Louis Orr is out at Seton Hall, after he had kind of a good year. Seton Hall was not expected to be a tournament team before the year started (or before the selection show started, actually), but they were. But Seton Hall decided they didn’t want to pay their Orr any longer.

The timing is weird, but… I dunno. I never really thought Louis Orr was that great of a coach. They’ve played some undisciplined ball… but in Louis Orr’s defense, he has to recruit from New Jersey. It’s too bad they waited this long to fire him… imagine the roster that Bob Huggins could’ve assembled at Seton Hall, recruiting kids from Trenton and Newark. It would’ve been able to frighten both UConn and the inmates at Rikers.

I thought about commenting on this earlier in the week, but by the time Monday rolled around, it seemed like the moment had passed… and if I had taken the time then to point out the suckiness of Tennesse’s Candace Parker’s dunk, it would have seemed just mean-spirited and sexist. And I try to hide the fact that I’m mean-spirited and sexist. Sometimes.

Anyway, I think Jason Whitlock nails it today, when he says that they kinda weren’t dunks, and even if they were… big fuckin’ deal. Not that I’m not happy for Candace Parker. She seemed excited about it, it got her some attention, it got her team some attention… that’s terrific. But do those dunks do anything for women’s college basketball? Do they do anything to make you want to watch? Are you putting up Candace Parker posters in your room because of them?

I dunno. All the glee that eminated from the women’s basketball analysts on ESPN seemed extremely starbury to me. They were patting themselves on the back for doing something sorta flashy, but something that ultimately has no impact on anything.

I could not agree with Whitlock more. To promote the dunk, to use it as an example of how great women’s basketball can be, is just dumb. “We can dunk, too!” is not a selling point. Sell the fundamentals. Sell the selfless play. Sell tits if you want to. But trying to get people to watch women’s basketball because of the dunks and athleticism… that’s like trying to get people to watch the Masters because of the cultural diversity.

In case you were wondering what it’s like to be the wife of a head coach at tournament time (and you know you were), here you go. I don’t really have much of an opinion on the subject myself, but I’ve always thought that Jim Boeheim was punching way out of his weight class with his wife Juli.

Now, that’s not the most flattering picture of her (unless you’re into teeth), but… Juli Boeheim is a fine looking older woman. I’ve got to think that would be valuable in recruiting. She’s a walking advertisement that says, “Come to Syracause and marry someone way more attractive than you are.” And it’s been working out quite well for Carmelo Anthony.

Those nineteen reasons would by the 19 players and recruits who were arrested under the Bob Huggins era at Cincinnati. One guy pleaded guilty to choking his girlfriend. One guy was arrested for assaulting police officers. One guy taped his roommate to a chair, burned him with a heated coat hanger, and stabbed him in the leg. But man, that guy could ball.

Anyway, Stewart Mandel makes the case against hiring Bob Huggins. He will win basketball games for you. That’s true. But he recruits exclusively from the same California Penal System that produced Rick Vaughn, his players do not graduate, and he’s a known saucebag.

But, back to the other hand… whoever ends up hiring him might also get OJ Mayo and Bill Walker, two prep studs who kinda sorta vow to go anywhere Huggins ends up.

“It could be a great thing to happen,'’ Mayo said of going to play for Huggins. “At the same time, we have to see where he ends up, what the school’s fan base is like, see what the fans think about him and make sure everything is great.'’

Everything might not be great… there’s likely to be some unhappy voices at whatever institution does end up hiring him. And unhappy voices tend to be louder than happy voices, even if outnumbered. So there’s still some hope for any other program out there that wants Mayo and Walker… two high school superstars who believe they’re NBA-ready and have sworn allegience to a criminal-recruiting boozehound.

What’s the big deal with the Missouri job? I don’t get it. Is there some legendary Missouri basketball history of which I am not aware? I don’t know why the job seems to be so highly sought-after. I don’t see it as a step up from Iowa or any other decent program in a BCS Conference.

Maybe they’re offering tons of cash. Maybe coaches see replacing Quin Snyder as a no-lose situation.  I dunno.

Nevertheless, rumored replacements have included Pitt’s Jamie Dixon (seems like it would be a backwards step for him), Iowa’s Steve Alford (him, too) LSU’s John Brady (him, too), Creighton’s Dana Altman (for him, it might be worth the move, and I think he’d be a great hire), and our old pal Bob Huggins.

To stick with Alford for a second… Indiana seemed like a lock. I know he’s got his critics, but what I saw of Iowa this year was very impressive. They work hard, they’re fundamentally sound, and they play excellent ball… I’ve been impressed with Iowa. The people at Indiana, apparently, have not. I guess they have their reasons.  Perhaps he still carries too much Bob Knight-related baggage.

Anyway, if I had a coaching vacancy to fill, I’d be looking to steal one of the coaches from the Missouri Valley… hire the coach from Bradley, Northern Iowa, Creighton, Missouri State, or Wichita State, and I don’t think you can go wrong.

One of my favorite things about the tournament thus far has been watching Florida’s weird-looking Joakim Noah. He’s got a Chris Bosh body and a Troy Polamalu haircut… and seems like a smart guy with a likable personality.

I had barely watched Florida this year, mainly because I felt the entire SEC sucked balls, and that there was no way that Florida was as good as their record. Maybe I was wrong about that (see what that looks like, Billy Packer?). They’re certainly hitting on all cylinders right now.

Anyway, I love how Noah sees the court. He doesn’t have the post-up skills of an NBA player at the moment (though he does have a nice spin move), of course, and he needs to get bigger if he wants to bang inside at the next level… but he sees the court extremely well, he’s got a nice touch around the basket, he plays aggressively, blocks shots, and he’s got a good feel for the game. I think he’d make the ideal Phoenix Sun.

And he wears a big blue dress sometimes. Any man with the courage to leave the house like that… deserves some respect. He also blew a kiss at the UW-Milwaukee band at the end of the last game… they had been shit-talking him all game long, and he responded by torching the Panthers and blowing a kiss at the band. Hard not to like that.

Florida/Georgetown is the late game on Friday.

I kinda harped on it yesterday on Deadspin, but I want to do it here, too… Bradley and Wichita State are very good basketball teams. It’s not a fluke that they’ve advanced this far. They’ve been the better team in the games they’ve played.

They’ve been well-prepared, disciplined, and as athletic as they need to be. They play defense, they take good shots, they run their offenses… they’re not intimidated, and they play like they expect to win. I’ve enjoyed watching them.

It’s a little bit of a shame, in fact, that their coaches are likely to be leaving… I haven’t heard any rumors or anything, but that’s how it goes. Coaches accomplish a lot at a smaller school, and then they move on to bigger schools. That’s how it goes. I kinda wish all the MVC coaches could stay in place, build their programs for 5-10 years and just see how good they can get.

I don’t mean to slight the other CinderFella, but I haven’t seen as much of George Mason… I have a feeling they’re losing to Wichita State, though. Various other tournament thoughts…

1. UConn hasn’t been all that impressive. It’s like, for some reason, they can’t get things hitting on all cylinders. A team with their talent should beat Kentucky a lot worse than they actually did.
2. I think Pitt’s Carl Krauser could best be described as a younger, angrier, Stephon Marbury.
3. Memphis looks like a team that can do some damage. Bucknell’s no pushover, Memphis just ran through them like Ron Jeremy plowing through a 38-year-old skank in a cheerleader outfit. Their athleticism is going to be difficult for any team to deal with.
4. Florida vs. Georgetown should be a very good game… I think both teams are playing at a very high level.

Hello everyone. I’m MJD. Perhaps you remember me.

Anyway, sorry for the hiatus. I have been, as you may have guessed, ball-deep in a college basketball orgy. It’s about all I’ve done over the past three days. And if I’ve learned one thing, it’s this: I am tired of hearing about your fucking bracket.

You are not the first person to ever fill one out.  You are not special or unique.  My enjoyment of this sporting event does not hinge on how many first round matchups you won or lost.
I just don’t care. I find it despicable that you’re rooting for a 3-seed over 14-seed because you’ve got the 3-seed winning it all. The tournament is about upsets, it’s about fun, it’s about great basketball and contrasting styles and David kicking Goliath in his steroid-shrunken balls… and it irks me to no end that people will root against historic upsets because of a tournament pool that they’re not going to win anyway. I’m sure there are those of you who feel differently.

Of course, I’m on Deadspin this weekend, and I’ll be back with you here on Monday… I hope you’re enjoying the tournament.

This is what the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament Selection Show would’ve been like if Trey Wingo were more like Andrew Dice Clay. Actual comments are in back. Trey Wingo’s comments, if he were more like Andrew Dice Clay, are in red.

Trey Wingo: Well, this is where all decisions are made, the NCAA selection headquarters in Indianapolis. And look at that fucking room. 30 women, one hairstyle. It’s like a girls’ gym teacher convention.

Stacey Dales-Schuman: I’m just happy that you, Trey Wingo, have joined women’s college basketball. No NFL right now.
Trey Wingo: I’m delighted to be here, but let me tell you something, sweetheart. If there was an NFL game today, believe me, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking about women’s fucking basketball. I’d plant my ass in front of a TV, drink a case of beer, root for someone to get injured, and then go fuck my wife before I passed out.

Trey Wingo: Listen, understand. ESPN has their arms completely around this event. Every single game of the tournament will be seen on the ESPN family of networks, which is great news if you’re a woman or a homo. Lifetime and Oxygen are in real fucking trouble this week, aren’t they?

Stacey Dales-Schuman: Check out Purdue. Cherelle George, suspended before the Big 10 tournament for academic reasons. We don’t know if she’s going to play.
Trey Wingo: What, did she fail Home Ec? Here’s your midterm, sweetheart. Do my fucking laundry and polish my knob. There, you get an A. Run along and play some basketball.

Trey Wingo: And then you have Tennessee, hey listen, the committee has always said go play a tough schedule and you’ll be rewarded. Was Tennessee rewarded or punished for that? And what’s their reward going to be, a new pants suit for the coach? Get the fuck outta here.

Stacey Dales-Schuman: I think what happened here was that Tennessee’s left cheek got smacked and then their right cheek got smacked.
Trey Wingo: Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on there, sweetheart. That’s the Diceman’s territory there. You want me to slap some asses, bring ‘em right here, bend ‘em over my knee, and I’ll paddle their flat little asses with my prick, OH!

Kara Lawson: How about the Kentucky women getting a higher seed than the Kentucky men? The ladies are rulin’ the roost in Lexington.
Trey Wingo: Wait a second, bitch. No one’s rulin’ anybody’s roost, cuz I’m about to put my cock in the henhouse right now. If the ladies at Kentucky want to rule the roost, they can play the men 5-on-5, and see how that goes. Loser has to toss my salad. Whaddaya say, bitch?

Trey Wingo: Vivian, before we let you go, we have to ask you, you were at Temple when John Chaney was there, so hey… you ever blow Bill Cosby?

Vivian Stringer: (John Chaney) touched my life in a very personal way and–
Trey Wingo: Oh, I bet he did, ya fuckin’ whore.

Trey Wingo: You want numbers? I got your numbers. How about 24 points and 26 rebounds… and 12 inches I’d like to shove down her fuckin’ throat, OH!

Trey Wingo: When we return, we will talk to the head of the selection committee and ask them: How the fuck can anyone stand to watch women’s basketball?

Check this out from ACC Now, the Atlantic Coast Conference blog at the Raleigh News & Observer. The Missouri Valley Conference, as you know, got just as many NCAA bids as did the ACC. This is, evidently, a major blow to the self-esteem of ACC fans.

The way they’re reacting, you’d think Bradley got a 1-seed, and is awaiting the winner of the Duke/UNC 8/9 game. I’m really sorry, fellas, that the selection comittee doesn’t give out bids based on conference reputation. Chris Paul is not walking through that door, fans. Charlie Ward is not walking through that door. Juan Dixon is not walking through that door. Nik Caner-Medley might walk through that door, but he’s not quite good enough.

Sometimes, you’re just don’t deserve more than 4 bids. Sometimes, you’re the third-best conference in the country. That’s OK. You can still join in our reindeer games. You just can’t have your entire conference in the tournament, just because you feel like it.

I don’t recall any of the selection committee member saying that the MVC was better than the ACC. But that’s how they’re taking it. I dunno. Some people are fragile.

Who else did they want to get in? I’m sorry, Florida State, but you can’t build an entire resume off of one win. And then there was Maryland, so confused and distraught by being left out of the field that they initially declined an NIT bid.

“All I want to know going into next year is what we need to do schedule-wise or whatever,” Terps coach Gary Williams said. ”

Well, I have an idea. You could not lose 8 of your last 13 games. You could not get your ass whooped in a must-win game against Boston College. Those ideas are radical, but… that might work. Sometimes you have to think outside the box.

Vaginas.

I don’t want John Chaney the coach to be remembered as the crazy old bastard who sent in a thug to break a player’s arm. I don’t want him to be remembered as the guy who threatened to kill John Calipari.

Actually, I guess I wouldn’t mind the second one. You can’t tell me that your eyes aren’t glued to SportsCenter every time they show that clip.

Chaney, Temple head coach for 24 years (though it seems like about 60) has retired. They don’t make coaches like John Chaney anymore. His retirement is a sad thing, for a lot of people. It’s sad for the Atlantic 10, it’s sad for people who like watching good basketball, it’s sad for Temple, and it’s sad for all of the young ballers in Temple’s recruiting area.

Whether I like it or not, he will be remembered for two incidents; incidents which most people see as a condemnation of his chracter, but I see as the marks of a passionate coach.

First, of course, he threatened to kill John Calipari. I’m not saying this is a great thing, but… ask yourself how excited you’d be in the coach of your favorite college basketball team stormed into a press conference being conducted by your arch rival’s coach, and then threatened to kill him.

Both guys laugh about it now, no one was hurt, and as fans, we get to enjoy a video clip that never ever gets old. Coaches so rarely threaten to kill each other anymore. The man stormed into a press conference with the intentions of physically fighting another head coach. A head coach about thirty years younger, at that. That’s phenomenal.

More recently, though, he sent a Temple bench player named Nehemiah Ingram into a game to take some hard fouls against an opponent that Chaney felt was setting illegal screens. Ingram ended up breaking another player’s arm. To me, it’s a non-issue.

He sent in a player to take play physical and send a message. 95% of the coaches in the country have done the very same thing. If you don’t think coaches routinely tell their players to play physical, to throw elbows, to send the message that they won’t be pushed around, you’re just wrong.

In this case, the player followed instructions, the opponent fell awkardly, and his arm broke. I’m sorry, as I’m sure John Chaney was, that the man was injured. But basketball can be a physical game, and injuries happen. Nehemiah Ingram was not the first player ever to take a hard foul, and John Chaney was not the first coach ever to instruct a player to do so.

Even if you can’t forgive the above incidents, even if you seem them as huge, harmful, mistakes, try to place them in the context of what else John Chaney has accomplished in his career.

John Chaney’s career, in fact, his life, has been about helping young people. You can’t even count the number of young men who’s lives have been changed, shaped, affected, maybe even saved, by John Chaney. It’s what he does. He’s made it his business. And if the trade-off for that is a near fight between head coaches and one guy breaking an arm, then sure, Nehemiah Ingram can break my arm.

And none of this even mentions what he’s accomplished as a coach. Temple’s been to the Elite Eight 5 times under Chaney. He’s got over 700 wins, becoming the first black head coach to get there. He’s a Hall-of-Famer. And there are a lot of black coaches around the country that can thank John Chaney. He had a lot to do with the push for the hiring of more black coaches in the NCAA in the ’90s.

There isn’t a lot that I can do to change it, but I think it’s a shame that John Chaney will be remembered by a lot of people just for the Nehemiah Ingram incident. That shouldn’t even register as a tiny little blip on his coaching career.

Just some quick-hitters for you… I’ll probably change my mind about everything by Thursday.

Toughest Bracket: Duke’s. 1 though 6, this bracket is the toughest. You start with Duke, the #1 overall seed in the tournament. Then there’s Texas with their balanced team and dominant bigs. The 3 is Iowa, a solid team that plays as fundamentally sound as anyone. An underrated and dynamic LSU team is 4th, the on-fire Syracuse Orangemen are 5th, and West Virginia and their difficult-to-prepare-for style is sixth. I think it’s a tough draw for all involved.  And George Washington at #8 is just plain fucked.
Runner-up: UConn’s bracket, featuring veteran-laden Illinois, a peaking UNC, and an unpredictable Michigan State… but Tennessee at #2 is oh so weak.  I think Bruce Pearl was sweating so much because he knew what he’d have to do to the guys on the selection committee to get a seed that high.

Weakest Bracket: Memphis’s. UCLA as a 2-seed? Man, the value of a 2-seed has really slipped recently.  As groups, I like both the 3-seeds and the 4-seeds better than the 2-seeds. Gonzaga, because of their resume, probably deserved a 2, but I don’t think they’re actually better than the 3 that they got. Kansas is a good 4 and a dangerous team, and Pitt’s probably the best 5-seed in the tournament. I don’t see Indiana doing much at the 6-seed.

Conference that got the happy ending: Pac-10. UCLA as a 2 and Cal as a 7 are both just absurd.

Conference that got the shaft: Nothing really stands out here. I think 4 teams from the MVC was fair, and 4 from the ACC was fair. It seems like the committee, when it came to seeding, really gave the benefit of the doubt to the power conferences, and that’s probably as it should be.

Teams I like to exceed expectations: Illinois, UConn, Georgetown, Villanova, Bucknell, Xavier, Iowa, LSU.

Teams I think will fall short of expectations: Arizona, Nevada, Michigan State, UCLA, Indiana, Texas, Syracuse.

Temple took down George Washington in the quarterfinals of the Atlantic-10 tournament, ensuring that the A-10 now has two bids, the tournament winner and GW, thus taking a spot away from one of the teams currently perceived as being on the bubble.

Not only did Temple beat them, they beat them by 15. The Temple zone just killed them. How many teams that are destined for 4- or 5-seeds are looking at GW and just licking their chops right now?

Anyway… this is bad news for the Cincinattis, Florida States, Seton Halls, Hofstras, and Creightons of the world. I suggest those schools pick a cheerleader, give her a pair of kneepads, and send her to the selection committee meeting. Think about the touching and emotional return that Kristi Yamaoka could make… showing up in a neck brace and fighting through the pain… Good Lord, I am a terrible person.

And the Salukis have an automatic bid anyway. So nevermind… go about your business while I burn in hell.

The Missouri Valley Conference isn’t letting anyone do cheer routines that involve throwing people into the air or stacking people higher than two levels during the MVC women’s tournament this week. The new rules are a reaction to the SIU cheerleader, Kristi Yamaoka, falling this past weekend and cracking her neck. You’ve probably seen the clip of her cheering as she’s stretchered out.

So, no jumping high, none of the really athletic things, nothing that some fans actually like to see. Oh, so it’ll be a lot like women’s basketball? Cool.

Not to be callous, but… you know, when someone gets hurt in a football game, they don’t change the rules of football. And there’s no doubt that cheerleading is an athletic activity, and these women are doing risky, athletic things… and hey, sometimes people get hurt. You don’t change the entire nature of the activity because someone suffers an injury… I think Kristi Yamaoka would agree with me.

Of course, I feel bad for her, and I want her to heal quickly… because the show must go on. I mean, what kind of an upskirt view am I going to get if they can’t go more than two levels high? I’m going to have to set up an elaborate system of mirrors, and that’s just really inconvenient.

Anyway… sorry for the cheerleading post. I’ll go back to being male very soon.