Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Fighting (Irish) Words
-- Frank Isola of the New York Daily News goes to print with a rumor. Rick Majerus may succeed Mike Davis at Indiana (though I wouldn't count on it). Particularly after CBS SportsLine's Gregg Doyel dribbled about Utah's ethical transgressions during Rick's tenure.-- Todd Burlage of the Fort Wayne (IN) Journal Gazette has a few choice words for ACC fans. His argument? The Big East is the better conference. His evidence? More persuasive than you might think.
Wake Forest, North Carolina and Duke are all fine teams and deserving of the hype and credit they receive. But to anoint Georgia Tech and Maryland as sure-fire tournament teams based on preseason predictions and exaggerated claims of league superiority is ludicrous.
Georgia Tech is 13-7 overall, 4-5 in the league and has lost five of its last seven. Maryland is also 13-7 overall, 4-5 in the league and has lost its last two...to Clemson and Miami...
The Big East, not the ACC, has the last two national champions.
The Big East has seven Sweet 16 teams the past two years. The ACC has three.
The ACC sent two teams (Duke and Georgia Tech) to the Final Four last year. Big East beast Connecticut beat them both on its way to the national title.
If recent tournament history isn't convincing enough, maybe the best argument for Big East supremacy comes from the epicenter of the ACC, where Big East defectors Virginia Tech and Miami are more than holding their own.
In their own arrogance and ignorance, the ACC coaches picked Virginia Tech and Miami to fight for last place in the league...But these two Big East busts already have combined for 11 ACC wins this season.
-- Digger Phelps dug himself into a hole last night when he suggested Notre Dame would tonight beat Boston College. The Boston Globe's normally astute Michael Vega, however, secured only a handful of awkward quotes from Al Skinner for his article about the controversy. Notre Dame, by the way, is not going to beat Boston College. Not. Even. Close.
