Bracket Burning – 8 Elite March Madness Pool Tips

Whether you’ve already filled out your bracket, you’re stuck on a bunch of games, or you haven’t even started yet, here are a few things to keep in mind that could prove influential in any of the 63 games that we will all be watching over the next few weeks.

1. History – History tells us that at least one 11, 12, or 13 seed is heading to the second round. Often, some of the best matchups come tournament time are in fact the 12-5 games, so pay extra attention to them. In terms of 11’s with a chance, look to Missouri or Gonzaga to be in close games against Cincy and St. John’s respectively. Marquette is a perennial underachiever in March, and Georgetown should be able to handle the USC/VCU winner. Any of the 12’s could win, but I think Richmond has the most legitimate shot against Vanderbilt. As for 13’s, Oakland is very intriguing. They have an experienced, senior-laden lineup and they drew a baby-faced Texas team that could buckle under the tournament pressure.

For anyone who thinks putting all four #1’s through to Houston is the best strategy, remember that has only happened once, in 2008, so don’t count on it happening like that again this year, especially with the overall parity that exists in the 68 team field.

2. Emotion – I know everyone wants to take their favorite team, myself included, but if you’re serious about winning your pool, you can’t let that get in your way. Sure, I would love for the Tar Heels to make a run all the way to the Final Four, but you’re going to be cheering for your team anyway, so do your best to objectively determine where they might encounter a tough opponent and bow out. I did a blind, bias-free, pros/cons only bracket this afternoon that did not list the team names, and I actually chose Washington to beat UNC in Round 2. Try it here, you’ll be surprised with the results! http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/documents/BLINDFOLDBRACKETS1103/index.html

3. Matchups – Don’t be naïve and think that the calibre of individual talent will always be the deciding factor! Style of play has a huge influence on the outcome of games, so look at the matchups. If a favorite has a tough time on the boards or causing turnovers and their underdog opponent does either well, that game could be on its way to upset city. Same thing if the underdog loves to get out on the fast break and run all day, while the favorite has a bigger, slower lineup that simply cannot keep up. There are all kinds of potential matchup problems for high seeds that are not used to seeing the style of offense or defense run by mid-major teams that come from smaller conferences, so be careful!

4. Location, Location, Location – There are always situations where teams are given higher seeds, but then pay for it as they have to travel across the country to play their 3^rd/4^th round games. This year is no exception, as Duke got the 4^th top-seed, meaning they start in Charlotte, but for the Sweet 16/Elite 8 they travel to Anaheim. That’s tough, and will really limit the amount of supporters that can make the trip with the team. Those games will take place at a truly neutral site, and those crowds generally elect to cheer for the underdog. While it may not pose any problem, the intimidation factor for a team playing Duke at the Honda Center in California is far less than the intimidation factor for any team having to play Duke in Charlotte or at Cameron Indoor Stadium, plain and simple.

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Video Break! Some of the Best March Madness Moments:

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5. The Charity Stripe is NEVER Generous – Pressure during March Madness is unprecedented, no regular season games or conference tournaments can compare. Games are played in bigger arenas than most teams are used to (especially for mid-majors and small conference teams), and there are millions watching on national TV. Add to that the fact that for several athletes and teams alike, this could be their only chance in the tournament. Now, imagine being one of those kids and try to make the first half of a 1-and-1 late in a close game. “This ain’t your home gym with 2 coaches and the cheerleaders watching anymore, you’re at the big dance kid, so good luck with that." Needless to say, free throws are huge, and are the deciding factor in a lot of games. Think about Memphis in the final a couple years ago, they were firing up bricks left, right, and centre. It makes a difference, if not THE difference, so pay attention to free throw stats, they only get magnified in March.  

6. Beware the 3 Ball – In order to highlight the importance of the three point shot, look no further than the successful Cornell or Davidson teams from years past. Of course Davidson had Steph Curry shooting the lights out, but both teams relied heavily on game plans that focused on taking a lot of high percentage three balls. This is a strategy shared by the vast majority of lower seeded schools (save those who have a dominating inside presence), and it can make for a very frustrating afternoon or evening for a top seed if their opponents get hot from the land beyond. Moreover, anyone who employs a zone defense can get burned by sharpshooters, and adapting in-game could pose further matchup issues. Long story short, pay special attention to three point shooting and defending statistics when selecting potential dark horses. Among this year’s mid and lower seeds, Wofford (.407), Richmond (.400), Arizona (.399), and George Mason (.397) shoot it the best from downtown.

7. Experience – Having tournament experience is a huge asset for any player, team, or coach, so do not discount it. Freshman-laden teams can struggle under the bright lights while those made-up primarily of seniors know what the big dance is all about. Of course, you can look at it the other way around too. Seniors know they may be playing the last meaningful games of their careers and that adds a lot of pressure, but the freshmen (or Diaper Dandies as Dicky V likes to say) and sophomores are enjoying the moment and soaking up the attention. That said, the team that emerges as National Champion will almost surely be a good mix of both enthusiastic youth and composed experience. One such example is Ohio State, which helps to explain their #1 overall seed.

8. Coaching – Finally, a quick word on coaching. There are some NCAA coaches that simply make their teams better throughout the season, case in point Roy Williams and his young Tar Heel group that improved exponentially as the season progressed. That momentum can definitely carry a team to a perhaps unexpected Final Four appearance. Also, there are coaches like Michigan State’s Tom Izzo that always know how to maximize their team’s chances in any given game. Regardless of seed (in the Spartans’ case, a #10), expert strategizing can lead to upsets, and Izzo has been the main cause of many of his teams performing exceptionally when it mattered most in March.

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Well, those are 8 things to consider when finalizing your brackets. With any luck mine won’t be busted by the end of the first slate of games!

My Key Upset Specials: Oakland, Clemson, Richmond, and Marquette in the 1^st Round, Old Dominion over Pitt in Round 2, and Michigan over Duke in Round 2!

Cheers, and enjoy the Madness!

Fire Hospital Sports Presents - The Miami Heat: Late-Game Choke Artists, Criers?

As their team name suggests, the Miami Heat are on fire, just not in the NBA Jam sense of the word. They are now 5-11 in games decided by five points or less, and that’s a legitimate concern for the ‘Big Three’ and their bandwagon fans as the NBA Playoffs near. But why has a supposed ‘dynasty in the making’ with three all-stars and a supporting cast of alleged sharpshooters failed time and time again when the game was in the balance? We here at Fire Hospital have decided to take a look at why the Heat are so dysfunctional in late-game situations.

First and foremost, it’s almost as if they expected to never find themselves in these kinds of situations. For all intents and purposes, the season didn’t even need to be played. The rings were ordered and the parade route was planned. But surprise surprise, it hasn’t quite unfolded as many had expected. The Heat were stuck around .500 for the beginning portion of the season, but since then have started to put some wins together. The problem is that they can’t seem to beat the elite teams in the association, or even teams with winning records. This is especially true when the game has come down to the final shot. A droopy-eyed armless child would have just as much chance as making a game-winning shot attempted by any member of the Miami Heat right now.

Charlie Sheen jokes aside, James, Wade, Eddie House, and Mike Miller have all missed on opportunities to tie or win games at the final horn. The whole team, coach Spoelstra included, appears to tense up in final shot scenarios, and the guy who ends up with the ball has generally choked #burned and missed. 

Miller vs. Celtics

Wade and James vs. Bulls 

If the the Heat want to win a title, they could definitely learn from the Bulls of 1996 and 1997 in these pressure situations. The two examples in question are the John Paxson and Steve Kerr NBA Finals shots in ‘96 and ‘97, respectively. The Paxson play was specifically designed to anticipate a double team on Jordan as well as collapsing down low for a potential rebound. This left Paxson wide open on the outside for the three, and he nailed it:

Kerr’s game winner wasn’t by chance either. In an earlier game in those same Finals, John Stockton had left Kerr to help out on Michael and stole the ball, sealing a Jazz victory. MJ was aware of the potential for a similar attempt by Stockton, so in a timeout just seconds before the play took place he told Kerr to be ready to shoot. Stockton went for the steal, Kerr was ready, and he made no mistake:  

  (you can see how Stockton can’t get back in time)

While both of these shots went to the role player, it should be something the Heat are prepared for. Double teams and switching will be inevitable on James and Wade late in any playoff game, so there is a possibility for both House and Miller to be open. Instead of thinking “I’ll never get the last shot because it will always go to Lebron or Dwayne,” those guys need to want the ball. They need to be ready to shoot instead of launching a prayer if the ball surprisingly goes to them. If that mindset is engrained in the whole team, they’re going to be tough to beat.

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As for the ‘Crygate’ incident, that’s just funny. We’re talking about grown-ass men who are making ridiculous amounts of money crying in the MIDDLE of the season! Maybe after the last game of your career or winning/losing an NBA Finals or an Olympics, but not after the 63^rd game of the season. Whoever it was had to be #burning, plain and simple. However, while it is pretty pathetic and quite frankly a little sad, it’s somewhat understandable from an athlete’s point of view. Sometimes the emotion of the game gets the best of you. What is absolutely absurd is that Spoelstra felt the need to tell the media. He’s the one who really #burned in this case. Imagine how awkward that’s going to be for the player who cried for the rest of the season. A conversation between Amare Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony implied it was Bosh, which won’t help his public perception. He is going to get getting chirped incessantly by opposing players and mainly fans for the rest of the year, especially in the playoffs. This is almost at the Pedro Martinez “Who’s Your Daddy?” level and we all know how bad that was (even in 2010): 

Only time will tell how the Heat are able to cope with these two very different problems, and honestly, I think anyone who didn’t hop on the Heat bandwagon will be fine with them failing miserably again and again. They’re going to have to earn a title; nobody’s going to hand it to them.

Cheers 

Slow Burn #1: The Fire Hospital Daily Progress Update

Slow Burn chronicles all the things Fire Hospital has in the works on any given day as we push to get this thing off the ground. Successes and triumphs, headaches and disappointments, whatever goes down you will hear about it here!

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Hey patients! With the first installment of Slow Burn, we’d just like to recap the insanely hectic but productive first 5 days of our existence. Evidently, we chose an interesting time to launch our operation. Whether it’s the historic revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East, the unmitigated failure that is Charlie Sheen, or just the bizarre encounters in our everyday lives, there’s definitely a lot of craziness and #burning going on around the world.

That said, it has certainly been a challenge to find a balance for our activities: commenting on current events, managing our infrastructure, and developing our original content. There’s so much to do and we have so many ideas to develop, but we feel it’s undoubtedly beneficial to offer our unique commentary on things such as last night’s “Sheen’s Korner” Ustream catastrophe. If nothing else, it gets our name out there a little and helps to both define our perspective and clarify our approach. Our “Awkward Clip of the Day” (on facebook and twitter) has also helped to establish the general theme of the hilarious moments that we have come to appreciate and want to share.

Construction and customization for all of our social media tools has been time consuming and frustrating for sure, but ensuring a consistent look and feel for each platform is important to us. In addition, development for our legitimate site is underway! Although it’s progressing slowly, we know it’s going to take some time to get things set up.

In terms of original content, we don’t want to give away too much early on but we are working on segments that utilize text, voice, and video to best communicate our interactions and stories. One of the things to look for in the near future is the “Fire Hospital Glossary of Burning Terms,” a comprehensive list (with definitions and examples) of all the ludicrous words and phrases that we use in our everyday conversations. Gaining an understanding of those terms will be essential to figuring out what the hell we’re talking about in our stories.

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We’ve compiled a brief list of a few of our major accomplishments on each day:

·         Day 1 (March 2, 2011)  

o   Twitter account created (twitter.com/FireHospital)

o   Blogger account created (firehospital.blogspot.com)

o   Facebook page created

·         Day 2 (March 3, 2011)

o   Youtube channel created (youtube.com/firehospital)

o   1^st blog - “The Burn Ward is Open for Business!”

·         Day 3 (March 4, 2011)

o   Tweet reply from a radio station, our 1^st cool mention! http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=130467797024363&set=pt.130022957068847&theater

o   1^st Youtube upload - Phaneuf and Komisarek Collide in Warmup – Leaf Fail!

o   1^st Youtube subscriber

o   25 Facebook “likes”, page name created (facebook.com/FireHospital)

o   2^nd blog – “Clarification: The Fire Hospital Name Further Explained”

·         Day 4 (March 5, 2011)

o   3^rd blog – “@Charliesheen: WTF Was That”

·         Day 5 (March 6, 2011)

o   Slow Burn #1

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While the pace has been frantic, we’ve been really pleased with our growth in these last few days. We know everything can’t happen with a snap of our fingers, so we’re going to focus on going about our business one day at a time. It’s bound to be an interesting ride, and with any luck we’ll keep picking up steam. We here at Fire Hospital truly appreciate everyone who has taken the time to check out our blog and pages so far and we encourage you to not be strangers. Let us know what you want to see and tell us about your most awkward encounters! That’s all we’ve got for now but stay tuned, there’s some good stuff on the way!


Cheers

@Charliesheen: WTF Was That?

So, after about 45 minutes of watching Charlie Sheen’s highly anticipated "Sheen's-Korner," (spelled with a "K" because it's Charlie Sheen and he has the mind of a Warlock and is blood is infused with #tigerblood, plus he’s cool) we here at Fire Hospital had to shut it down.

It got a few laughs out of us early on, what with the farting nosies, Charlie's sippy cup of moonshine, and the premise of a “webcam in his solution chamber” setting, but once it got rolling, he quickly became the moronic captain on his very own Failboat of Disaster.

We started a #winning counter and in the 45 minutes of crap, we counted 53 #winning's. And those were the audible and recognizable ones, who knows how many he uttered amongst the oft-spewed jibberish. 

His segment of #winner stories began with something about a Boy Scout, was followed by story about an American bald eagle flying into a window, and finished with a tale of some guy (who he couldn't even pick out of the picture he showed) who survived after getting 90 minutes of CPR. After that he had a "weigh-in with some random guy” bit consisting of some loser in his entourage standing in a corner giving no useful information about anything. Charlie then started talking about some Josie Dimples chick for about 10 minutes, what the point was, no idea... this was really the prevailing theme of the whole show. He mentioned Colin Farrell and Nancy Grace at some point, and again, what his point was, we’re not sure. Aside from the “weigh-in” douchebag, Sheen had 2 others riding along with him for this trainwreck: the "sound guy" sitting in the corner with his Mac and Wal-Mart headphones controlling the fart soundboard, and one of his Goddesses "Napalm" sitting on the couch being useless. 

It honestly seemed like a big marketing ploy for his Tigerblood drink and his Warlock elixir in the beginning, and once he started rambling about other things he lost his audience completely. The social feed to the right of the live stream would certainly attest to that.

The stream’s viewership spiked as soon as he went live, rising faster than Gary Busey’s blood-alcohol level during a late night bender. At one point he had over 115,000 lemmings sucked in. Unfortunately, once the initial circus freak appeal had worn off, people were getting out of there faster than Mubarak left office in Cairo.

I don't even want to go on about any other details, mainly because I stopped caring. Anyone who made the mistake of watching that mess knows how ridiculous it was. Those are 45 minutes none of us will ever get back, and frankly we should all be ashamed of ourselves for having given him the time of day to spew his mindless dribble. The only thing we should take from this frankly retarded episode is that Sheen’s booger sugar dealer gets some damn good stuff.  

If anyone watched beyond the 45 minute mark and something useful came up, feel free to let us know...and in the meantime check out the “Fire Hospital awkward clip of the day” on twitter (twitter.com/FireHospital)! 

Cheers

Clarification - The Fire Hospital Name Further Explained

Hey patients, I’d just like to take a minute to clarify what Fire Hospital is all about. As separate entities, there’s nothing funny about fires or hospitals.

Simply put, fires are scary as hell. They destroy property and with it, cherished memories that can never be replaced. They cause unbearable pain that we shouldn’t wish on our worst enemies. They take lives in one of the most horrific manners imaginable. Firefighters are some of the bravest people in this world, and should be commended whenever possible.

Hospitals are depressing. There’s just too much pain, anger, and hopelessness. You’d think they could serve at least halfway decent food to brighten patients’ moods, but no, it’s always terrible. Better yet, hospitals always smell a little off, no matter where the hell you are. Doctors, nurses, and hospital staff are some of the most thoughtful and caring people out there, and they can never be thanked enough.

The simple fact that there can even be fires AT hospitals just adds insult to injury for all parties involved.

That said, Fire Hospital has nothing to do with the serious and very real consequences that are associated with fires or any visit to a legitimate hospital.

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Fire Hospital is simply a venue to share some of our craziest adventures and encounters with the one-of-a-kind characters that we have all come across at some point. People burn (see “The Burn Ward is Open for Business” for our definition of burn) about different things, in different situations, and with different people, but the results often have a common thread of hilarity. Sharing that hilarity is our goal, so we look forward to telling our stories in a way that makes you feel like you are right there laughing with us.

Stay tuned, there are some good stories on the way!

Cheers

The Burn Ward is Open for Business!

burn (verb): To be in an acute state of confusion, bewilderment, disarray, embarrassment, excitement, or perplexity, often resulting in extremely awkward and sometimes humorous exchanges with those around you.

A few quick examples of “burning” to help you understand what the hell we’re talking about:

- Try not to burn too much when you talk to that hot girl in our class.

- Holy crap he is taking his sweet ass time finishing the test, he must be burning.

- I should have scored on that breakaway but I burned and shot it wide.

- Man, look at that guy across the street doing back flips in a tuxedo, that is burning.
- You know who’s really burning? Anyone who wears JORTS to the gym.

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Hello patients! Welcome to Fire Hospital, the home of life's most awkward, bizarre, challenging, and generally hilarious episodes. We’re a group of about a dozen friends who are constantly talking trash, shooting the shit, and making fun of strangers. You’ll meet us all (or at least our nicknames) though the ludicrous stories, ridiculous quotes, and generally retarded content that will soon be coming your way!

I guess sometimes, good ideas come from stupid mistakes. Two days ago one friend tried to say “Fire Hall” but instead uttered “Fire Hospital” and naturally, he was chirped mercilessly. However, the more we said it, the more we liked the combination, and an idea was born. We have long discussed a way to share the tales of our shenanigans, mainly the unforgettable encounters with characters that are truly unique. I guess you could say we have finally decided to act on all those discussions.

Anyway, we always enjoy talking about our favorite stories, so hopefully all you new Fire Hospital patients will enjoy them too.

Cheers