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 You Say Madness
Tournament.
The very word itself conjures up visions of brackets, of buzzer-beaters, of eating entirely too much bean dip. It’s a word that for many means, simply, “March Madness.”
Ah, but how do you say it? Do you pronounce the word “tore-na-mint” or “turn-a-mint”? Do you say the abbreviated version “tore-nee” or “turn-ee”? The voice on Answers.com uses the former pronunciation; the voice on Dictionary.com uses . . . well, actually I don’t know what that voice uses, because audio pronunciations are available only to Dictionary.com Premium members, and I’m not about to shell out $19.95 a year to hear some guy say either “tore-na-mint” or “turn-a-mint.” I mean, really, what’s the difference? You say tomato, right? Plus, I’ve got much better things to do with twenty bucks -- like place a couple of entries in my favorite March Madness pool.
Thus, without further ado, I now give you the State of the Union March Madness Viewer’s Guide, a couple thousand words that are guaranteed to entertain you -- and also guaranteed to provide not one iota of enlightenment or insight into who’s going to win any of the games over the next three weekends.
Where Have You Gone, Stetson Hairston?
Every year since 2001, we’ve pored over every roster of every team in the tournament to bring you the best names in the games, and delivered them to you as part of the All-Tournament All-Name Team. For the last four years, from 2002-2005, Stetson Hairston, of Southern Illinois, made the team, becoming the only four-time awardee. Getting named to this team four years in a row takes some doing -- not only do you have to have a great name, but your team has to actually make the field of 65 four years in a row. When you come from a so-called mid-major conference like the Missouri Valley Conference, as the Salukis do, that’s no mean feat. That’s why last year we retired Stetson Hairston’s name, in honor of his accomplishment. If another Stetson Hairston comes along, he’s just going to have to change his name.
With Stetson Hairston’s graduation, however, comes opportunity for others to step to the fore. And, oh, have they stepped to the fore. The competition for this year’s squads, both men and women, was ruthless, but we think you’ll agree that every single name on this list is fun to say. Go ahead, try it. Say them out loud. Revel in the pleasure of saying “Pops Mensah-Bonsu” or “Shalamar Oakley.” If the joy wears off, try saying them in other voices, in public, at inopportune times.
The Men’s Team
Washington, D.C. Regional
Hilton Armstrong, Senior, Center, Connecticut*
Levi Levine, Senior, Forward, Albany
Wen Mukubu, Junior, Forward, Alabama at Birmingham
Lukasz “Woo” Obrzut, Junior, Center, Kentucky
Rajon Rondo, Sophomore, Guard, Kentucky
Atlanta Regional
Antanas Kavaliauskas, Junior, Center, Texas A&M
Pops Mensah-Bonsu, Senior, Forward, George Washington*
Kevin Pittsnogle, Senior, Center, West Virginia*
Magnum Rolle, Freshman, Forward, LSU
Ayinde Ubaka, Junior, Guard, California
Minneapolis Regional
Leandro Buboltz, Junior, Forward, South Alabama
Mo Charlo, Senior, Forward, Nevada
Taurean Green, Sophomore, Guard, Florida
Wolfgang Raffety, Junior, Forward/Center, Pacific
Mustafa Shakur, Junior, Guard, Arizona*
Oakland Regional
Pierre Marie Altidor-Cespedes, Sophomore, Guard, Gonzaga
Ousmane Barro, Sophomore, Forward, Marquette
Marco Killingsworth, Senior, Forward, Indiana
Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Freshman, Forward, UCLA
Ken Tutt, Junior, Guard, Oral Roberts
The Women’s Team
Albuquerque Regional
Greeba Barlow, Senior, Guard, St. John’s
Joh-Teena Filipe, Freshman, Guard/Forward, Utah
Kirby Killingsworth, Senior, Guard, Stephen F. Austin
Muffet McGraw, Coach, Notre Dame*
Abiola Wabara, Junior, Forward, Baylor
Bridgeport Regional
Fifi Camara, Senior, Forward, Marist
Lady Comfort, Sophomore, Center, Temple
Shalamar Oakley, Sophomore, Guard, Coppin State
ChiChi Okpaleke, Sophomore, Forward, South Florida
EeTisha Riddle, Junior, Forward, Missouri
Cleveland Regional
A'Quonesia Franklin, Sophomore, Guard, Texas A&M
Tainoisouti Lott, Freshman, Forward/Center, UC-Riverside
Ortal Oren, Senior, Guard, UCLA
Cherish Stringfield, Junior, Guard, Vanderbilt
Tiff Terwelp, Sophomore, Forward, Missouri State
San Antonio Regional
Shuteamia Brayboy, Sophomore, Guard, Florida Atlantic
Scholanda Houston, Senior, Guard, LSU
Tandem Mays, Junior, Guard, Tulsa
LaQuinta Neeley, Senior, Guard, Florida State
Kara Pongonis-Paslay, Senior, Guard, Tulsa
(* indicates a member of the 2005 squad)
Truth In Advertising
So when I saw LaQuinta Neeley’s name, naturally, I immediately wondered if perhaps her parents had named her after the hotel chain, so I went to the home page for La Quinta Hotels. On their website, it says, “La Quinta. Spanish for ‘free high-speed Internet.’” Just above the word “Internet,” there’s a link that reads, “Vea en Espanol,” which is Spanish for, “See in Spanish.” On the Spanish version of the La Quinta website, that same line reads, “La Quinta. En espanol quiere decir ‘Internet de alta velocidad gratis,” pretty much a direct translation of the line from the English site. But if you’ve chosen to click on the link to read the site in Spanish, isn’t it a safe assumption that you speak Spanish, and you already know that “La Quinta” means “The Villa,” and not “free high-speed Internet”? To me, having that line translated exactly on the Spanish site is the equivalent of having “The Villa. English for ‘free high-speed Internet.’” on the English site. I think on the Spanish site, it should read something like, “La Quinta. We like to play little jokes on dumb Gringos.” In Spanish, of course.
Lady Love
When you find a disproportionate amount of entertainment in names, as I do, the fascination doesn’t stop with player names -- it extends to team names as well. And while there are some unique names on the men’s side -- the Albany Great Danes is a pretty great name, and the Iona Gaels are, well, interesting, what’s caught my eye once again this year is the “Lady” names.
In the Albuquerque region, for example, the 13 seed is the Stephen F. Austin Ladyjacks. The 14 seed, however, is the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks. The Stephen F. Austin’s men’s teams, of course, are also the Lumberjacks. So why are their women’s teams the Ladyjacks? And what, you ask, is a Ladyjack? The Lumber/Ladyjacks home page gives no indication whatsoever.
Of course, this ladyfication is unnecessary in almost every case. Certainly bears (Missouri State Lady Bears, Baylor Lady Bears), frogs (TCU Lady Frogs), tigers (LSU Lady Tigers), flames (Liberty Lady Flames), volunteers (Tennessee Lady Vols) and even monarchs (Old Dominion Lady Monarchs) can all be either male or female.
Indeed, bulldogs (Georgia Lady Bulldogs) can be male or female as well. However, bulls are, by definition, male -- specifically, “adult male bovine mammals.” Which makes the South Florida Bulls women’s basketball team all the more intriguing. To call their women’s teams the South Florida Lady Bulls would be pure oxymorony; to give the appropriate gender to the bovine mammals and call them the South Florida Cows would provide entirely too much fodder for opposing fans. Thus, with no better alternative, the South Florida women are known as the Bulls.
The Southern California women, however, are not known as the Lady Trojans, as you might guess, or even the Trojans, which would be appropriate, as “Trojan” is defined as, “A native or inhabitant of ancient Troy,” with no specific male or female designation given. But USC’s women are, in fact, known as the Southern California Women of Troy. Personally, I think that sounds more like a gentlemen’s club than a women’s basketball team, but I didn’t get a vote on the matter. And of course, up until 1912, the USC teams were known as either the Methodists or Wesleyans, so I suppose even Women of Troy is an improvement.
The nickname I still don’t get is Louisiana Tech. Their men’s teams are the Bulldogs. Their women’s teams? The Lady Techsters.
I guess it’s better than the Cows.
But Is A Sextillion Bigger Than A Gazillion?
I’m going to make a confession here: I love Danny Sheridan. I wish I could say my abiding love was the result of having used his wagering wisdom to make a bunch of money, but the truth is, I love him for the simple gift he gives me every Monday after Selection Sunday: his odds against winning the tournament for all 65 tournament entries, printed in the sports section of USA Today.
Rarely am I interested in his favorites -- this year, both Duke and Connecticut, at 4:1 -- rather, I eagerly jump to the end of the list, where the Winthrops and the Oral Robertses of the world reside, for it is here that Danny starts getting into some really trippy math.
In 2001, the odds against Monmouth were 4 gazillion to 1; in 2002, the odds against Winthrop were 14 gazillion to 1; in 2003, the odds against IUPUI (Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, better known as Ooey-Pooey), were 100 gazillion to 1. In 2004, Danny and I had a bit of a lover’s spat; for reasons I cannot, and could not comprehend, and which he regretfully never explained, Danny refused to give any odds longer than 10,000 to 1, which he assigned to East Tennessee State. We were back on good terms last year, when he assigned the winner of the Oakland/Alabama A&M play-in game odds of 22 gazillion to 1. So you can understand my breathlessness as I turned to page 25E.
And perhaps you can understand my confusion when I found the longest odds to be those against Oral Roberts, at 5 sextillion to 1. It wasn’t just that there was no team with odds longer than 22 gazillion to 1 that threw me -- it was that not a single set of odds involved even a single gazillion.
What, exactly, was this sextillion of which Danny spoke? I Googled it, and found a page on Wikipedia detailing “Names of Large Numbers.” And it turns out that not only is a sextillion a pretty big number -- it’s one followed by 21 zeroes -- but “gazillion” isn’t even a real number! Which means that if you did bet a dollar on Ooey-Pooey in 2003, and they had won, the bookies wouldn’t have even known how much money to pay you.
Which is why I’m so glad that Danny is now taking his oddsmaking more seriously and only using real numbers. And to put those Oral Roberts odds in some sort of visual context, the odds against them winning the tournament are 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000:1.
In other words, if you bet a dollar on Oral Roberts to win the whole tournament, and they do, you would pretty much own Las Vegas. I bet you could probably buy yourself a bunch of iPods, too.
Good Night, And Good Luck
As we look forward to this year’s tournament, I’d like to pause to look back on the career of Temple Owls coach John Chaney, who retired Monday after a 24-year tenure at Temple that included 17 NCAA tournaments, six Atlantic-10 Conference tournament titles, five conference coach-of-the-year awards, five Elite Eights, and twice being named national coach of the year. At Temple and Division II Cheyney State, where he won a national championship in 1978, he earned 741 coaching wins; Texas Tech’s Bobby Knight, Oklahoma State’s Eddie Sutton, Arizona’s Lute Olson and Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski are the only active college coaches with more career wins.
The numbers, though, hardly defined Chaney’s success. He was notoriously demanding of his players, running legendary practices at 5 a.m. daily, but using those early morning-sessions not just to teach his vaunted matchup zone, but to pester, plead, and preach lessons about education, success, commitment and discipline. His players won, and they went to class.
He was emotionally intense, screaming himself hoarse on the sidelines, tie pulled loose, and sometimes his emotions led him to bad decisions -- last year he sent in a player to commit hard fouls against St. Joseph’s because he felt his team was being treated unfairly by officials, and in a now-infamous post-game incident in 1994, he threatened Massachusetts coach John Calipari. In both cases, he admitted he was wrong, apologized, and made peace -- upon hearing of Chaney’s retirement, Calipari, now at Memphis, said, “We had an unbelievable rivalry that was heated and smoking, and he tried to choke me after a game, and [now] we’re friends.” St. Joseph’s coach Phil Martelli said, “He elevated Temple basketball, Philadelphia basketball, and Atlantic Ten basketball to a level that all coaches strive to meet.” Along the way, he also became the face of Temple University, elevating the school along with the basketball program. And when he saw something he saw was unfair or unjust, like the NCAA’s Proposition 48, which he felt unfairly penalized poor city kids, he spoke out against it -- and at Monday’s press conference announcing his retirement, he promised to continue to do so.
Though many called for Chaney’s job last year after the St. Joe’s incident, Chaney wanted to leave on his terms, when the time was right. Unfortunately, because of his wife’s health, that time is now. Last week, after his team knocked off the sixth-ranked team in the country, George Washington, in the Atlantic-10 tournament, he told reporters, “My wife’s been with me for 54 years. I told her she should have left me a long time ago. But she stayed with me through it all. She just asked me to look into nursing homes for her. Nursing homes! Are you kidding me? I’m her husband. I told her I’m going to take care of her. And that’s what I’m going to do.”
The sportswriters keep saying that he was a true original, that there will not be another like him. For the sake of college basketball, for the sake of education in this country, and for the sake of the countless young men and women who learn about much more than basketball by playing for a coach like John Chaney, I sincerely hope they’re wrong.
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