What are you doing without March Madness?

Got an email from a friend Doug Workman. Thought I’d share.

Given that I had allocated yesterday to watching UVA basketball, I tried to figure out what to do with myself when I got home from work. Fortunately I still had on my DVR the recordings of the last 3 games from last year’s Big Dance. So last night I watched the first of those 3 games, which was the Purdue game. Even though I was obviously aware of the outcome, with almost one year having lapsed since the game, the only play that was still vividly in my mind was the tap-out play to force the overtime; in other words THE PLAY. So I was able to watch the rest of the game with a mostly fresh set of eyes.

And the following are my observations: Memory had me thinking that it was the Big 3 and other than THE PLAY, Clark and Diakite serving as mostly supplementary players. That was not necessarily the case. Mamadi was a major contributor from the outset. He had 4 blocks and was UVA’s 3rd leading scorer with 14 points. Moreover, Chris Webber spoke in real time before THE PLAY of Clark being the heart and soul of the team, which was an interesting observation given that Clark was held scoreless until he was fouled with something like 1.6 seconds left in the OT. Clark only had 3 other assists, other than the one that will etch him forever in UVA lore. TB used a very short rotation. Braxton played 2 minutes off the bench and Jack was the only other non-starter with major minutes. Part of TB’s using Jack was to negate the 7’3” Haarms, and he did an excellent job of doing so. Hunter did not have one of his best games that night although he was excellent in the OT. Virtually all of the offense was provided by Ty and Guy. Guy was cold in the 1st half and then heated up in the 2nd .

The comments of Barkley and the Jet after the game were particularly insightful. Edwards had 42 points and Purdue’s next highest scorer had only 7. Edwards shot 56% from the field and 52% from beyond the arc. The rest of the Purdue team shot 43% from the field and 30% from beyond the arc. Barkley pointed out that a team cannot let one guy do that to them. I know that TB switched up Clark, Hunter and Guy all on Edwards, but there was almost no doubling on Edwards. I wonder whether he could have done some within the framework of the pack line defense. It appeared to me that Barkley’s criticism was mostly valid. The Jet pointed out that tap-out plays are typically done at the end of practice when the players are tired and have their minds on being somewhere else. To have the tenacity to work on those plays reflects a character which both Smith and we as Wahoo fans can commend. I still have two games left to watch and I intend to savor them like fine wine. Wahoo-wah. Hope you and your family are safe and healthy.

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It’s tough among many other things. March and April are such great times for sports, it’s fans, the players, and everyone involved. The world has really come to a halt with all this. Sports in general have been a huge form of escapism from our problems for many people (including myself), but now sports are the problem. Stay safe and healthy everyone. We’ll miss sports so much, but they got cancelled to ensure that millions of people stay healthy. For now, there are some great games and highlights on YouTube, movies on Netflix among other sites, and 30 for 30s on ESPN. Stay healthy and as always, go hoos!

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@Marktykobe how is ty taking all of this over in Phoenix? What are his thoughts on the suspended season? Etc

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I had an interesting suggestion that we should hold an online watch party for last year’s NCAAT games or maybe just the top games of recent years. Above my position to figure out how that could work. Any ideas?

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The last 3 (elite 8, final four, championship) are all on YouTube, but I’m not sure where to find the others. It would be awesome to rewatch the games from last year. Watching the natty last night brought back so many great memories

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We do have a twitch channel now where we could stream it. I just don’t think we have the rights to rebroadcast the Youtube video…we could do it just time everyone’s video though…not sure how they would work.

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@Merch how are you planning to use the twitch channel? What’ll be streamed? Who’ll stream it? Etc

This is great

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Please, someone needs to figure this out or I’m going to have to spend the next week + watching professional cycling. Ahhhhhh!

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Just in case you don’t know, cycling is only slightly more interesting than watching paint dry.

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We were planning on streaming the podcasts, live post game & pre-game…charity events. may be some fortnite or 2k…we’ll see.

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Just an idea for the game replays - maybe a private video call platform that allows for screen sharing like Zoom or Google Meet-up would be okay? I’ve only ever done screen sharing on those platforms so that I could walk others through Powerpoint-like presentations for trainings but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work for videos too as long as the person screening the game through their screen share has good wifi. I’m no tech expert though so I could be totally wrong :sweat_smile:

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sounds like you know more than us

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It would be really cool if you could get some of the players to do like weekly 2K with the fans. I know a lot of people would tune in for that

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I can definitely look into the screen sharing video thing if there’s interest here! Would be cool to watch each game on the same day/time they were played last year

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I loved the idea of re watching. Doug made point earlier of Purdue game only remembering The Play and not appreciating body of the game until re watching

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Yeah, I can’t wait to watch for the things he mentioned the next time I watch the Purdue game! I love rewatching games with different perspectives like that. I just rewatched the Gardner-Webb game today, and actually seeing all of the adjustments the team made between the first half and the second half made the impression I had of that game come back to life in the context of the full body of the game, especially after so much time has passed!

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It’s not a technical issue, its more of a legal
issue with rebroadcasting rights owned by cbs

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2k would be a really good way to get the community involved.

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Yeah I guess what I was saying would still technically be considered rebroadcasting. And I definitely wouldn’t want to get this site involved in muddy legal issues like that! I’m not sure it would have worked anyways.

Those other things you mentioned sound great though! Appreciate being able to re-listen to some of the past podcasts too. It’s all such great content

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