A friendly reminder to join our challenge on ESPN here. You have until noon tomorrow to fill out your bracket and join the group. Winner gets space on the blog to trash talk to his or her heart’s desire. Plus a picture, if you want.
Is your basketball knowledge greater than ours? Here’s your chance to find out!
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Duke earned a 1-1 draw against the MLS club New England Revolution in a scrimmage played Wednesday morning at the WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary, NC. As part of its preseason schedule, the Revolution are spending a week in North Carolina, playing three games including this morning’s match versus the Blue Devils.
New England opened the scoring in the 13th minute when forward Zack Schilawski slotted one past Duke goalkeeper James Belshaw. Just a minute later though, the Blue Devils equalized as Nick Sih headed headed home a Blue Devil corner kick. Though just a scrimmage, the game became chippy at points with a couple of hard challenges that got players yelling. Each team had plenty of chances throughout the remainder of the match, but none found the back of the net.
The game marked the return of Revolution players Darrius Barnes (Duke ‘08) and Mike Videira (Duke ‘06). Barnes did not see any action in the contest while Videira played the final forty five minutes for New England in the center of its midfield. Videira had one of New England’s best chances in the second half as he nearly scored on a header in the 76th minute.
The game marked the third of seven spring matches for the Blue Devils. Duke fell 3-2 to the Carolina Railhawks on February 20 and 2-1 to N.C. State on March 4. The Blue Devils’ spring practices continue for the upcoming weeks with their next match not coming until April4 against CSN Cork. For the full spring schedule, click here.
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President Obama filled out his NCAA tournament bracket with ESPN senior writer Andy Katz today at noon on SportsCenter.
The President predicted that Kansas, Kansas State, Kentucky and Villanova would all reach the Final Four.
A minor problem for Mr. Obama, however, was his misspelling of “Syracuse” when he chose the Orange to edge out Butler in the Sweet 16. When Katz informed the President that he forgot the “r” in Syracuse, Mr. Obama laughed at his mistake and joked that his daughters would tease him for the error.
Mr. Obama is an staunch supporter of North Carolina and even played in a scrimmage with the Tar Heels during his presidential campaign in 2008.
Even though his personal aide, Reggie Love, attended Duke and played on the basketball team, President Obama refused to put the Blue Devils in the Final Four and instead advanced the Wildcats.
“I finally break away from Reggie Love and pick Nova,” Mr. Obama told Katz.
Last year, President Obama picked eventual champion North Carolina to win the NCAA tournament. Do you think his predictions are right this year?
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Carrick Felix, a 6-foot-6 wing player from the College of Southern Idaho, announced via his facebook page Tuesday that he intended to accept Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski’s scholarship offer and join the Blue Devils.
Carrick Felix
Felix is described as an extremely athletic player (a scouting report from Rivals.com described him as possessing “NBA Athleticism”) who is a tough-nosed defender on the perimeter and a hard, dedicated worker with upside on the offensive end as well. Felix averaged 14.8 points and 4.7 rebounds this season for the Golden Eagles while leading his team in blocks with 37.
“He’s an extreme athlete, a real high flier,” CSI coach Steve Gosar told Scout.com’s Dave Telep. “He’s got great conditioning and runs the court really well.
“He’s a great kid, he plays hard. He’s 6-feet-6, 195 pounds and a great kid. He’s all about winning. He’s got a big upside with three years to play. He’ll be all about the program. He’s got an unbelievable mom who has raised him to be a really good person.”
The signing of a junior college transfer is an unprecedented step for Krzyzewski, who has accepted only three transfer players during his entire tenure at the helm of the Blue Devils, all of whom came from four-year institutions—Roshown McLeod from St. John’s in 1995, Dahntay Jones from Rutgers in 2000 and Seth Curry from Liberty in 2009.
Due to NCAA transfer rules for players leaving junior colleges, Felix will not be required to sit out a season, as Curry has done this season. Felix will have three years of eligibility with the Blue Devils after he arrives on campus.
The signing of Felix was made possible when sophomore Olek Czyz opted to transfer to Nevada, opening up an additional scholarship available for the 2010-2011 season.
Felix’s athletic ability is on display in the following Youtube clips, which show him competing in his team’s preseason dunk contest. What do you think about the Felix signing and Coach K breaking with precedent by signing a JUCO player? Excited by the signing?
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I’ve been pushing tempo-free stats to anyone who will listen all season long, but if you want to win the Chronicle Sports Blog’s Bracket Challenge, it never hurts to have some numbers on your side. Also, I can guarantee that you’re tired of listening to ESPN’s crew talk about “bounce-backability,” “toughness” and “athleticism” by now, if you weren’t already sick of it after the first 24 hours of coverage.
It’s fun to see that most of the statistically-based approaches to projecting the NCAA Tournament install Duke as the favorite. Of course, the NCAA Tournament is a probability-based affair. You’d look at me as if I were crazy if I suggested that the better team wins every game. But you’d also look at me as if I were crazy if I suggested that knowing the better team prior to the start of the game tells you nothing about the likelihood of predicting who is going to win that game.
To statistically project the NCAA Tournament, people who do this sort of thing use a quantitative ranking of NCAA teams, like the Pomeroy or Sagarin ratings. A computer that compares the rankings of two teams can determine the probability that one team will beat another. Then, using some sort of super-powerful wizard computer, the computer plays out the NCAA Tournament 5000 or one million times, compiles the results, and spits out the probability of each team entered into the tournament winning one, two, three, four, five and six games. For reasons that I don’t really understand, this is called the log5 method.
So here’s a compendium of tempo-free links to help you make your bracket picks:
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Kentucky and Duke won’t meet in this year’s NCAA Tournament unless both make it to the Final Four, but the two do have quite a history–recently, it has involved recruits John Wall and Patrick Patterson, and before that, it involved a certain foul-line jumper at the Meadowlands.
But now, the antagonistic relationship between the two bluebloods has entered a new arena: Congress.
A lovely Politico blog post today centered on the Republican Part’s primary race in Kentucky, in which two gentlemen, Trey Grayson and Rand Paul, are running. Grayson is a Harvard grad; Paul went to med school at Duke. So both have elite academic roots, right?
Well, not exactly, at least not according to Grayson’s newest campaign ads. In the spots, Grayson paints himself as a true Kentuckyite, and depicts Paul’s Duke connections as a negative. His slogan: Beat Duke. Vote Grayson. Simple, elegant, and a tad ridiculous, as Paul points out in his own respnse.
And who said sports don’t matter?
Thanks to former sports editor and current Politico writer Meredith Shiner for this little nugget.
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