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Monday, March 16, 2009
Johnson, mother survive Selection Sunday
Dayton guard Marcus Johnson had to calm his nerves during those tense moments before the NCAA Selection Show on Sunday, and he also had to keep his mother, Felicia Jefferies, under control while the Flyers waited to learn their fate.
“I told my mom they were doing a Selection Show party for us (at the Frericks Center). I told her about 20 minutes before we went on stage, ‘I’m gonna have to call you back. I’m going into the gym to do this.’ I’m on stage, and she’s blowing me up (making his phone vibrate non-stop). I’m like, mom, I can’t pick up the phone now.
“She was just excited. She was just as excited as me. That whole morning, she said her stomach was in a knot. She was so nervous. She wanted to see me play (in the NCAA tournament). I had a lot of support on that.”
Like many, Johnson is vexed the NCAA selection committee seems to favor the BCS schools when it comes to handing out at-large bids. The 10-person panel awarded just four of the 34 berths to non-BCS schools, making the Flyers one of the lucky few.
“The BCS schools, it seems like they (almost) have an automatic bid,” Johnson said. “It seems like the other schools, we have to work harder.”
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Your Minneapolis travel guide (go for it)
I’ve been to Minneapolis many times. Great city. And if you’re worried about the weather, the forecast for the weekend is favorable: highs in the mid-50s.
UD plays West Virginia in the first round of the NCAA tournament at 3 p.m. Friday at the Metrodome. That’s good news if you’re thinking about buying tickets today. I checked out gophersports.com and found two really good seats (Section 134) for a total of $386. That’s for all sessions Friday and Sunday.
If you want to deal with scalpers, I highly recommend hanging out at Hubert’s, a famous sports bar right across from the dome. I picked up two sweet Vikings tickets last fall just outside the front door. Paid just over face value. Then again, the scalper was really hungover and wanted to go home.
Basketball tickets aren’t a problem, but plane tickets could be an issue. I checked this morning, and a round-trip ticket out of Dayton (leaving Friday morning, returning Sunday) starts at $648. They’re not much better out of Cincinnati ($502) or Columbus ($485).
If you do fly, THE BEST bit of advice I can offer about Minneapolis is this: DO NOT rent a car or flag down a taxi. Take the light rail from the airport to downtown. It is fantastic, and last fall when I was in the Twin Cities the fare was less than $2. The light rail is clean, efficient and stops right at the Metrodome. Other downtown stops get you within a few blocks of dozens of hotels and restaurants. It’s about a 20-minute train ride from the airport to the dome.
Finding a hotel shouldn’t be an issue. I usually stay at the Embassy Suites, a nice place that is a 10-minute walk from the dome. There are plenty of other options, including the upscale Graves 601 across from Target Center. I stayed there once and felt like I was dropped in the middle of a chic music video shot in Amsterdam. Never again.
Downtown Minneapolis is pretty vibrant on the weekends. Plenty of options for food and drink. If you’re looking for something you wouldn’t see in Dayton, I suggest Brit’s Pub, which features lawn bowling. It’s at 1110 Nicollet Ave., across from Target’s world headquarters.
Frankly, the procrastinating UD fan couldn’t have picked a better venue than Minneapolis. It’s easy to get to and it’s easy to get around. Prices are reasonable, too.
So if you’re thinking about heading north, go for it.
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Non-BCS schools get no respect
The BCS schools have a racket going on when it comes to the NCAA tournament. Maybe it shows my bias for the hometown team, but you can’t tell me that schools from the six power conferences deserved to get 30 of the 34 at-large bids. No way.
They have almost all of the TV exposure, they have the big bucks from cash-cow football programs, and now they appear to have the ability to work the NCAA Selection Committee like puppets.
No Creighton or St. Mary’s in the field? Just one at-large team from the Mountain West Conference?
Only Dayton, Xavier, Butler and BYU made the tourney among teams outside the BCS. Despicable.
The Big Ten and other BCS teams load up on home games during non-conference play, maybe test themselves once or twice, and go 12-2. Then, if you split your conference games, you’ve got a 20-win season and an NCAA bid. It ain’t right.
I watched the Illinois-Penn State game in Champaign during the regular-season, and I thought both teams were awful. Penn State didn’t make the field, thankfully, but the Illini were a No. 5 seed. And they certainly didn’t look like an upper-tier Atlantic 10 team to me.
In 2003-04, 12 non-BCS schools were invited to the Dance as at-large teams. That number dropped to nine the next year, eight after that, six the last two seasons and just four this year. Pitiful.
At least the Flyers, deservedly so, made the field — but only as an 11 seed. That tells me the margin for getting in was so slim that another defeat, say losing at George Washington or La Salle instead of winning by two, and they were NIT-bound.
It was neat, though, to see the unbridled joy of the Flyers as they celebrated their NCAA bid Sunday. London Warren was so moved that he wept unashamedly — and he wasn’t the only Flyer crying.
Kurt Huelsman, Stephen Thomas and others let the tears flow.
“All the stuff has paid off, all the work you put into it,” Huelsman said. “This is why you play college basketball.
“For a lot of these guys, basketball is all they’ve got. It means everything to us. That’s why it’s a dream come true — and we’re going to take advantage of it.”
