina (3), Baylor, Wichita St (5)

5s: Oklahoma (4), Butler, Maryland, West Virginia (6)

6s: Arkansas, Providence, VCU (5), Georgetown (7)

7s: SMU, Ohio St (6), Indiana (8), San Diego St (8)

8s: Oklahoma St (7), Georgia (7), Texas (9), Xavier

9s: Ole Miss, Michigan St (10), Dayton (10), Temple (12)

10s: St. John’s (12), Cincinnati, Texas A&M, Stanford (9)

11s: LSU, Iowa (9), UCLA*, Colorado St (10), Illinois

12s: NC State*, Purdue*, Murray State, Iona (12), Wofford

13s: Harvard, Valparaiso (14), Bowling Green, Louisiana Tech

14s: William & Mary, Sam Houston St*, Eastern Washington*, UC Davis

15s: NC Central (14), High Point, Albany, Florida Gulf Coast*

16s: New Mexico St (15), UL Monroe (15), North Dakota St, St Francis, Bucknell*, Texas Southern*

Teams That Left the Field

Auto Bids: Stephen F. Austin, Sacramento St, North Florida, Colgate, Alabama St

At Large Bids: Seton Hall, Old Dominion, Tulsa