The next three weeks will bring burberry handbags outlet inviting opportunity. Baylor was seeded No. 1 in the Des Moines Region on Monday and is heavily favored to win its first title since 2005. With six more victories in the tournament, the Bears (34-0) would become the first men’s or women’s team in N.C.A.A. basketball to win 40 games in a season.
During the regular season, Baylor defeated two other No. 1 seeds: Connecticut (29-4) of the Kingston Region and Notre Dame (30-3) of the Raleigh Region. It also defeated Tennessee, the eight-time national champion that is seeded second to the Bears in the Des Moines Region. (The fourth No. 1 seed in the tournament is Stanford (31-1) of the Fresno Region, which lost only to UConn.)
The Lady Vols (24-8) will carry the most poignant story line into the tournament. Coach Pat Summitt, who has won more games than any other men’s or women’s college basketball coach, announced last summer that she had early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Her role has diminished this season. There has been much speculation that she will step down after the N.C.A.A. tournament, but burberry beige handbag Tennessee has said nothing officially.
As of Sunday’s practice, “Pat said she still wants to coach,” Debby Jennings, a Tennessee spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.
In strict basketball terms, the overarching tournament question is this: Can anyone defeat Baylor?
Griner “plays above the rim and does things I’ve never seen another player do,” Baylor Coach Kim Mulkey said in a television interview during the Big 12 Conference tournament. “The thing she lacks is, she hasn’t won a national championship. That motivates her.”
Those considered among the greats of women’s college basketball — Nancy Lieberman, Cheryl Miller, Chamique Holdsclaw, Diana Taurasi and Candace Parker — all won titles. Griner seems poised to do the same this season and/or next. And she is expected to be the only college player named to the United States Olympic team for the 2012 London Games.
Last summer, Griner played with the women’s national team for the first time. Her repertory now includes a jump hook and the ability to burberry ties turn and shoot over either shoulder. Her passing is also much improved. She is shooting 61 percent from the field and averaging 23 points, 9 rebounds and 5 blocked shots.
“She put on weight and didn’t lose any speed,” said Gary Blair, the coach at Texas A&M, the defending national champion and the last team to defeat Baylor, in a 2011 regional final. “She’s stronger finishing her midrange shots. Her spin move to the basket is very good. I think she played the whole year without a single dunk. People can now appreciate her as a complete player rather than a dunker.”
In December, UConn took a 50-39 lead at Baylor with a little more than 13 minutes remaining. It employed a couple of defensive strategies, playing Griner straight up with center Stefanie Dolson, then using double-team help.
Still, Baylor prevailed by 66-61 as Griner collected 25 points, 9 rebounds and 9 blocked shots.
Texas A&M has tried to take the ball directly burberry scarves at Griner and has had some success with a floating zone, placing its center behind Griner and using the star guard Tyra White in a double team. In one of three meetings this season, the Aggies lured Griner into early foul trouble, yet Baylor won each game.
“What’s hard is not to foul her,” Blair said. “She jumps into you. Normally, people like to put a hand in her face to try to distract her. I haven’t found a thing that works consistently.”
The best defense against Griner might be a steadfast perimeter offense, said Muffet McGraw, the coach at Notre Dame, the 2011 national runner-up, which lost to Baylor by 94-81 in November. The Fighting Irish shot only 3 for 18 from 3-point range in that game, McGraw said, while UConn was somewhat more effective a month later against Baylor while hitting 11 of 29 shots beyond the arc.
“You’ve really got to crowd her inside; you can’t let her get 45,” McGraw said of Griner. “There’s also the philosophy of, do you try to hold everybody else down? But I think a lot of it is your burberry kids skirts cheap offense. If you hit your 3s, you’ve got a much better chance, because you’re not going to score around the basket.”
At point guard for Baylor, Odyssey Sims can be just as resourceful as Griner is at center. She is a calming presence who knows when to take over a game, averaging 15 points, shooting 39 percent from 3-point range and possessing the body control to stab inside. She is also hounding in Baylor’s press and man-to-man defense. This allows the tall wing players, Kimetria Hayden and Jordan Madden, to take chances, knowing that Griner is positioned as the ultimate backstop.
“The best thing they do is contest shots,” Blair said. “It’s like watching an N.B.A. game.”
Although Baylor could become vulnerable if burberry bags outlet Griner fell into foul trouble, Blair said: “They don’t call nitpicking fouls in the N.C.A.A. tournament. That’s to Baylor’s advantage. I think they’ll be the most physical defensive team in the tournament.”
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2012年3月11日星期日
The first is that you are female and attractive
There is a good chance that you will burberry handbags outlet fill out an N.C.A.A. basketball tournament bracket for an office pool sometime in the next three days. There is an even better chance that you spent the last four months focused on your family and career, not glued to ESPN. Therefore, you have only a passing familiarity with most of the teams in the tournament, and your bracket selections are just a series of guesses.
Those guesses say little about your basketball acumen but speak volumes about your personality. A tournament bracket can reveal more about a person’s character than handwriting analysis, or even phrenology. Read these five classic bracket archetypes and select the one that best fits your tournament strategy. Then, discover what your bracket tells the world about you. Warning: this system burberry beige handbag is so accurate that it can feel as if we opened a window to your very soul, so make sure you are seated comfortably.
The Favorites Bracket
You select favorites to win nearly every game. First seeds beat 16th seeds, fifth seeds beat 11th seeds, and if you dare pick a ninth seed to “shake things up” against an eighth, you make sure that the hierarchy is reaffirmed in the next round. You have Kentucky beating Syracuse in the final, and you view anyone who does not with suspicion.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT YOU You feel that societal order must be preserved at all costs, and that disagreeing with the wisdom of the selection committee is the first step toward anarchy. Upsets are for hippies. Rooting for underdogs is subversive. When Bucknell beat Kansas in 2005, you spent two weeks cowering in your fallout shelter eating Meals Ready-to-Eat. You do not have time to focus on a silly tournament, anyway: you have orphanages to foreclose upon and tie tacks to polish. You participate in the office pool only so your subordinates will think you are “one of the gang,” and the plebes totally fall for it. Your children attend military academies. Your pets attend K-9 academies. Your spouse attends support groups.
The Underdogs Bracket
You love a good upset and see no reason Savannah State cannot make the Round of 16 this year. While your bracket includes a few nods to common sense, you find yourself scribbling South Dakota State far more often than anyone not living in South Dakota should.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT YOU You truly believe that one person can change the world, but you cannot comprehend that Roy Williams or Thomas Robinson is probably that person. You are an incurable optimist, though several pharmaceutical companies are working on it. You applaud at the end of children’s movies, even when you are watching at home on DVD without children present. Your bracket strategy is also your investment strategy, burberry ties which is why you are wearing a sweater with holes in it, and in the unlikely event that Davidson wins the championship, you will use the winnings to help pay off that mortgage you took out in 2007.
The Out-of-Date Bracket
You overrate teams that were powerhouses about 20 years ago. You have Michigan going all the way. Nevada-Las Vegas is in your final four. What: Loyola Marymount did not make the tourney this year? What gives?
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT YOU Back in the early 1990s, you were single and had leisure time and disposable income to spare, so you spent winter evenings at the local tavern, hoisting beers and thrilling to the exploits of Bobby Hurley and Lionel Simmons. But now you have a family and a serious career, leaving you with little time for college basketball, but you cannot bring yourself to admit that your carefree weekends with Jerry Tarkanian ended decades ago. Don’t worry, friend. Grab a flannel shirt, pop the Spin Doctors into your CD player, and get ready for Georgetown and Indiana to make big runs. Your loved ones will break the news gently that you are actually watching ESPN Classic.
The Expert Bracket
You combine favorites with underdogs that you carefully selected based upon their strength of schedule, assist-to-turnover ratio and the expert opinions of the other message board posters at UnhealthyHoopsObsession.com. Your bracket is the product of 36 hours of painstaking research; you took burberry scarves breaks only to rank players 300 through 770 for your nine fantasy baseball drafts.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT YOU Data are your friends, perhaps your only friends. You understand that the purpose of a tournament pool is not to add zest to your basketball-watching experience or promote water cooler bonding, but to gain the 0.07 percent advantage over your co-workers that comes from turning a small diversion into a life-consuming chore. You believe co-workers admire your ability to steer all break-room conversations away from movies, family and life’s pleasures and toward Baylor’s R.P.I. rating. All the effort was worthwhile, however, when you finished tied for sixth in the pool in 2003, winning $56 and gloating for two days before beginning your research for the next year’s pool.
The Nickname Bracket
You pick the team with the coolest nickname to win every game. Wildcats are cooler than Cavaliers, Blue Devils are tougher than Bears, and while Badgers are fierce, the Wisconsin Honey Badgers would win not only the tournament, burberry kids skirts cheap but a Super Bowl and Wimbledon as well if they existed. When nicknames of indeterminate coolness face off, like Zips versus Shockers, you just flip a coin.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT YOU There are two possibilities. The first is that you are female and attractive. In this situation, your male colleagues find your strategy cute. They also find your sneezing, blinking and existing cute, so do not put too much stock in the intrinsic cuteness of your bracket strategy. The second is that you are an ironic hipster who does not fill out a bracket so much as “fill out a bracket.” The fact that you are too urbane to take the pool seriously is only slightly undercut by your knowledge that Vermont’s nickname is the Catamounts.
In either case, when you inevitably win the pool with this strategy, you are obligated to announce that you watched burberry bags outlet no basketball at all during the tournament, cannot imagine what everyone got so worked up about, and think that sports are overemphasized by society. Then, you must use your winnings to buy a Jeremy Lin jersey. Whether you are ever invited to another office social event depends upon which of the two categories you belong to.
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Those guesses say little about your basketball acumen but speak volumes about your personality. A tournament bracket can reveal more about a person’s character than handwriting analysis, or even phrenology. Read these five classic bracket archetypes and select the one that best fits your tournament strategy. Then, discover what your bracket tells the world about you. Warning: this system burberry beige handbag is so accurate that it can feel as if we opened a window to your very soul, so make sure you are seated comfortably.
The Favorites Bracket
You select favorites to win nearly every game. First seeds beat 16th seeds, fifth seeds beat 11th seeds, and if you dare pick a ninth seed to “shake things up” against an eighth, you make sure that the hierarchy is reaffirmed in the next round. You have Kentucky beating Syracuse in the final, and you view anyone who does not with suspicion.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT YOU You feel that societal order must be preserved at all costs, and that disagreeing with the wisdom of the selection committee is the first step toward anarchy. Upsets are for hippies. Rooting for underdogs is subversive. When Bucknell beat Kansas in 2005, you spent two weeks cowering in your fallout shelter eating Meals Ready-to-Eat. You do not have time to focus on a silly tournament, anyway: you have orphanages to foreclose upon and tie tacks to polish. You participate in the office pool only so your subordinates will think you are “one of the gang,” and the plebes totally fall for it. Your children attend military academies. Your pets attend K-9 academies. Your spouse attends support groups.
The Underdogs Bracket
You love a good upset and see no reason Savannah State cannot make the Round of 16 this year. While your bracket includes a few nods to common sense, you find yourself scribbling South Dakota State far more often than anyone not living in South Dakota should.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT YOU You truly believe that one person can change the world, but you cannot comprehend that Roy Williams or Thomas Robinson is probably that person. You are an incurable optimist, though several pharmaceutical companies are working on it. You applaud at the end of children’s movies, even when you are watching at home on DVD without children present. Your bracket strategy is also your investment strategy, burberry ties which is why you are wearing a sweater with holes in it, and in the unlikely event that Davidson wins the championship, you will use the winnings to help pay off that mortgage you took out in 2007.
The Out-of-Date Bracket
You overrate teams that were powerhouses about 20 years ago. You have Michigan going all the way. Nevada-Las Vegas is in your final four. What: Loyola Marymount did not make the tourney this year? What gives?
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT YOU Back in the early 1990s, you were single and had leisure time and disposable income to spare, so you spent winter evenings at the local tavern, hoisting beers and thrilling to the exploits of Bobby Hurley and Lionel Simmons. But now you have a family and a serious career, leaving you with little time for college basketball, but you cannot bring yourself to admit that your carefree weekends with Jerry Tarkanian ended decades ago. Don’t worry, friend. Grab a flannel shirt, pop the Spin Doctors into your CD player, and get ready for Georgetown and Indiana to make big runs. Your loved ones will break the news gently that you are actually watching ESPN Classic.
The Expert Bracket
You combine favorites with underdogs that you carefully selected based upon their strength of schedule, assist-to-turnover ratio and the expert opinions of the other message board posters at UnhealthyHoopsObsession.com. Your bracket is the product of 36 hours of painstaking research; you took burberry scarves breaks only to rank players 300 through 770 for your nine fantasy baseball drafts.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT YOU Data are your friends, perhaps your only friends. You understand that the purpose of a tournament pool is not to add zest to your basketball-watching experience or promote water cooler bonding, but to gain the 0.07 percent advantage over your co-workers that comes from turning a small diversion into a life-consuming chore. You believe co-workers admire your ability to steer all break-room conversations away from movies, family and life’s pleasures and toward Baylor’s R.P.I. rating. All the effort was worthwhile, however, when you finished tied for sixth in the pool in 2003, winning $56 and gloating for two days before beginning your research for the next year’s pool.
The Nickname Bracket
You pick the team with the coolest nickname to win every game. Wildcats are cooler than Cavaliers, Blue Devils are tougher than Bears, and while Badgers are fierce, the Wisconsin Honey Badgers would win not only the tournament, burberry kids skirts cheap but a Super Bowl and Wimbledon as well if they existed. When nicknames of indeterminate coolness face off, like Zips versus Shockers, you just flip a coin.
WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT YOU There are two possibilities. The first is that you are female and attractive. In this situation, your male colleagues find your strategy cute. They also find your sneezing, blinking and existing cute, so do not put too much stock in the intrinsic cuteness of your bracket strategy. The second is that you are an ironic hipster who does not fill out a bracket so much as “fill out a bracket.” The fact that you are too urbane to take the pool seriously is only slightly undercut by your knowledge that Vermont’s nickname is the Catamounts.
In either case, when you inevitably win the pool with this strategy, you are obligated to announce that you watched burberry bags outlet no basketball at all during the tournament, cannot imagine what everyone got so worked up about, and think that sports are overemphasized by society. Then, you must use your winnings to buy a Jeremy Lin jersey. Whether you are ever invited to another office social event depends upon which of the two categories you belong to.
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