When the NCAA goes on their annual “let’s talk about gambling because it distracts from what a sewer major college basketball is” campaign, remember the following quote. Fired Indiana State coach Royce Waltman said of his future, “I can’t get a head coaching job, because if you get fired for cheating you can get rehired, but if you get fired for losing it’s like you have leprosy. Young coaches need to bear that in mind. Cheating and not graduating players won’t get you in trouble, but that damn losing will.”

In a related note, Bob Huggins is the head basketball coach at Kansas State.

And you thought some of the NCAA tourney decisions were bad. After the NIT snubbed 26-win Akron, who lost the MAC title game on a banked 3-pointer, Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports wrote: “The selection committee is stocked with the oldest boys' network you could ever dream up – C.M. Newton, Dean Smith, Gene Keady – so maybe everyone slept through the meetings. If NIT at-large bids are just going to be handed out to schools with political connections to a committee that isn't paying attention, then the entire tournament should just be disbanded.”

Though they beat Florida A&M (though the Rattlers covered on a “meaningless” 3-pointer at the buzzer), Niagra wasn’t thrilled to be in the play-in game, as the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference is far from the bottom in conference rankings (Sagarin has the MAAC 23rd out of 31 Division 1 conferences). So why were the Purple Eagles in Dayton on Tuesday night? Joe Lunardi of ESPN suggests that it is because the NCAA doesn’t want to generate bad publicity by matching up historically black institutions against one another. Apparently they’re concerned that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would be placard-waving fixtures in Dayton on the second Tuesday of the month each March.

Jimmy Dykes apparently didn’t study in math class. When Alabama hit a three-pointer at the first half buzzer against Massachusetts in a Tuesday night NIT game, the ESPN analyst said “90% of the time, when a team hits a buzzer beater at the half, that sometimes is the difference maker in the game.” Of course it is easy to take the cheap shot when you’re the one listening and not the one talking extemporaneously for 2 hours. Still “90% of the time…that sometimes is the difference maker…” is as humorously mangled as it gets.

Let me tell you about an NCAA game we were considering, and why we won’t be on it. Even in Jerel McNeal’s absence, we figured that with Marquette willing to play uptempo games out of conference, and Michigan State finally playing a team that wasn’t familiar with them, the low total in that game might be worth a play on the over. But a Grand Rapids Press article reveals the fact that a month ago former coworkers Tom Crean and Tom Izzo exchanged plays that were working well for them. Knowing that they each gave up their most effective offensive calls to each other made staying off of that over an easy decision.

If you follow us at all you know that we’ve had a huge college basketball season, and the combined regular season/conference tournament pointspread record for Strategic Sports Publishing should be 108-59 (64.6%) when Ruth at The Sports Monitor releases this week’s reports. If you’d like to take advantage of our NCAA tourney package call the office at 770-649-1078.

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Thanks for reading Sports & Gaming News this week. Good luck, enjoy the tournament, and be careful.