There was a time – much longer ago than it sometimes feels – when I thought I knew an awful lot about college basketball. I’d devour the preseason magazines, watch random midweek games from other conferences, and read every word of the Top 25 recap in the morning paper.
With the collaboration of a couple of buddies during a Sunday morning sermon, my practiced hands could expertly loosen the paper from the cheap glue holding the offering envelope together, unfold and flatten it to fashion some makeshift scratch paper, take a very short pencil from the wooden pew, and confidently sketch out the top 5-10 players in the country at each position.
Such was life as a hardcore sports nerd growing up in south Arkansas in the early ’90s.
But those days are long past now. These days, I’m the one passing out Sunday morning crayons, and the best college players are NBA-bound before most of us get a chance to know the ones who don’t play for our team. So my knowledge of college basketball beyond the SEC, and honestly beyond Arkansas, is a fraction of what it used to be.
All that to say: I’m no Jay Bilas.
In case you’ve been absent from the internet since Sunday, Bilas, ESPN’s lead college basketball personality, picked Vermont to upset the Hogs. And he isn’t alone. Though most analysts have Arkansas advancing, the Catamounts have been a trendy upset pick this week.
Could it happen? Of course. Odds are, at least a couple of teams will be going home much sooner than expected this weekend. But with respect to Vermont, I don’t see it happening to the Hogs.
I may look very dumb very soon because Madness ritually occurs this time of year. Good teams lose to lesser ones year in and year out, and if the Hogs play like they did in the SEC semifinal – their worst game, bar none, in months – then yes, Texas A&M could beat us, Vermont could beat us. Gene Hackman and a bunch of Indiana farm boys could beat us.
But what about Arkansas’ team, coach or program makes anyone believe that’s the most likely outcome? The truth is, it’s not.
Obviously, that doesn’t mean Vermont doesn’t stand a chance. There are reasons to believe Vermont is capable of winning – we’ll talk about some in a minute – but those reasons ignore what Arkansas is capable of.
Based on the preponderance of evidence presented over the last two months, what’s more likely than an upset is that Arkansas will win this game – and just maybe a couple more. Since mid-January, the Hogs are 6-2 against teams in the NCAA tournament, including wins over two No. 2 seeds and one 3-seed. In other words, they’ve proven they can go toe-to-toe with some of the best teams in the country and come out with a win.
Maybe Vermont has that ability as well, but anybody asserting that is doing so, at least to some degree, on blind faith, because the Catamounts have played just two games this season against NCAA tournament qualifiers: a 10-point loss to 4-seed Providence, a game Vermont trailed by double digits for virtually the entire second half; and a 10-point win over 13-seed Colgate. The most recent of those games was almost three months ago.
Since then, they’ve been beating up on plainly inferior competition. Maybe they’ve improved dramatically since their loss to Providence, but we can’t say that for sure because the second-best team in Vermont’s conference ranks somewhere in the 200s, depending on which power rankings you prefer. For reference, that’s lower than Georgia, the worst team in the SEC.
Not that the Hogs can afford to take anybody lightly at this time of year. Last week, we all got an ugly reminder of what happens when we’re giving less than our best effort. And Arkansas trailed by at least 10 points in all three of last year’s tournament wins, so we should be well aware that every opponent is dangerous in the tournament.
And to give credit where it’s due, Vermont has done what a good team should in the American East Conference, going 17-1 in league play and running up wide margins of victory with regularity.
While we’re being generous, let’s give Bilas and his upset-minded colleagues the benefit of the doubt, too: filling out a bracket is tricky business. I’ve been participating in the annual rite since it required clipping brackets out of the newspaper, and I have yet to win a single pool. My nine-year-old daughter already has one win to her credit, and my wife, who never watches a game I don’t drag her to, has somehow won three times.
So, like I said, I’m no expert. But I’ve been told by the people who play them on TV that Vermont shoots the 3-pointer exceedingly well, that they don’t turn the ball over, that they play smart basketball, and that they start five seniors.
If I’m being honest, that’s a combination of team characteristics that makes me a little nervous, so I can see why some have circled Vermont as a team with Cinderella potential. But my quibble with these predictions is that they tend to ignore the other half of the matchup.
How well does Vermont shoot it against good defense? The best they played against in the American East ranks 179th in the country in defensive efficiency. Arkansas ranks 14th (and third in the country since the middle of January).
How well will the Catamounts protect the ball against one of the longest, most athletic teams they’ve seen this season? They’ve been a great rebounding team all year, but can they maintain that advantage against the Hogs when they’re undersized at every position? How will they react if the Hogs use their size and quickness to bully their way into the paint and start racking up free throws? Can Vermont stop that?
I don’t know the answer to any of the above, but I know that better teams than the Catamounts – no disrespect intended – have tried and failed.
So, maybe I’m arrogant or ignorant or just looking at the bracket through cardinal-colored glasses. Maybe the closest I’ll ever come to Bilas’ level of expertise was 30 years ago as a back-row Baptist.
Nonetheless, I believe the Hogs are going to take care of business, because that’s what recent history tells us they’ll do. I trust that the heart and high hands on defense will return after a one-game hiatus last weekend. I trust that the other team won’t make Hail Mary layups off the top of the backboard like the Aggies did, that every bounce won’t go against us, that JD Notae will find some side-step 3s in rhythm, and the Hogs will win because that’s what’s actually (probably, hopefully) more likely to happen.
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Arkansas native Brent Holloway is a freelance writer living in Gainesville, Ga. His “4th and 25” appears every other Friday at ARMoneyandPolitics.com.