Deadspin: Mount St. Mary's Mountaineers

NCAA Pants Party: North Carolina Vs. Mount St. Mary's

Leitch — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:50:40 EDT

North Carolina Tar Heels (32-2) vs. Mount St. Mary's Mountaineers (19-14)
When: Friday, 7:10 p.m.
Where: Raleigh, N.C.

NORTH CAROLINA TAR HEELS

1. Look Out.North Carolina enters the tournament as the No. 1 overall seed and prohibitive favorite. Their path to the Final Four would start in Raleigh and move all the way to Charlotte. (Jim Boeheim on PTI Monday: "Does Carolina even need to get out of bed to advance?") They are peaking at the right time, with their ACC tournament championship capping a strong stretch in which the Heels won their final six ACC games by an average of 17.5 points. Point guard Ty Lawson is fresh, back from injury, and the rest of the team is as healthy as you can hope for. And Tyler Hansbrough is still, presumably, yelling at his muscles to "lift harder!" and, when they refuse, subjecting them to ping-pong punishment. Anything short of a Final Four berth would be something of a disappointment. Luckily, UNC will win the NCAA Tournament.

2. Blood Bracket. The bracket is set up for what would be two dream Final Four matchups for any blue-blooded Carolina fan. With Kansas #1 in the Midwest, UNC could face Roy Williams's old team in the semifinals, in an environment that surely will cause the dag-nabbed coach to, finally, give a shit. That's happened before; in 1991, Kansas beat UNC in the national semifinal; in 1993, UNC returned the favor. But looming as a possibility beyond that is the Holy Grail of college basketball What-Ifs, the ratings bonanza that might save CBS no matter how badly their fall series tank, the event that would cause Dick Vitale's tonsils to rip free from his throat and flee to Canada: a potential UNC-Duke matchup in the championship game. (Ed. Note: UNC-Duke is actually the Finals pick of this site's humble editor.) We can't even begin to express the amount of anxiety that would cause us, imagining Duke and its coach, Satan-Rat-Spawn, beating the Heels in the biggest game of their lives. Luckily, UNC will win the NCAA Tournament.

3. A Doherty Year. 2001-2002 was a great year for ACC schadenfreude, as the Heels went 8-20 under coach Matt Doherty and missed the tournament for the first time in 27 years. That disaster led my friends to coin the phrase "a Doherty year" to describe a period in your life when, in the midst of a long tradition of success, everything goes to shit, only to return fairly quickly to previous levels of quality. Our own personal Doherty year was 1995-1996. For Duke's lacrosse team, it was 2006. Queen Elizabeth's was 1992. It's possible that for Eliot Spitzer, it's 2008, or it's possible that things will never get better, making this less a Doherty year than a, say, Art Shell year. Matt Doherty's safely out at SMU these days, leading the Mustangs to a 10-20 record in his second year. Luckily for us, Roy Williams is our coach now, as we abandoned Matt Doherty like he was an Enron stock certificate dipped in herpes. Luckily, UNC will win the NCAA Tournament. — Dan Kois

MOUNT ST. MARY'S MOUNTAINEERS

1. Fun facts about your Mount St. Mary's University Mountaineers. Mount St. Mary's University was founded in 1808, making it the oldest independent Catholic college in the United States. It's located in Emmitsburg, a tiny mountain town in Central Maryland just south of the Mason-Dixon Line. The Mount (and yes, that's really what they call it) has been co-educational since 1972 and has seen a sharp spike in impure thoughts in the ensuing decades. According to my friend John, a 2002 grad, a popular saying around campus is, "Mount. It's not just a school. It's a verb." Basketball-wise, the most famous alumnus is former Bullets, 76ers, and Bucks guard Fred "Mad Dog" Carter. The Mount (18-14) gained the third tournament berth in school history by winning the Northeast Conference tournament. Strong efforts from the Mountaineer bench powered the team down the stretch, as the reserves notched at least 39 points in each of their last three games.

2. Hooked on a Phelan. If you have any familiarity with the Mountaineers, it's probably because of their former coach, the legendary Jim Phelan. He coached at the Mount for his entire 49-year career before retiring in 2003 with 830 wins (fourth all-time) in an NCAA-record 1,321 games. He guided his teams to 16 Division II tournament appearances, reaching the Final Four five times and winning it all in 1962. Phelan has received the honor of having the Mount's home court named for him; the NEC Coach of the Year award and the collegeinsider.com National Coach of the Year award also now bear his name. His trademark was an ever-present bow tie, and he kept a set of ninja throwing stars in his breast pocket, which he used to intimidate referees and gain favorable calls for his team. I may have just lied to you.

3. They Don't Burn Couches in Emmitsburg. The Baltimore Sun's recap of the NEC tournament final in Fairfield, CT notes that an unspecified number of Mountaineers fans celebrated the victory by storming the court post-game and ... throwing confetti. The reporter fails to describe the manner in which the fans threw the confetti. Were they tossing it in the air and letting it rain gently down? Or were they firing it at the Sacred Heart players and fans in an aggressive and taunting fashion? Personally, I approve of the injection of small-time whimsy into what is becoming an overdone and unimaginative expression of euphoria by college hoops fans. But I suppose Storming The Floor will have the final ruling on the matter. — Kevin Brotzman

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Your Live Report From The Play-In Game

Leitch — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:49:40 EDT

Yes, that play-in game was last night. Mount St. Mary's won, and we're sure you didn't watch it. But the guys at Flyers Fieldhouse were there, like they always are for the annual play-in game in Dayton. Here's their report from the event.

The fact that we're writing this in place of one of those glamorous preview posts for our own Dayton Flyers is all a tad bittersweet. We Flyers fans feel like we're perfectly entitled to an NCAA spot, but were left on the outside looking in - a convenient parallel to the poor play-in contenders that we watched. Neither of these teams wants to be here. Consolations are never meant to actually console anyone. This is all a half-hearted gesture to those schools that don't make anyone money so that teams like Kentucky can get blasted in the first round.

Even if you lose, you're still technically an NCAA Tournament team, but the only way anyone is going to remember said loser was even in the tournament this year is if they picked your team to win/lose in the bracket and the wrong choice messed up their chances of winning an NCAA pool. All you are is a tiebreaker. And what's the reward for winning this game that's loved by as many as 16 fans? Your eminently forgettable team gets served up as an appetizer for the some Yeti to teabag at will.

Having said that, we loves us some play-in game.

So off we went to this meaningless affair of basketball between a 20-loss team that got doubled up on this very court earlier this season by the hometown Flyers and a Mount St. Mary's squad that we were forced to surmise is actually nicknamed The Mount. Seriously. Mount. The joke practically writes itself. So we're not going to.

We're happy to say we actually came away impressed. No really. Things were not looking up when we were tipped that alcohol would not be sold. Thank goodness we're not so far out of college that we're not above going half-and-half with cheap liquor in a water bottle and crotching that shit. Had we not been able to improvise, we just wouldn't have went. Sorry, Will. Due diligence just happens to be a lesser priority than drinking far too early for our own good.

Remember, this is Dayton, Ohio. We only love this town because we lived here for four years. Unless you're looking for a 400-page discourse on the Wright Brothers, Mead notebooks, out-of-date cash registers or the most confusing system of roads ever known to man, you probably don't want to visit here. But if you're looking for a basketball town with a Madison Square Garden-like appreciation of the game, then you've come to the right place. This town has packed UD Arena with 8,000+ fans for every play-in game. ESPN probably doesn't even get 8,000 viewers of the game. People actually care about this game, and they appreciate the effort these kids put into the game, even if they're not all that good at it. Cliche alert: There was a palatable buzz in the air the entire game last night.

We found ourselves pulling for Coppin State because we're petty and distracted by shiny things like a kick-ass band. Coppin State's band is not your average band. They brings that muthafuckin' ruckus. We've never seen Drumline, but the Coppin State band is something we imagine Nick Cannon might be proud of. They danced, their song choices were current, they made fun of the MSM band's cliché choices ("Eye of the Tiger"...phsaw), and then they danced some more. It was all enough to keep a couple of young white boys very much entertained, but also feeling slightly awkward in their crippling whiteness, especially when they played Chris Brown's "Kiss Kiss."

The night was even important enough for the WWL to unthaw Brent Musberger and trot him out. The fuck was Brent Musberger doing calling this game? You're too good for this, Brent. Either way, Musberger has the bladder of an orca whale or he was wearing Depends. He didn't move once throughout the entire game. Steve Lavin was up and down like an ornery child, but Brent stayed stuck in.

And of course, the obligatory Erin Andrews update. Of course we would. Yes yes, extremely hot and all that. Actually far more attractive in person than the Google Images searches that you masturbate to. Something you didn't know: you'd do her assistant as well. Just like the encyclopedia said, attractive women roam in packs.

So the night at least had the appearance of a prime-time event. Coppin State head coach Fang Mitchell even broke out his best gold suit for the occasion. Luckily, the game itself delivered in its own right. Sadly, it was probably some of the best all-around basketball we've seen in University of Dayton Arena for some time. Leads changed hands repeatedly, hard fouls were dished out all over and the majority of the crowd stood idly by cheering for every bucket and rebound because it didn't know of anything better to do. The Coppin State Eagles we loved for all of 40 minutes fell in the end, but it hardly mattered. Even the band was in good spirits afterwards, or at least the Beyonce blaring from their brass section seemed to indicate as much.

To most, this might be a meaningless game, but to Dayton, it's our meaningless game. Sometimes we're so wrapped up in our own teams that we forget how to enjoy a game without any sort of vested interest. It might only count as half of an actual NCAA tourney game, but it's a part of the tournament we get to take part in every single year. That's more than any other city can say. This is our night where all allegiances go out the window, and we watch basketball for no other reason than the fact that basketball is being played in an arena we're familiar with. There's something charming and oblivious about it all, and dammit if we don't love it.

We were, however, denied Len Elmore loving up on this city for two hours this year. You owe us one ball-tonguing, ESPN. We'll wait. It's Dayton. It's not like we've got anything else to do.

Get Out There And Mount The Beginning Of The NCAA Tournament

Leitch — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:20:16 EDT

The NCAA tournament is starting tonight, and even though most people don't consider it the real start — you can't even pick the game in tourney pools — we do. We admire any game that gives us a coach named "Fang" and allows us the opportunity to pretend a team's logo is an imperative verb.

We've posted our preview of the game, but that's not much help for you if you want to know who will win, not that you get to pick the game anyway. Basketball Prospectus likes The Mount, by a lot, but never, ever bet against Fang.

NCAA Tournament tonight! Really!

Um, It May Be Time To Eliminate That Play-In Game

rickchand — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 16:10:52 EDT

On most tournament pool brackets it will be indicated as "play-in winner," a stirring tribute to a successful season if ever there was one. Presenting once again the play-in game, which has become the NCAA's little joke on the smaller Div. I schools. This year was especially awkward, as Coppin State — the first 20-loss team ever to make the NCAA tourney — is scheduled to take on Mount St. Mary's for the right to make the 64-team field. The latter team is not amused.

Mount St. Marys and Coppin State were both informed early Sunday — 90 minutes before all the other teams — that they would be playing each other in the play-in game. That essentially spoiled the fun of the televised Selection Sunday announcement for both teams.

"I liked knowing [early] from a coaching standpoint," Mount St. Mary's coach Milan Brown said. "But as a fan, I didn't like it because we already knew when we walked in here who we were playing and where we were going. This part of March, just figuring out where you're going, that's so exciting for the kids and to have that taken away from them is a little bit of a downer."

Sophomore guard Jeremy Goode:

"I mean, we won our conference. I don't expect to have to win a game to get to a tournament that I feel we worked hard enough to get to."

He has a point. Either you're in the tournament or you aren't; creating two second-class citizen teams — the winner to be shoveled into the maw of a beast school like North Carolina anyway — doesn't seem right. Nor does awarding berths for conference tournament winners. Coppin State won the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Tournament by upsetting Morgan State (22-10), 62-60, after having been swept in the regular season. If the conferences want to generate revenue by having these tournaments, fine. But can't the NCAA ignore them, and award berths in the Big Dance to regular season winners?

No, you say. If the conference tournament didn't determine the true conference winners, no one would watch them. OK, I suppose. But you could still eliminate the play-in game. This year would have been an easy decision: Take Mount St. Mary's to the field of 64, and leave the 20-loss team behind.

Coppin State, With 20 Losses, Makes The NCAAs [SportsbyBrooks]
Mount's Surprise Party Spoiled [The Baltimore Sun]

NCAA Pants Party: Mount St. Mary's Vs. Coppin State

Storming the Floor — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:00:49 EDT

Mount St. Mary's Mountaineers (18-14) vs. Coppin State Eagles (16-20).
When: Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Dayton

MOUNT ST. MARY'S MOUNTAINEERS

COPPIN STATE EAGLES

1. Is That Record Inverted? Located in Baltimore's inner city, Coppin State is the first 20-loss team ever to make the NCAA tournament. The Eagles lost their 20th game at Morgan State to end the regular season. After an improbable three-game run through the MEAC tournament, they faced the same team and won this time, on a clutch layup by Senior Guard Tywain McKee.

2. That Said, We Expect Great Things. Coppin State hasn't made the NCAA Tournament since 1997. They entered that year's Dance as a 15 seed and a 30-point underdog. Their opponents were the South Carolina Gamecocks, who had earned their #2 seed by beating Kentucky twice, and grabbing the regular-season crown in the SEC. The game ended in a 78-65 win for the tiny school from the MEAC. Then-SC coach Eddie Fogler was never the same again.

3. "Ron" Just Doesn't Have the Same Ring To It. Coppin State head coach Ron Mitchell goes by the nickname "Fang," which is surely one of the coolest monikers in college hoops. He claims he got the nickname from a referee who thought his voice resembled that of a television character on the ancient "Soupy Sales Show". If you're a playa on HBO's "The Wire," you want Fang to take an interest in you. The Eagles coach scours Baltimore and surrounding areas for lost causes. "Bad grades," he told a reporter "bad attitude, needs discipline. That's my kind of player." — Storming The Floor

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Mount St. Mary's Mountaineers

Leitch — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 20:38:58 EDT