Bob Huggins thinks Digger Phelps is smart? Well, that explains a lot...

Since it’s Monday and I’m only going to be in the office until Wednesday I’m going to keep today’s post rather short. There are a number of things that I could discuss in light of yesterday’s unveiling of the tournament brackets. However, I have some more pressing (and somewhat related) items to share today, before I return later this week with a more in-depth look at my take on how the tourney’s first two rounds will shake out. Of course, you know I can’t completely ignore yesterday’s events. So, with that in mind, I’ll give you a few of my thoughts from the weekend before I get to the meat of the post.

- I guess I don’t get the overall #1 seed thing. According to people smarter than me, Florida is the #1 overall seed. Then why, pray tell, are they not in the South bracket or facing the winner of the play-in game. As I understand it, the NCAA rewards the highest seeded teams by placing the in their “home brackets”. Additionally, aren’t the teams playing in the play-in game seeded 64 and 65? Isn’t that why they have to play in that craptacular game? I’m having a hard time figuring out why Kansas gets the winner of that game? Of course, you won’t hear me complaining about Wisconsin being the #2 seed in Florida’s bracket? Not by a long shot.

- As for Kansas, I’d be pretty pissed off if I was Bill Self and had to face the possibility of playing UCLA in a regional final located in California. It’s absurd that UCLA can get to the Final Four without leaving California for the second consecutive year. I think the NCAA Committee needs to look a little more closely at the pod system and who’s really being rewarded by it. I mean, when you have Louisville (6 seed) possibly playing a second round game in Lexington it’s not even close to being a fair and equitable situation for whomever they face.

- This was supposed to be the year that the mid-majors finally got a fair shake. Well, I'm willing to be that Drexel and Missouri St. would beg to differ with that sentiment. I think both schools can make a legitimate argument for why they deserve to be playing in the NCAA Tournament. Drexel, especially, seemed to have done everything they could to convince the committee of their worth. They games at Syracuse, Villanova and Creighton while totaling 13 true road wins. That's a staggering number for any school, much less a mid-major who's often facing far larger schools on the road. Sure, they should've finished better than 4th in the Colonial but, other than that, there's not a serious blemish on their resume. Why do I bring all this up? Because I find it interesting that schools like Butler and Southern Illinois have benefited from the newfound mid-major respect to the tune of 5 and 4 seed, respectively while the mid-majors who aren't sure fire locks seem to still be receiving the typical mid-major treatment from the committee. Nobody's denying that Butler has a more impressive resume than Drexel. however, I will say that the CAA was a much better conference than the Horizon. Just as there's a difference in conference quality among the BCS conferences, so to is there a difference amongst the various mid-major conferences. The committee reacted to the recent mid-major driven paradign shift by rewarding mids with higher seeds while continuing to show the hyprocrisy of the process when it came time to evaluate the supposed "borderline" teams from the mid-major conferences. For further proof, consider this: The number of at-large bids for mid-major conferences this year was 7. The lowest number since 1997.

- I’d like to state for the record that Joakim Noah and I are officially feuding. That guy went and stole my dance and then had the audacity to do it on national television. That, my friends, if messed up.

- Speaking of messed up, if you have a queasy stomach, you might want to skip down a paragraph or two. Yesterday, while watching the SEC Final with a friend of mine, we noticed that Bill Raftery is not married. Shocking, I know. Well, since it’s not secret that I find Raftery endlessly amusing, this new found fact led to a round of jokes about Raftery and his voracious appetite for, um women of the night, if you will. Some of the lines uttered included:

- C’mon, just give the big guy a little kiss!
- And she unleashes the puppies!!
- I don’t have a lot of time. How ‘bout a little nickel-dimer?
- (my personal fave): I want you to lick, my onions!

Alright, with that out of the way, I’m going to move on to the story of my Friday night. Well, not the night actually but rather the stories that came from my Friday evening activities. I ended up hanging out with a couple of my friends as well as a co-worker of one of these friends. The night was pretty standard fare for the weekend, lots of drinks and all around douchebaggery except for one detail. My friend’s co-worker had formerly been a basketball player at the University of Cincinnati. He only played at UC for one year before being injured and transferring to a Division II school but not before he spent a freshman year with one of the all time “Whatever happened too…” guys: Dontonio Wingfield.

You may remember Wingfield, then again you may not. He only played one year at Cincy before leaving school and being drafted in the second round by the Seattle Supersonics. As I remember, Wingfield lasted a year or two in the league before moving on to a career overseas, or maybe into a maximum security facility. I wouldn’t be surprised by either, to be quite honest. Wingfield was the personification of the early years of the Huggins led revival at Cincinnati. Players with tons of physical talent and little regard for rules, the law and most of all academics. Wingfield set a UC record for most points by a freshman in his debut game (breaking the record of Oscar Robertson) when he dropped 37 (if memory serves) points and then went on to set a record for fewest classes attended by a freshman at any University in the history of ever. I’m not 100% sure about this record, but I think I’m close here. Anyway, below are a number of stories about the Cincinnati program (some include Wingfield, some don’t) that, while not overly shocking are certainly entertaining:

- During a halftime tirade by Huggins, Wingfield picked up a shoe out of his locker and threw it at Huggins, hitting him square in the head. Huggins was nonplussed.

- Lazelle Durden set the record for most 3 pointers made in a single game during his junior year at Cincy, with 9. Durden was hammered during this game. Like stinking, slurring hammered. According to my source, he’d been drinking gin for the entire afternoon leading up to the game.

- Damon Flint was a world class bama. He could barely read, we’re talking like 3rd grade level here. Oh yeah, he didn’t shower either. Like, ever. Apparently when the guys on the team would go out after games, he would just put clothes on over his uniform and go out like that. He’d literally hang out all night in his sweaty uniform.

- On the day he declared for the NBA Draft, Wingfield was served with 2 paternity suits in addition to being formally kicked out of school. He failed his entire course load.

- Danny Fortson (while in high school) was so angered by being shown up by my source during a summer league game that he actually came off the bench and clotheslined him while he was running full speed downcourt on a fastbreak. I guess not everything was Huggins’ fault.

- Wingfield’s pregame ritual is perhaps my favorite story though: It seems Dontonio would come over to my source’s dorm room and take a shit in his bathroom. Whilst shitting, he would smoke an entire blunt by himself. Of course, all of this was done with the bathroom door wide open to the adjacent rooms. As my source tells it, he came home one day early in the season to find Wingfield doing this and, Wingfield was so happy with the results of this activity on that evening that he decided to make it his pregame ritual for the entirety of the season. Every home game, a big shit and a bigger blunt all in his teammates bathroom.

That’s all I’ve got for today. Are you not entertained?