Is More Better? Or Just More?

Madness powers plot going to 96 teams

Dan Hurley. Connecticut Post

UConn has tried to swipe most of the drama from the Madness, winning games the way the Big Red Machine won championships, but thankfully the Huskies can play only one opponent at a time. Lamont Butler went Michael Jordan-esque Saturday evening to send San Diego State to Monday, the latest episode in the Thrill-o-rama that has been March ‘23. The successes of Princeton, Furman, Fairleigh Dickinson and Fla. Atlantic make some questions more necessary than in the past.

Should the tournament go to 96 teams?

Yes, said Miami coach Jim Larranaga: “(There are) 360 Division I teams and only 68 make the dance. The whole mission is to give the student-athlete a great experience. Well, there is no greater experience for a college basketball player than to compete in March Madness and yet we only have 68 teams out of 363. That's 18%.’’

No, said UConn coach Danny Hurley: “I think it's great the way it is. I feel like devaluing the regular season, I think, potentially hurts the regular season and what it means. I think the pressure to have to win games and being rewarded for winning big nonconference games and then taking care of enough business in the league. “It's a privilege to play in this tournament, not a right."

It brings up the notion of playoff participation in general. How much is too much? Is more better or is more just more? I like beer. I don’t like drinking too much of it.

Baseball is better for having expanded its playoffs from 10 to 12 teams last season. Three wild cards per league keeps more fans more engaged for more time. And, of course, produces more money. If the expansion had come a year earlier, the 83-win Reds of 2021 would have made the playoffs.

The NFL hasn’t lost any appeal since it went to 14 postseason teams in 2020.

It’s hard to talk about the NBA and the NHL playoffs without snickering. The NBA lets teams in from off the street (16 of 30); the NHL (16 of 32) makes them wear shirts and shoes to get through the door. I don’t know when a league reaches the point of playoff silliness, but it maybe it looks like the NHL.

By those measures, 18 percent seems light. Then again, college hoops is different. Its all-or-nothing emphasis on its postseason is unlike anything in the pros. Either you make the tournament or you had a bad year. Coaching careers are made and undone by what happens in one game or two. Dusty May’s agent hasn’t slept for three weeks. May coaches FAU. His career is currently in rocket mode.

Matt Painter, meanwhile, is not buying a bigger home in West Lafayette, IN. Or East Lafayette, for that matter.

Would a 96-team field help the regular season’s relevancy? Probably. More teams, more chances to keep your job. But it better be the right teams. If the expansion existed just to make more lives better in the big-time leagues, an opportunity to spread the wealth might be missed.

Enough teams that go sub-.500 in their conferences make the Dance already.

Even Dan Hurley said, “There are probably mid-major programs, a lot of times, that are more deserving than like a 10th-place team in a power conference that has figured out how to just game the numbers.’’

Was this March a fluke? Or will NIL and the portal ensure more Davids will sling rocks at the Sweet 16 door? Hard to say. Miami loaded up on transfers, yes, but the ‘Canes were a #5 seed from a power conference. What teams in lesser leagues, with fewer dollars to lavish, can maintain? George Mason and Loyola were nice. And now, back to being, well, George Mason and Loyola.

We have a couple very good test cases right here, re the new rules. Xavier could be rebuilding from almost scratch. Sean Miller assembled the ‘22-’23 team with an eye on big things now and, to a decent extent, he succeeded. Can he rebuild a similar team on the fly?

Wes Miller will have to start proving himself in Year 3, with just a few building blocks, fewer if Landers Nolley isn’t back. This brave new world of team-building is about to get interesting around here.

Now, then. . .

IT WAS A NICE MONTH FOR women’s college hoop, culminating in LSU’s W Sunday over the Iowa Caitlin Clarks. The game sold out, more than 350,000 fans attended all the games. Great.

But here’s a question:

Why was the women’s final marooned on Planet Nowhere, with a 3:30 Sunday tip-off? Was Tuesday at 3 am taken? You have to be a huge women’s hoops fan to spend a rare pretty Sunday in front of the TV. If the networks are serious about building the product, maybe they consider showing the product’s biggest event in primetime.

I didn’t see Connecticut playing Miami at noon on Saturday.

IT’S MASTERS WEEK. I’ll try not to be mortally depressed. I’ve been to as many toonamints as Tiger Woods (24) but he’ll be in Augusta this week and I won’t. Not being there is bad. Not being there and knowing I’ll probably never be there again makes me more melancholic than listening to a Van tune while sitting atop a cliff in Dingle in a driving rain, staring at the angry Atlantic and sipping a warm Guinness.

Speaking of Tiger, his candor about his golf future is interesting. Often, the hardest thing for a great athlete to face is his own mortality. Woods is handling his like a pro. Here’s what he said at Augusta National on Sunday, from ESPN.com:

“I'm not going to play any more than probably the majors and maybe a couple more. That's all my body will allow me to do. My back the way it is, all the surgeries I had on my back, my leg the way it is, I just can't. That's just going to be my future.’’

Perhaps no athlete ever has defined his sport the way Tiger has defined golf at the Masters, where he has won five times. If I ever have a grandkid, I will definitely bore him/her with tales of Tiger amid the flora at Augusta. I walked the course alone with Woods’ parents in ‘96, when Tiger was still an amateur. I walked with 40,000 people the following year, when he won his first green jacket. I was there when he won Jacket #5 (second only to Jack’s win in ‘86 on my all-time list of Best Sporting Events I’ve Seen in Person) and I was there last year, when he carded consecutive 78s on the weekend, looking ancient as he was doing it.

World’s best golf hole. 13 at Augusta

MEANWHILE. . . No one was more fun to watch at the Masters than Phil. The layout lends itself to Mickelson’s risk-reward style. For a quarter century, nothing defined the Masters more than Phil in the fairway on the par-5 13th, a couple hundred yards from being on the green in two.

Mickelson’s creativity around the greens and skill with the putter was made for Augusta. Sadly, he’s about done, too. ESPN.com:

Mickelson has looked like a shell of himself -- figuratively and literally -- since bolting for LIV and his performance at last year's U.S. Open (the last major he participated in) was particularly poor. Since thumbs-upping his way out of that tournament, Mickelson has shown absolutely no signs of life in any of LIV's events, consistently finishing near the bottom of the leaderboard.

The only sports music better than the jingle that declares March Madness open for business is the plaintive, tinkly piano from Dave Loggins that commences the Masters theme.

Sigh.

GEE, WHO ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT HERE:

The home of the (fill in the blank) will need roughly $280 million in repairs and upgrades to remain in "top condition" over the next decade.

The (team) and taxpayers make yearly deposits to the stadium's capital improvement fund, which reportedly has $16 million in the account currently. The stadium's audio-visual room, one of the key areas for (the stadium’s) production value for events, is projected to require $14 million in funding alone.

PayJoe Stadium, you say?

Nah, US Bank Stadium, in Minnesota. And it’s only seven years old.

Fourteen-mil to upgrade the “audio-visual room.’’ Hahahaha.

TRIP REPORT. . . Took advantage of the (mostly) sunny Saturday (and braved the Auntie Em winds) to take a roadie to just outside Frankfort, K-Y, home office of Whiskey Thief, a bourbon distillery in a gorgeous setting atop a hill surrounded by farmland.

You pay $35 for a tour, then get to fill up your own (small) bottle of bourbon. American Whiskey Magazine:

Whiskey Thief Distilling Co. is the first Kentucky distillery to offer every visitor a single-barrel experience, with the opportunity to fill their own bottle using the distiller’s tool that is known as a “whiskey thief.” Uncut, unfiltered brown, straight from the barrel.

J. Thinwallet passed on the tour and the bottle, opting instead for a $13 Old Fashioned made with the company hooch. It was fabulous. Thief is just a few miles from Buffalo Trace if you want something more familiar.

AND FINALLY, NO NEWS IS. . . good enough that one week became two. I broke down Saturday and heard/read about Trump’s indictment and the silly spin applied by all, depending on whether they prefer red ties or blue.

What I Iearned: ‘Bout what I expected. Days were more pleasant. I laughed more, got angry not at all. I do feel a civic obligation to be informed. I think that’s a duty we all must bear if our wonderful way of life is to survive. But I’m done using the news as a means of entertainment.

Many, many years ago, I swore off social media as anything but a means of promoting my work. Don’t read, don’t respond, don’t care. That’s a decent strategy when contemplating becoming better informed about the crazy-stupid planet on which we live.

TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . The aforementioned Mr. Loggins. Slays me every time. I have too much Scottish/Old South blood within me. I’m a sucker for nostalgia, azaleas, the 12th hole and music that makes me cry.

Do your work, Dave.