Hansbrough Family Goes 1-1, Everyone Sleeps

By Will Brinson
John Calipari’s Memphis team was kind enough to shoot an embarrassingly pathetic 46% from the charity stripe as a team, paving the way for the only exciting action of the early evening games. The Tigers were so bad from the line (15 for 32) that not only did they let Mississippi State (and lil’ Psycho T) work their way to a near overtime-causing bank-shot heave, but one really has to wonder if they can actually advance to San Antonio without being even remotely decent at such an important facet of basketball. In fact, one really has to wonder how the hell they almost went undefeated. That’s when you remember they play in the same conference as East Carolina.

Memphis did hang on to win 77-74, as evidenced by the video above, and if you live in the North Carolina area, you were lucky enough to see, well, not much of it. Unless you consider a minute and a half of game time to be anything more than a tease, and even then, CBS kept cutting back to the Carolina game.
1:47. That’s what I wrote down when, with the Tigers up by four, CBS finally and mercifully decided to cut away from the local Hog slaughter so I could see some legitimate basketball. Not that Carolina and Arkansas aren’t legit or good, and not that Tyler Hansbrough’s will isn’t completely impenetrable, indestructible and otherwise dominant, but come on guys. Throw me a fricking bone here. Carolina dogpiled Arkansas, in case you didn’t catch that.
The Louisville game wasn’t much different, although no word yet on whether Rick Pitino was able to piece together a white-wash like Roy Williams did. The Cards did pound the Sooners 78-48, much to the dismay of the Capel family, which actually makes it that much sweeter. Louisville brought the even-handed heat, with seven players scoring seven or more points in the trouncing of Oklahoma.
Oh, and a helpful hint for future boring stretches of March: do like I did and put this CBS edited montage of Vernon Macklin’s dunk in the Georgetown game on repeat and play it loud. No chance you black out on boredom and sleep through the only good game that your local cable station refuses to play.

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