NCAA Championship Post

No Yankees tonight, but we have Butler-Duke for the NCAA Championship in what's likely to be the final 65 team tournament. Who ya got?

Fack Youk is pulling for:



We in no way, shape, or form endorse Duke, but in the interests of equal time and because he was an absolute genius, we'll leave you with this for the night:



Enjoy the game Fackers. After this one is over there's one fewer sport to draw attention away from baseball.

Tourney Time

We're not big basketball fans here at Fack Youk, but it's hard to ignore the magnetism of the NCAA Tournament. If nothing else, it's a good excuse to waste time at work during the early games and fill out a bracket (strictly for bragging rights of course). It's nice to have something in the sporting landscape to waste our time until baseball starts, as the remainder of the tournament will carry us clear through to Opening Day.

We're smack in the middle of two of the best days of the sporting year, with sixteen more games on tap for today and tonight. D.J. Mitchell's Clemson faces Chad Jenning's Missouri at 2:35, Mark Teixeira's Georgia Tech has prospect Neil Medchill's Oklahoma State at 7:15, and Nick Swisher's Ohio St. tips off against UC Santa Barbara at 9:35. And of course Big Willie Style's beloved "Sycasuse" plays Vermont at 9:30.

Not wanting to expose how little we know about college hoops, Jay and I decided against having a public pool here. But we are both in a pool with some friends of mine, and we both had a rough first day. I went a measley 9 for 16 yesterday, good for a three way tie for fourth place, while Jay (and his aptly-named 'Aggressively Mediocre' bracket) hit just .500, is in last place, and lost one of his Final Four teams when Georgetown spit the bit last night. I narrowly avoided the same fate when 'Nova pulled it out against the Robert Morris School of Cosmetology and Hair Dressing.

How about the rest of you Fackers out there? Anyone go perfect yesterday? Anyone's bracket completely busted already? Did anyone else spell "Syracuse" incorrectly?

Meanwhile, at 5 PM tonight a tournament in which I am far more interested will continue, as the Hockey East semi-finals take place at Boston's TD Bank Garden. In the early game, two seed BC will take on eight seed Vermont. The Catamounts upset number one seed New Hampshire in a best of three series last weekend. Last month, Vermont dismissed second leading scoring Justin Milo, who happens to be a 2009 Yankee draft pick and turned in a decent season at Staten Island last summer. In the nightcap three seed BU will take on four seed Maine. You all know who I'll be pulling for in the first game. A meteor could drop on center ice in the second game for all I care; I can't decide which of those teams I like less.

Whichever your sport, enjoy the games.

Siena Saints Repeat MAAC Championship

THE SAINTS WIN BACK TO BACK TITLES AND ARE GOING DANCIN' BITCHES!!!!!!WOOOOOOHHHHHHOOOOO!!!!!



Sorry, I got a little carried away. Last night the Siena Saints (from Loudonville, NY, my home town) beat Niagara for the MAAC Championship, the second of back to back championships for Siena. I had the pleasure of attending this contest, and had some pretty good seats, lower level row A.

(Sorry for the shitty pics, my camera is broke so these are from my phone.)

I am not going to lie, I was pretty drunk but I will give you a brief recap. Basically Niagara shot a ton of 3s, which they aren't very good at (9-37 or 24%), but got a lot of offensive boards as a result. Once Siena realized that they should just keep pounding the ball into the post, there wasn't much Niagara could do. The main thing was Siena's defense. The Saints were running a 3/4 court press for much of the game. When they started doing this ten minutes into the first half they were down by about 12. At half time it was tied, and they ended up winning by 7.

Now the Siena student section emptied into the isles with about 3 minutes left and were getting ready to rush the court (which is real classy when you are the #1 seed playing on your home court). At this point, I start thinking the following...I am 24 and am creeping near or am already at the age where it is not socially acceptable to rush the court. This and I am wasted, so I rushed the court and took some photos for verification.

(You thought ODB was dead? Thanks to Ed taking my pic.)

(Yaayyyy!!! For the record, I did not go to Siena, but I have lived about a mile away for 24 years and I was a monster (got my ass kicked) at Siena basketball camp for from 4th-8th grade.)

Now, I think Siena is probably going to get a 10 seed in the NCAA Tournament but could possibly get as high (or low? whatever, fuck off) as a 9 seed. They have had a pretty tough out of conference schedule and are #21 in the RPI. They also have tourney experience. Just ask last year's #4 seed Vanderbilt (and their queer square arena). But I hate all the speculation about rankings that is all over the webs so I am stopping there.

I will say this, if your team is playing Siena in round, you should be nervous.



(Unless they play Syracuse in which case Siena will be on the receiving end of some major pwnage.)

Finally I would like to congratulate John Nolan of Cornell for rushing his first court ever and for eating at Golden Fried Chicken (ghetto chicken joint in downtown Albany) all in one night.

Syracuse v. Pittsburgh Recap

Alright, well that game sucked ass. First of all it was pretty sloppy on both ends with a combined 23 turnovers. 'Cuse was flat all night and the Blair and Young for Pitt were too much.

Here are some observations:

First of all the student section at Pitt has the worst name ever, the Oakland Zoo.

They had this dipshit announce the starting five and I thought he was from an actual Zoo in Oakland, CA (even though I don't know if they even have one.) During this interview this guy also said that he started at Pitt in 2001, and for those of you who have been in college that long, that means you should be a fucking doctor by now.

My main problem with this game was the refs. From the very beginning they were calling minor calls and stopping the game to discuss calls, just trying to make their presence known in the game. This happens all the time in both football and basketball and it pisses me off to no end. Just a small example, Routins hit a 3pt shot from about a foot behind the line. They stop the game for about 2 minutes to review. What the fuck is that?

"How much does Pitt need to win by again?"

The biggest BS call in this entire game was the technical on Harris for talking shit to a Pitt player. This was ridiculous because Blaire threw (dropped) the ball on Onuaku's lap after he got called for the charge, which is blatant taunting but wasn't called. I think that is fine but then to call a taunting T on Harris later makes it bullshit.

Anyway, that game sucked, I kind of figured 'Cuse would lose in Pitt, so fuck it. The Orange are off until next Sunday at 12PM when they play #9 Louisville. Look for the game preview on Friday or Saturday.

P.S. - Lavence Fields is still gay.

Sucking a dick? You decide.

Syracuse v. Pittsburgh Preview: I Hate Levance Fields Edition

Tonight's match-up should be a really good game between two heated rivals. Cuse is coming off a strong win against Notre Dame while Pitt was just handed their first loss. There is a lot to be said about this game but I am not going to get into that. What I am going to discuss is how much I hate Levance Fields.

It might just be me, but Fields is one of those guys that it seems like he has been playing for 7 years. [Ed. Note: During the broadcast Jay Bilas said "Doesn't it seem like Levance has been there for 7 years?"]
The thing about him is that I don't think he is that good, but he somehow pulls his shit together every time he plays Cuse.

So in honor of my hatred of Levance Fields and the overwhelming response to the hatred of Luke Harangody here are some similarly gay pictures of Levance Fields for your enjoyment.

(Just to clear up a few questions I have got, I know Harangody scored 26 pts on Cuse, but when you do that while taking 28 shots, all that means is you suck AND you're a ball hog.)

"Guess who!?!?!"...................................Eddie Curry?




"I hate you. I HATE YOU...... I fucking love you!!"

Levance can juggle balls while doing other stuff (semi-NSFW.)

"OOOOO, you know how I like it!!!"

Fuck you Levance, LETS GO CUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Enjoy the game.

Introducing Jodie Meeks

I will admit that I only watched the last 5 minutes of this game due to my faggy obsession with Nip/Tuck, but holy shit. Jodie Meeks (Guard) for Kentucky just hung 54 points on Tennessee in Tennessee, setting a school record. UK won 90-72.

Meeks averages about 24 points a game, but just blew up with what was probably one of the best individual games ever played on the NCAA level. Here are his stats:

FG 15-22
3P 10-15
FT 14-14
Reb 9

After watching the highlights I can say that he was making it rain (obviously) with a hand in his face on basically all of his shots.

I am huge college basketball fan and I can't recall anyone scoring over 50 points in a game. So just to recap....FUCKING WOW!!!

[Ed. note: after doing some research of NCAA records I have found that Jodie Meeks couldn't hold Pistol Pete Maravich's jock]

'Cuse in da House OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!

I am well aware that the College Basketball regular season is half over, but for the #8 ranked Syracuse Orange it's just getting started.

'Cuse is currently 16-1 and has played anything but their normal early season cupcake schedule so far. They have actually started traveling outside of New York State before Big East play, and within a three week period have had three big early season wins over #18 Florida and #22 Kansas on consecutive nights followed a few weeks later by a win over #22 Memphis. I would also like to point out that the Florida game was played on a neutral site, the Kansas game was too (but anyone that watched it knows it was basically a Kansas home game) and the Memphis game was played in Memphis.

Sandwiched in between these games, was a match-up against Cleveland St. in the Carrier Dome. This is one of the few games that I didn't watch, but lucky me, I will get to see highlights all fucking season. For those of you with your head up your ass, Cleveland St. won this game at the buzzer with a 60 ft. prayer. I would be unbelievably pissed off if it weren't for these other wins because this is the type of early season BS that could have potentially fucked 'Cuse out of the NCAA Tourney for a 3rd consecutive year. Fortunately, those other wins and the way in which they lost to Cleveland St. should prevent that buzzer beater from having much bearing on their NCAA bid.

As for the upcoming schedule, 8 out of the next 10 games are against top 25 teams. I don't know of any other team ever playing against that level of competition, but that is the nature of Big East basketball this year. With that being said, I think 'Cuse creates match-up problems all over the floor (mainly Johnny Flynn and Arinze Onuaku) giving them the ability to beat anyone in the country. I predict they will go 7-3 over the next 10, with the three losses coming at Pitt, at UConn, and home against G'Town.

'Cuse will most likely be a #2 or #3 seed in the NCAA Tournament and maybe a #1 if they can win the Big East Tournament. It is way to early to predict how this will shake out, but I will tell you this:

Syracuse will lose pivotal games and get bounced from the NCAA tournament because of their poor free throw shooting.

Every team, every year has games that they win or lose at the free throw line. It hasn't come down to it yet, but it's going to come back and bite 'Cuse in the ass at some point. They shoot 63.32% as a team which is just not good enough. They have always been a poor FT shooting team, but this year is especially bad. Why they can't make uncontested, stationary 15 footers is fucking beyond me. Arinze Onuaku shoots 100 FTs every day, yet is 41.2% on the year, which is historically, mindbendingly awful (significantly worse than Shaq, Wilt or Ben Wallace).

All I hope is that 'Cuse makes a run at the title, I get to see Johnny Flynn posterize some more people this year and that everyone comes back so that we can make another run next year.