Quick NCAA Related Thoughts: How About Those Dawgs and the Hokies Robbed

Cinderella has a new name: THE DAWGS!

• I was pleased that we got a #7 seed. I felt that was a concession by the committee as to how difficult it is to be competitive game in and game out in the ACC.
• I was not pleased that Virginia Tech was left out of the bracket, however. Throw out the RPI numbers and the other stats. If you watched the Hokies at any point in the ACC season except the blowout in Chapel Hill they were a tournament team. Besides just a week ago today they lost a game to Clemson where they were completely robbed in the last few seconds when the Hokies led by one point.
  
• Kansas State getting in ahead of the Hokies tells me that in some ways the NCAA is more interested in marketing than holding a serious basketball tournament for the best teams in the country.
  
• Georgia's achievement over the last four days far exceeds anything I have seen in a power conference in the last 25 or so years. The Bulldogs have been reduced to seven scholarship players for most of the season, have a coach in Dennis Felton that was about to be fired and had to play four straight games against teams either that made the NCAAs or just missed. Add to that the storm that ripped apart the Georgia Dome, the two games against two NCAA bound teams that had both gone 12-4 a few hours apart on the same day, and the fact that the last place Dawgs were forced to play on their biggest rivals home court for the re-scheduled games. Dickie V may go on about Jimmy V's 1983 and 1987 ACC Tourney runs with NC State but the reality is this: In those days the ACC had 8 teams and NC State was essentially an NCAA bubble team entering both tournaments. Georgia was a last place team with injuries and scholarship limitations because of NCAA probation due to Jim Harrick. This Bulldog Championship is the most improbable in the recent history of a power conference.