Skip to main content

Why Bucknell Will Beat UConn Today

Nineteen brackets, four contests, and one fantasy team later, I am finally done with my men's NCAA tournament picks.  (I still have to pick my Women's NCAA tournament brackets  tomorrow.)

In every single one of them I have Bucknell beating UConn.

Crazy?  Maybe; after all, I spend an inordinate amount of my spare time following Patriot League sports, and while my loathing for all things orange and blue knows no bounds when the Bison Burgers take on Lehigh, once the NCAA tournament happens... madness.

I think there are at least ten good reasons as to why Bucknell will win over the Huskies today.  Read them - and then judge for yourself if I'm crazy. (more)


  1. Abe Badmus. Yes, he's not a current player on the Bison. But Badmus was a huge reason why Bucknell's ""upsets" over Kansas and Arkansas in 2005 and 2006 shouldn't have been so surprising - his stats weren't gaudy, but he did the little gritty things - play physical, get big rebounds - to win games. This 2011 Bucknell team has this Badmus quality in spades - and that's why they'll win.
  2. G Bryan Cohen. UConn fans have probably never heard of this Badmus clone averaging only 7 points per game, but they will. His mission will be to "Badmus" a certain superstar on UConn, a guy you might have heard of: G Kemba Walker. He won't totally stop him - but he'll frustrate him and get into his head. You won't see Cohen fall flat on the floor trying to guard him.
  3. UConn Overconfidence. They will have heard it all this week: don't overlook Bucknell, they beat Kansas, they're good. But watch 30 seconds of coverage of UConn on ESPN and you'll see evidence of a team that has been reading an awful lot of their own press clippings on how great they are. By the time they figure out this is a game, they might be down by double digits.
  4. Inexperience. In all the talk about Kemba! Kemba! Kemba!, folks tend to forget that the Huskies have precious little experience on this team. Only three seniors dot the roster, none of whom average double-digits in scoring. How will they respond when they're down by 12 to the Bison?
  5. Pressure. Bucknell has zero pressure. If they win, they'll add another scalp to their growing NCAA Tournament trophy case; if they lose, hey, it was Kemba Walker. But while expectations at UConn are outsized even in the best of times, Walker's magical run through the Big East Tournament has caused folks to think of an inexperienced, one-trick pony team as a lock for the Final Four. How does UConn respond to this - especially after they fall behind?
  6. Free Throws. The Huskies shoot 75% from the charity stripe - not bad, but there are clearly some easy guys to foul, like C Charles Okwandu (52.9%).  However, Bucknell shoots 78% - and have almost nobody to foul during crunch time.  (G Darryl Shazier is the "worst" at 75%, and trust me, you don't want to foul him, either.)  If this game is close - and I think it will be - Bucknell's free-throw shooting becomes a gigantic plus.
  7. Depth. The Huskies don't come at you in waves - hardly. They only have five players who average 20 minutes or more a game. Bucknell has eight, and will go to the bench often to switch people in and out. Especially considering UConn played so many games last week, how will UConn endure going against Bucknell's large supply of fresh bodies?
  8. Style of play. Bucknell's style is one that looks like it could pose problems for the Huskies - a precision-passing, turnover-forcing, screening, disciplined team. UConn will try to line up their team athlete for athlete - say, C Alex Orihaki on F Mike Muscala - and try to beat the Bison. They will find that very difficult due to the way the Bison play.  If they try to man them athlete for athlete, Muscala will probably score 18 points off of screens alone.
  9. No Home-Court Advantage. Though crazy UConn fans will indeed make the trip to Washington, DC to watch their Huskies, Bucknell is also bringing the full allotment of Sojka Psychos to the Nation's Capital. While long-time Bison fans will be deeply outnumbered, you can bet that the other two schools - Missouri and Cincinnati - will be big, big Bison fans as well. It's not going to be like a home game for the Huskies - this will be split right down the middle.
  10. Mental Toughness. I've learned something about this Bison team - they are one mentally tough team. I know they will not come apart mentally when playing UConn. They were not sitting in awe watching the film in Lewisburg of the Huskies. They know full well they can - and will - win this game.
Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
Just watched the game. Not even close. Bucknell was outclassed in every aspect of the game tonight. The Patriot league is clearly not he Big East.
9:45 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How The Ivy League Is Able To Break the NCAA's Scholarship Limits and Still Consider Themselves FCS

By now you've seen the results.  In 2018, the Ivy League has taken the FCS by storm. Perhaps it was Penn's 30-10 defeat of Lehigh a couple of weeks ago .  Or maybe it was Princeton's 50-9 drubbing of another team that made the FCS Playoffs last year, Monmouth.  Or maybe it was Yale's shockingly dominant 35-14 win over nationally-ranked Maine last weekend. The Ivy League has gone an astounding 12-4 so far in out-of-conference play, many of those wins coming against the Patriot League. But it's not just against the Patriot League where the Ivy League has excelled.  Every Ivy League school has at least one out-of-conference victory, which is remarkable since it is only three games into their football season.  The four losses - Rhode Island over Harvard, Holy Cross over Yale, Delaware over Cornell, and Cal Poly over Brown - were either close losses that could have gone either way or expected blowouts of teams picked to be at the bottom of the Ivy League....
40 comments
Read more

UMass 21, Lafayette 14, halftime

Are you watching this game? UMass had this game under control until about 3 minutes in the second quarter, and then got an interception, converted for a TD. Then the Leopards forced a fumble off the return, and then converted THAT for a TD, making this a game. It's on CN8. You really should be watching this.
20 comments
Read more

Examining A Figure Skating Rivalry: Tonya and Nancy

It must be very hard for a millennial to understand the fuss around the Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding figure skating scandal in the run-up to the 1994 Olympics. If you're of a certain age, though - whether you're a figure skating fan or not, and I am decidedly no fan of figure skating - the Shakespearean story of Harding and Kerrigan still engages, and still grabs peoples' attention, twenty years later. Why, though?  Why, twenty years later, in a sport I care little, does the story still grab me?  Why did I spend time out of my life watching dueling NBC and ESPN documentaries on the subject, and Google multiple stories about Jeff Gilooly , idiot "bodyguards", and the whole sordid affair? I think it's because the story, even twenty years later, is like opium. The addictive story, even now, has everything.  Everything.  The woman that fought for everything, perhaps crossing over to the dark side to get her chance at Olypic Gold, vs. the woman who...
1 comment
Read more