Pirates lock up Ian Snell and lots of tourney talk

The Pittsburgh Pirates took a gamble,but a smart one as the Buccos signed pitcher Ian Snell to a 3 year contract that could last as long as five years considering the addition of two option years.
If Snell continues his performance level,he could earn as much as 24.6 million over the length of the deal.
This is a gamble,but one worth taking.
The Indians have been doing this for years with their talented young players,paying them more money now than they have to in return for buying off free agency years and/or arbitration years.
These deals do not always work as the Indians know.
For every Albert Belle ,there was a Mark Whiten and for every Charles Nagy,
there was a Dennis Cook and so on.
But when you do not have the money of most teams,these are chances that you must take and I fully back this one.
Now lets get to work on locking Tom Gorzelanny up next!!

Talkin hoops.

Xavier and Kent State are in,Ohio State and Maryland are NIT bound and Wake Forest is sitting at home after yesterdays announcement of the post-season tourneys.

Xavier and Kent State both play Thursday afternoon,as the 3rd seeded Musketeers play the 14th seed,the miracle SEC Tournament winning Georgia Bulldogs and the Golden Flashes,who received a 9 seed will take the Runnin Rebels from Nevada Las Vegas.
Ohio State was given a one seed in the NIT and will play their NIT opener against UNC Asheville at home on Tuesday,while Maryland was given a 5 seed and will travel to Minnesota for their Tuesday opener against the Gophers.
No complaints here about either team not getting in,Ohio State needed a Big 10 tourney win and did not get the job done and Maryland lost two non-conference games at home to American and Ohio U to go with their utter collapse against a losing Boston College team in the ACC brackets.
Win those three very winnable games and 18-14 becomes 21-13 (figuring a next round ACC loss for the Terps) and that gets you in.

UNC Asheville was one of eight small conference teams that won their regular season conference title,but lost in their conference tournament.
Such teams now get an automatic bid to the NIT and I love the rule,as I got tired of watching quality small teams not play in the NIT,so 15-14 teams from the ACC and Big East could half heartedly shuffle through the tourney.

NCAA stupidity-Part 1
I have no problem with the play-in game between teams 64 and 65 and I have no problems with the two teams picked to play in it-Mount St.Marys and Coppin State.
But the NCAA could have had a much better atmosphere for the game if the game had been played at say College Park for the two Maryland schools and saved each school some time and money on traveling to Dayton Ohio.
Instead of a good size crowd of maybe 5 to 6 thousand watching that game in MD,it will be lucky to have 500 breathing fans for the same game in Dayton.

NCAA stupidity-Part 2
Please quit the out and out lying about not hooking certain teams up to play each other for obvious reasons and the we do not look at teams playing near home deal either.
I do not believe that USC with O.J.Mayo and Kansas State and Michael Beasley just happened to fall that way for one example or of all the 15 seeds-UMBC happened to accidentally draw Georgetown,so that Washington and Baltimore teams can play as just two examples.
Or that top seed Memphis will have to beat second seed Texas in the "Neutral' site of Houston.

Will someone please tell the Jay Bilases of the world that the tournament does not say the best 64 teams in the country,just the best at large teams plus qualifiers?
Bilas whined about this all through the ESPN show on the tourney last night and cried "the committee give breaks to mid majors for at larges over majors" using South Alabama as an example.
Sorry to offend your ACC mentality,Jay,but the tournament is great because of the smaller schools getting their shot and if Virginia Tech and Arizona State sit home because the Sun Belt got two bids for a change-oh well.
If you put the best 64 teams in,few of the smaller teams get in and that leads to basically a bigger version of the major conference tournaments that we saw all weekend and that with few exceptions is not all that wonderful.

I do agree that the two teams that got screwed the most were Arizona State and Virginia Tech.
I would have put both teams in over PAC Ten entrants Oregon and Arizona.

The best part of the show was( surprisingly) Bob Knight,who offered great insight in a non-overbearing fashion and stood out among the other commentators.
Plus. watch this video for Knight's reaction to Dick Vitale's ramble about a Knight return to Indiana that had nothing to do with the subject at the time.


Until tomorrow.

Photo Credit
Snell-Lenny Ignelzi-AP Photo