Sports Guy Bracket

[ephoya04]

One of the columnists we all love to hate...but he has us beating Texas, Texas A&M in the Elite 8 and Final 4 respectively losing in the final to Kansas

sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/070313&sportCat=ncb&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab1pos2

Here's how he describes the loss to Kansas:
OUSTED IN THE TITLE GAME

2. Georgetown (2).

As long as this leads to Jeff Green cracking the top-seven in the 2007 draft, I'm happy. He deserves it.


Looks like Simmons is drinking the JG Kool Aid big time these days...amazing what happens when you watch us play

[DallasHoya]

And he says in the same article about the A&M game:

"That's right, it's a Final Four battle in which John Thompson the Third and Patrick Ewing Jr. will defeat Acie Law the Fourth! That should be exciting. By the way, brace yourself for about 10,000 John Thompson interviews, old Patrick Ewing clips and features about the 25th anniversary of the "Fred Brown game" when Georgetown makes the Final Four. As long as they show Reggie Williams' postgame interview after the '84 title game, I'm happy. That may have been the single most awkward moment of the entire 1980s. And that's saying something."

Reggie will never live that one down.

[DonkDonk]

sports guy has finally been watching some college basketball rather than forcefeeding us NBA material. i'm glad he realizes how overrated the Big 10 is. 3 out of the first four people I've asked have a GTown - Kansas final.

weird that some people 'hate' him as a writer. i don't feel that way at all. it freaks me out sometimes how much he brings up sports/pop culture minutiae that my friends and I notice and joke about. like what happened to Pitino's face?

also, what's up with the Reggie Williams interview...sorry - I didn't become a Hoya fan until the late 90s.

[DallasHoya]

Reggie was the high scorer in the '84 final and they interviewed him immediately after the game on national TV. He couldn't even complete a sentence he was so nervous - just kind of stopped in the middle. Gave a lot of ammunition to those who criticized how a school like Georgetown could recruit him. etc.

[guru]

He also either said "s--t" or dammit when he fumbled for words during that interview, then pretty much gave up and stopped talking. Tough moment for him. Sports Guy brings it up way too often though.

[HoyaTejano]

Re the whole Reggie Williams interview -- sometimes Simmons takes things out of thin air and runs with it, runs with it hard, kills it, kills it dead. This reference is right up there with Miami Vice, the Red Sox, talking to his father, etc., etc. We get it. Reggie Williams had a rough interview.

Secondly, if the pundits call this right and A&M meets GU in the Final Four, that's mega ultra basketball super apocalypse in my family, where I go into direct conflict with my father (A&M '75) and uncle (A&M '78).

[Fan Of The Game]

I'm shooting for a similar conflict in the second round. GU (Me) versus BC (Mother, both sisters...and my father has been there clock guy for 35 years).

[redskins12820]

Georgetown/UCLA in the finals (not so far-fetched) will kill me. I have to root for Georgetown, but my grandmother, grandfather, mother, 2 cousins and sister will disown me

[Fan Of The Game]

Does anybody out there have a Belmont family member? No? Well, then let's all enjoy that win before we each get into family wars.

[dajuan]

I also don't understand why anyone would hate the Simmons. I wouldn't say he's been force feeding anyone pieces about the NBA. You're not required to read his stuff. Also, he is pretty insightful about college basketball after only getting into it this year.

If you were a writer who had the freedom to write about whatever you wanted, wouldn't you write about what you cared about? I know I'd be all Georgetown basketball and Chicago sports. Simmons writes about the NBA, Boston sports and pop culture. If you don't enjoy it, there are about a dozen other writers on ESPN Page 2, and about a million other "writers" somewhere out there on the internets.

[JohnnyTwoTimes]

dajuan said:

I also don't understand why anyone would hate the Simmons. I wouldn't say he's been force feeding anyone pieces about the NBA. You're not required to read his stuff. Also, he is pretty insightful about college basketball after only getting into it this year.

If you were a writer who had the freedom to write about whatever you wanted, wouldn't you write about what you cared about? I know I'd be all Georgetown basketball and Chicago sports. Simmons writes about the NBA, Boston sports and pop culture. If you don't enjoy it, there are about a dozen other writers on ESPN Page 2, and about a million other "writers" somewhere out there on the internets.

I love comments like this - as if the ability to just ignore something should preclude one from commenting on it. I have ceased reading Simmons, but I also feel quite free to dislike him strongly. Besides the fact that his act has gotten old and he just recycles the same tired jokes and pop culture references all the time, over the years he has been a huge hater of Pops and Ewing, as many of his Boston-area brethren of the same age were/are. As is his wont, he posts his stupid quips and diatribes without being bothered by any fact-checking or perspective. Hence, he once devoted half a column to berating John Thompson for ruining the collegians-in-the-Olympics experience. Pops may have not coached that team perfectly, but the fact is the world was catching up at that point, as evidenced by Denny Crum's team losing the Pan-Am Games in '87 and Coach Kay's squad losing in '90, facts that Simmons, of course, ignores because all he cares about is bolstering his point that Thompson was an awful coach.

His ill-named "Ewing theory" is also dumb as can be. The Knix may have pulled off a couple games when Pat went down in '99, but teams often do that playing off adrenaline when their star goes down. The larger point is they wouldn't have been there if not for Pat's contributions in the first round; they got squashed by the Spurs in the finals in part because they had no big man; and, most significantly, they have been abominable ever since Pat left the team. Again, Simmons won't let facts get in the way of his "commentary."

So yeah, I'm one of those who scoffs at this ignoramus acting like he's Moses coming down from the mountaintop to grace us with his keen college hoops observations after years of boasting how he doesn't watch college basketball. Talk about "unintentional comedy" - his asinine college observations are off the charts (like he wants a 6-foul rule; yeah, that worked real well for the Big East in the 90's). And this is coming from a Red Sox/Pats fan.

[Boz]

Must ... resist ... urge ... to ... pile ... on.

(also ... must ... die ... in ... classic ... lorne ... greene ... pose)

Simmons bothers me much less now that I haven't clicked on one of his columns in many, many months (with the exception of movie reviews; I still enjoy those a fair bit) and haven't read a complete column in more than a year. [correction: i did read that recent allen iverson column he wrote, and gave him due credit for it]


BEST ... DEATH ... EVER!!

[AvantGuardHoya]

dallashoya said:

And he says in the same article about the A&M game:

"That's right, it's a Final Four battle in which John Thompson the Third and Patrick Ewing Jr. will defeat Acie Law the Fourth! That should be exciting. By the way, brace yourself for about 10,000 John Thompson interviews, old Patrick Ewing clips and features about the 25th anniversary of the "Fred Brown game" when Georgetown makes the Final Four. As long as they show Reggie Williams' postgame interview after the '84 title game, I'm happy. That may have been the single most awkward moment of the entire 1980s. And that's saying something."

Reggie will never live that one down.

Worth noting, too, I think is that Reggie was a mere freshman then. I suspect he encountered more than a few awkward, disarming situations that year. I know I did.

[Frank Black]

avantguardhoya said:

dallashoya said:

And he says in the same article about the A&M game:

"That's right, it's a Final Four battle in which John Thompson the Third and Patrick Ewing Jr. will defeat Acie Law the Fourth! That should be exciting. By the way, brace yourself for about 10,000 John Thompson interviews, old Patrick Ewing clips and features about the 25th anniversary of the "Fred Brown game" when Georgetown makes the Final Four. As long as they show Reggie Williams' postgame interview after the '84 title game, I'm happy. That may have been the single most awkward moment of the entire 1980s. And that's saying something."

Reggie will never live that one down.

Worth noting, too, I think is that Reggie was a mere freshman then. I suspect he encountered more than a few awkward, disarming situations that year. I know I did.

Was that the same postgame interview session where Michael Graham said, "Me and Pat be fluffin'." I wonder what happened to that expression, I'm a big fan.

[miamihoya]

for whats its worth the sport gal has us losing to texas in the regional final:

sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/blog/index?name=simmons

[nomer]

frankblack said:

Was that the same postgame interview session where Michael Graham said, "Me and Pat be fluffin'." I wonder what happened to that expression, I'm a big fan.

1. I have no idea what that means and 2. The only time I've ever heard fluff used as a verb (as slang and/or not involving a pillow) the porn industry was invovled. That's probably one of the reasons you don't hear that anymore.