(Part 3) Top products from r/CollegeBasketball

Of the books I've read:

• A Season on the Brink - John Feinstein Feinstein's chronicling of Bob Knight the 1985-1986 Indiana Hoosiers. The book was very successful and Feinstein followed it up with a number of inside looks at college basketball. 10/10
  
• The Last Amateurs It's about the Patriot League which, at the time of publication, was one of two conferences that didn't award athletic scholarships (Ivy was the other). 7/10
  
• Basketball on Paper - Dean Oliver Oliver is the granddaddy of basketball analytics. His examples are primarily focused on the NBA, but it's an interesting read that might change your perspective on how you watch basketball. 8/10
  
• Don't Put Me In Coach - Mark Titus Maybe it's just because I was a big fan of Club Trillion back in the day, but I think it's a really funny and interesting read about what big time college basketball is like today. Like A Season on the Brink, it helps you realize that, regardless of the era, these guys are just college kids. 7/10
  
• Playing for Knight - Steve Alford There are some interesting Indiana stories in here. But whereas A Season the Brink is enjoyable and a must read for any college basketball fan, this one is probably just worth reading if you're an Indiana fan. 5/10
  
• Last Dance: Behind the Scenes at the Final Four - John Feinstein Eh. Not as good as some of the other ones I've read by him. 4/10.
  
  On my bookshelf but I haven't read them yet:
  
  
• Underdawgs - David Woods The story of Butler's first trip to the Final Four. This is the one I'm most excited to pick up next.
  
• Rising from the Ashes - Terry Hutchins It's about Indiana's dumpster fire leading up through it's return to the Top 25 in 2011-2012. Honestly, I only bought it because Hutchins and Woods were selling them side by side at a Butler Indiana game and I felt weird buying just the Butler book while wearing Indiana gear. It's a story that I already know by heart because I lived through it so I might never get around to reading it.
  
• The Last Great Game - Gene Wojciechowski About 1992 Kentucky - Duke. Haven't read it yet. Although I certainly plan to.

The entire school was near insolvency in the late '90s. And yours is the exact right answer here. But to add just a little to the perspective...

Like the primordial soup, lightning struck this program and made all the elements combine just the right way at just the right time, and brought it to life. That lightning was the Cinderella success in 1999, when the Zags beat both Minnesota and #3 Stanford in Seattle (I was in the stands). Then they beat Florida on a tip in, and eventually lost to the champion UConn, giving them the toughest game of their tournament. Mid majors rarely get past the second round, and an E8 appearance appealed to just about every fan in the country. Following that success, the donations began to pour in, and recruiting took on a whole new look. And as you said, both the AD and Coach Few really took off with it.

The success of the basketball program has translated hugely to the success of the university, where every department and sport has ridden it's coattails. New baseball complex, new buildings on campus, use of a private jet for the team, the success of the women's basketball program, higher academic ratings and stricter admission requirements. Even the GU Law School has seen a huge uptick in it's reputation.

Best case example of "success breeds success".

Fun read that spells it all out, and one that every Zag fan should read: Glory Hounds

Not entirely, one method I've read about is to wait until right before the first game (or if I really have to, wait until the Wed. night before, just to make sure I have time to get my brackets in properly). Anyway, what you're supposed to do is look at the percentages ESPN puts out of how often the teams get picked to advance to each round, and use that as your guideline.

Sure it'll be skewed a bit (perhaps QUITE a bit - we'll see after I try this), by 1) people who don't know anything about basketball and are just picking randomly, of which there are obviously numerous amounts, plus the fact that it's telling you what all the people who used ESPN did, not specifically the people I'm playing in my pool did. Nevertheless, it's still a PRETTY good way to judge IMHO. Then, you go and see what teams were projected to go to each round (via sites like fivethirtyeight.com or whomever else) and you choose your upsets out of the teams that are being "under-bet" on (in other words, if fivethirtyeight.com says - let's say Marshall, has a 30% chance of making the round of 32, but only 15% of people are picking them to do so, that's a good value upset to pick. Likewise, if people are picking Virginia to repeat as champions 24% of the time, but fivethirtyeight says they only have a 14% chance of doing so, they're being over-bet and aren't a good team to choose.

But then again, I also read that you NEVER want to pick a "front-runner" as your champion, because that means you're going up against a bunch of other people who also choose that top team, making your pick for champion essentially a "moot point" and then all your earlier picks play a much bigger part in whether or not you win, especially those early round picks, because there are so many of them (which I also read you shouldn't pick too many early round upsets, because each of them is only worth 1 point, and thus almost meaningless, whereas a mid-round upset is more risky, but wields much bigger rewards).

I'm only telling you all this because there's like a 99.9% likelihood that you aren't one of the people I compete against in the pool and thus you knowing all this can't directly hurt me and can only help you. Here's another piece of help you might want to invest ($10) in:

https://www.amazon.com/How-Your-NCAA-Tournament-Pool/dp/0998442305

> Ed Martin was not necessarily a wealthy man.

Oh?

>He gave the recruits hundred of thousands of dollars

Well then...

>and had previously been investigated by the FBI for running illegal gambling rings.

Right, like I said: made money doing shady shit on the side.

> Ed Martin was a booster with recruit contact long before Fisher was head coach at Michigan.

Yup.

>Do not watch the Fab Five 30 for 30 documentary. ESPN allowed it to be put together by Jalen Rose, who was one of the Fab Five and has an axe to grind with Chris Webber. It is biased in the extreme.

Jalen Rose's side of the story is a fairly accurate side of the story. The only axe to grind against Webber is that Webber wrote off the rest of his teammates and the University of Michigan after the Ed Martin incident. Webber threw Martin under the bus...

"This case is about a man who befriended kids like myself, preying on our naïveté, our innocence, claiming that he loved us and that he wanted to support us, but later wanting to cash in on that love and support that we thought was free," Webber said at the time.

...and turned his back on his teammates. He refused to sit with them at the Natty and refused to participate or comment on their history.

FWIW the Fab Five are the reason I got into college basketball. First games I remember watching as a kid with my dad, a Michigan man. When I moved to Ann Arbor as a teenager, the first gift I received from my new friends at school was a book "The Fab Five: Basketball, Trash Talk, the American Dream."

The funny part is I agree with the Maryland guy about UConn and agree that Gary Williams tried to stay above the muck that is much of the higher level AAU ball yet also acknowledge that his current coach is much more like Calhoun and less like Williams.

Diamond Stone's father is currently doing "consulting" for UnderArmour. Amazing how that came about after he signed there. (Its the regular Duke treatment and its been this way for 80 years in the NCAA.

I'm a Badger fan and there is a great book about the 1942 Badgers football team: 3rd down and a War to go.
http://www.amazon.com/Third-Down-War-All-American-Wisconsin/dp/0870203606

It openly spoke of players having "jobs" to walk the city streets after businesses closed up and check to make sure they are all locked.
My family knew Elroy Hirsch who played at Wisconsin and Michigan and then was Wisconsin's AD for 20 years. He'd tell stories about the gifts he received when he was recruited and his summer jobs. Its a cycle and always has been.

Read Play Their Hearts Out but George Dohrmann, it is one of my favorite books and does an amazing job detailing the underworld of AAU. It is a little dated (about a decade) at this point but many of the flaws have only become worse.

I'm just happy DePaul made the list. #45, baby! (Oh, how the mighty have fallen).

Interestingly, they ranked DePaul at #24 here:

http://www.amazon.com/ESPN-College-Basketball-Encyclopedia-Complete/dp/0345513924/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1345836427&sr=8-1

Jon Abrams just released a book too on the prep-to-pro generation in the NBA. Haven't read it yet but I've heard good things

Um so what college are you both going to?

Also who says belly laughs? Are you pregnant?

Haha I just realized that she wrote a book called [Sports Ethics] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0631216979?pc_redir=1412236235&robot_redir=1), with a foreward from Dean Smith.

Can I interest you in a book?

http://www.amazon.com/Guilty-Until-Proven-Innocent-Sypher/dp/1470176858

Well, I know what I'm reading for the next few days

;)

....oh.... it's a real book.

(Grade A Shitposting btw)

You can buy his book, he narrates the audio version

Oh no, Georgetown!