The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Nothing beats NCAA tourney’s first two days
Register columnist Chip Malafronte says that the first two days of the NCAA tournament are more exciting and more enjoyable than the weekend games.
In anticipation of a snowstorm, they now cancel school a day early, getting the word out through phone calls, emails and text messages to every house as well as multiple social media posts.
It’s a lot more efficient then when I grew up, when only a blizzard canceled school. And the only way to find out was by listening to the local radio station, which announced the list once every 20 minutes. If you missed it, you had to wait until the next round, often with a tape recorder to prove to your parents there really wasn’t school.
Some things never change, though. Upon hearing the news, a kid’s celebration is still on par with a ticker tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes.
• Is it just me, or do you also find the first two days of the NCAA basketball tournament to be more exciting and enjoyable than the weekend games?
Nothing against those weekend games, of course, but that opening round has everything. Like those weekday workday afternoon games, when we’re supposed to be focused on our jobs yet discreetly inhaling hoops by the hour.
Or being excited at the end of the day, because there’ll be more basketball on when we get home, and another full slate tomorrow.
Or the underdogs and upsets; where we root for the Princeton’s and Bucknell’s of the world to knock off the sport’s heavyweights. And if they fail to pull it off, there’s another game tipping off in five minutes.
Apologies to Andy Williams, but the most wonderful time of the year is those two hoop-filled days in March.
• Quinnipiac is closing in on its new men’s basketball coach. With seasons of some candidates ending this week, it won’t be long. We hear the preference is to bring in a current head coach, with an enticing salary to make it worthwhile, and that Albany’s Will Brown and Vermont’s John Becker are two of the main targets. Both lost in postseason tournaments on Thursday.
Iona was also eliminated, freeing up assistant coach Jared Grasso. Southern Connecticut State head coach Scott Burrell is also believed to be in the mix.
• There’s something wrong when settling for a contested, 30-foot 3-pointer while down one point and plenty of time on the clock is an accepted practice in college basketball.
• David Price starting the season on the disabled list is an unfortunate blow, but let’s not get too panicky. The Red Sox still have two Cy Young-caliber starting pitchers at the top of the rotation.
• Tough year for basketball in New England. And the Tri-State area, for that matter. Vermont, Iona, Seton Hall and Princeton all went down in the first round, leaving Rhode Island, an upset winner over Creighton, to carry the banner for the Northeast the rest of the way.
• Oh, yeah. Providence lost its opener, too. Those Tuesday play-ins are a disservice to any team with the misfortune of being stuck there. They don’t even make it onto the brackets we all fill out for our office pools. The NCAA tries to sell it as part of the tournament, but it’s really not, because almost no one pays any attention. But what can you do besides contract back to 64 teams or expand to 128?
• Great win for the Quinnipiac women’s team, though. Marquette won the Big East championship, but on Saturday it was outplayed and outcoached. The Bobcats have a very real chance to reach the round of 16.
• John Hayden made his NHL debut with the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday, skating on the top line alongside Jonathan Toews and Richard Panik just five days after his Yale career ended. He was asked to lead the team onto the ice for pregame warmups. Only no one followed. Hayden skated a couple of laps alone before finally being joined by his teammates. Got to love timeless rookie initiations.
Hayden is eligible for the playoffs. He may ultimately wind up in the minors to finish the season, but Chicago will give him an opportunity to prove himself in the NHL.
• I spent this weekend in Lake Placid, New York and was crushed to learn the local Howard Johnson’s restaurant, one of only two left in the entire world, shuttered its doors last year. Not only was the food delicious and the décor straight out of 1966, it hadn’t changed the menu pricing since Uncle Charlie was still on “My Three Sons.” Sadly, the days of the $13 four-course surfand-turf dinners might be history.
• Not much fan support from Quinnipiac, or Harvard, at the ECAC Hockey championship weekend. Can’t blame them. Lake Placid is a remote location, nearly a five-hour drive, with unreasonable weather, even in midMarch. I turned on the car Saturday morning to see the temperature was a crisp 4 below zero. That’s a tough sell during spring break week, when most college students jet off to some tropical locale.
• One other disappointing revelation from Lake Placid — they dismantled the old scoreboard, the one used during the “Miracle on Ice” — and installed a modern monstrosity with an HD video board so fans can gaze vacuously at the game broadcast on a gigantic TV instead of, I don’t know, watching the actual action on the ice.
They say the old scoreboard was getting harder to maintain, and parts increasingly difficult to find. Still, it would have been fitting to continue the retro feel of the old arena.