Texas Honky Tonk
March 15th, 2007 at 11:26 am
Now that the NCAA tournament is officially underway, we thought we’d handicap the five Texas teams in the field. We can’t just give away our expertise while your brackets are still open, after all.
Texas Tech Red Raiders — Their frontcourt depends on two immobile guys who look like they’d utterly dominate a church league. At this level, not so much. There’s a reason any team with a athletic, mobile big men tore Tech up. It’s surprising that they made the tournament as an at-large team, it’ll be shocking if they beat Boston College today, and it’ll take a miracle to knock off Georgetown in the second round.
Texas A&M Corpus Christi Islanders — It’s their first tournament appearance in school history, and their first game is against a team, Wisconsin, that hung around the top five in the polls all year. Enjoy it while you can, fellas.
North Texas Mean Green — No one has a better name than the Mean Green. No one’s giving them, as a 15 seed, a chance to go anywhere, either.
Texas A&M Aggies — The bigger the game, the more the pressure, the better point guard Acie Law IV gets. At this point, after witnessing in person that miracle shot he hit to send the last Texas game into overtime, I’ll believe anything. Let’s say A&M reaches the Elite Eight against #1 Ohio State and Greg Oden. Law could drop 60, and I’d just nod my head and say, “Sounds about right.”
Texas Longhorns — We all know about Kevin Durant, but this team is really going to need guards D. J. Augustin and A. J. Abrams to play well. And Damion James has to stay out of foul trouble so as not to expose our inexperienced bench.
A final point: Even if I wasn’t a UT alum, I’d still be rooting for the Longhorns to win it all, just so the pundits wouldn’t call for Durant to stick around college another year. If he decides that’s what he wants, which is possible, according to a Washington Post profile today, no problem, he’s free to do that. But for everyone not in his family encouraging him to stay in school, look at this way: The sooner Durant gets into the NBA, the sooner he gets out from under his league-mandated rookie contract. Then everyone expects him to sign a new deal at the maximum salary allowed in the NBA’s collective-bargaining agreement. In Durant’s prime, that will be worth somewhere around $20-30 million per year. There is no other scenario on Earth where we could encourage someone to pass up on $20 million dollars. So why do we ask it of young athletes?
March 16th, 2007 at 11:43 am
I suggested to a number of legislators and staff before bill filing that the Legislature statutorily forbid Durant from leaving for the NBA, paying the equivalent of his rookie contract next year out of the PUF.
No takers.
March 17th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Intriguing, I would’ve seconded, Grits.