Armadillo: Thursday's six-pack
Odds to win the college football national title game next year:
Odds are from the Westgate SuperBook
3-1— Alabama
8-1— Florida State, Ohio State, Oklahoma, USC
10-1— Louisville
12-1— Michigan, LSU
20-1— Clemson, Oklahoma State, Texas
25-1— Penn State, Auburn
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Armadillo: Thursday's List of 13: Doing some thinking out loud……
13) Tennessee Volunteers are only team that played all four teams in the Final Four this season; they were 0-5 against them, losing twice to South Carolina.
12) 1982 title game: North Carolina 63, Georgetown 62. UNC’s bench played a total of 13:00, Hoyas’ subs played total of 22:00. Maybe things have changed less than I think.
11) Was pricing some Air Jordan sneakers the other day, have never owned any. Damn, they’re expensive!!!! No thanks.
10) When a mid-major basketball school with limited resources wins a lot, it usually means they hire a lot of coaches, since the $$ schools poach their coaches. Take VCU, for instance…….
2002-06— Jeff Capel 79-41, 50-22 in CAA (went to Oklahoma)
2006-09— Anthony Grant 76-25, 45-9 in CAA (went to Alabama)
2009-15— Shaka Smart 163-56, 74-30 in CAA/A-14 (went to Texas)
2015-17— Will Wade 51-20, 28-8 in A-14 (went to LSU)
2017-present— Mike Rhoades (hired from Rice)
Keep in mind Capel/Grant both got fired and Smart is struggling at Texas. Maybe it is best to be the big fish in a smaller pond. And VCU does pay its coach well (Wade made $1.4M this season).
9) Detroit Red Wings will miss NHL playoffs this season for first time in 26 years.
8) Having instant replay stuff decided by NFL people in New York instead of by the ref on the field will be a good thing. Problem is, if there are ten games on at 1:00 and four of them have replay issues at the same time, which games take precedence?
7) UMass hired Matt McCall as its new basketball coach, after Pat Kelsey skipped out on them at the last minute last week. McCall is a former assistant for Billy Donovan at Florida; he went 48-18 in two seasons as the coach at Chattanooga.
6) Interesting article on espn.com this week, on how in the 90’s, Gonzaga University was in financial trouble; their undergraduate enrollment had dipped from 4,176 in 1990 to 2,791 in 1998.
Gonzaga’s basketball team started winning in ’99; in 2000, the freshman class was 900 kids and now, since 2004, seven new buildings have been built on campus, so the school that is located in eastern Washington (Spokane) is thriving, in part because of basketball’s success.
Undergraduate enrollment this year is 5,160.
5) Mets closer Jeurys Familia got a 15-game suspension for domestic violence issues.
4) Red Sox OF Mookie Betts has bowled seven perfect (300) games. Impressive.
3) Wyoming 81, Coastal Carolina 57— Last year, Nevada lost the opener of CBI final and then beat Morehead State twice in Reno to win tourney title. Same thing could be happening here; Cowboys made 12-31 on arc, while Coastal was 5-26 playing in high altitude. Final in Friday.
2) St Peter’s 77, Furman 51— Niko Medved is a coach who just jumped from Furman to Drake; he didn’t wait until the Paladins’ run in the CIT was over- he just bolted, so they played this game at St Peter’s with an interim coach. He couldn’t have waited a couple days? Coach Medved did his players a big disservice; in my opinion, he’s a creep.
For the record, Furman plays in the SoCon, the #13 league- they tied for first in and are #95 in country. Only two teams in the MVC, the #10 league, are ranked higher than Furman- Wichita State and Illinois State. Drake is the #258 team; not even sure why this guy changed jobs. Can the money be that much better?
To their credit, St Peter’s made 13-27 on the arc in this game; their reward is a trip to Corpus Christi for the tournament final Friday.
1— Corpus Christi 79, UMBC 61— Retrievers played without Jairus Lyles, were held to their lowest scoring output of season. Corpus Christi hosts the championship game against St Peter’s on Friday night— solid national TV exposure for these teams.