Just crazy, not even Western NY.
Remember we were in the West region last year and played the first weekend in Buffalo. First weekend it doesn’t matter. Des Moines ain’t in the West either.
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West of Bangor and East of Denver
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Yeah, the names of the regions are meaningless these days. The women name their regionals after the city where the second weekend is played. Makes more sense.
This year they have two regionals in Greenville, SC, and two in Seattle. So it’s Seattle 1 and Seattle 2, etc.
That was my point; at least Buffalo is western NY (I should add I lived in Syracuse a while).
Danny you lived downstate. Southern Tier for 20 + years (SUNY Geneseo)
SUNY Geneseo is a liberal arts public of considerable repute for those in the know (I live in the Northeast). 97% of students are from NY state, so people outside NY aren’t familiar with it. Geneseo is a safety school for Cornell, which is a good place in the pecking order in the broader scheme of things.
Most of fraternity brothers were from Buffalo, Rochester and Long Island (Lacrosse players)
The directions correlate with where the regional semifinals and finals are played — South, Louisville; West, Las Vegas; Midwest, Kansas City; East, New York.
The first two rounds are scheduled to get the top four seeds relatively close to home, but games are played as part of the regional brackets. So in Albany you get games as part of the West and Midwest brackets.
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I miss the old days when geography made sense. I liked East, West, Mideast and Midwest. I liked the fact that every game in the West Regional would be played in a Western city. I liked the fact that teams played in the region they were located in, with maybe a little wiggle room for Midwest and Mideast teams. Call me a regionalist if you must, but there was kind of an aura about that system that I really liked.
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In the old old days, it was strictly regional. John Wooden’s UCLA title teams would get to the Final Four by beating Idaho State or Santa Clara or, in a huge geographic stretch, New Mexico State. The SWC champ would ALWAYS be in the Midwest with the Big 8 winner and the Missouri Valley winner. There were only 16 conferences then; the rest of the field was independent teams (no at-larges for another few years).
Yeah, and I loved that! And all those Eastern schools that I had never heard of, playing all NIT games in the Gahden.
It also greased UCLA’s path into the Final Four every year. And I mean EVERY year. In the entire Wooden dynasty, they had only one game in a regional decided by less than 9 points – in the SS his final year, beating Montana by 3.
I’m thinking it started to end in Albuquerque in Spring 78.
Wooden retired in 1975. The next year they lost to Indiana (which finished 32-0) in the Final Four, and in '77 they lost to Idaho State in the Sweet 16. Then us in The Pit.
They didn’t need to have it greased. They were the best team. Year after year.
Not raelated to topic. But just returned from baseball practice and they were all talking about how Walsh plays the game A number of them had attended 1 of the 2 games. We are 25 miles from Des Moines.
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Yep, they were (with no small help from Sam Gilbert, who was a bagman to beat all bagmen). But as we see in the Dance today, the best team doesn’t always win. That format made it really, really easy for the Bruins. Meanwhile the ACC and SEC and Big Ten and Big 8 and all those independents were beating each other up in the other three regions.
The old rules led to stuff like this: In 1971, the #5 team in the country didn’t make the tournament. They happened to be located on the other side of town from UCLA, and one team per conference, so SoCal was out. In 1974, NC State and Maryland had a 45-minute war in the ACC final. NCSU won and went on to win the natty. Maryland, which was #4 in the country, didn’t even go to the NIT. UNC was #12 that year; no soup for them either,
Never heard of Gilbert until you mentioned him. Looked him up. Wow…kinda takes some shine off Wooden’s success.