Part 2 With Joe Lunardi, and A-10 Championship Notes
by Bill Kintner
CINCINNATI – This was an incredible final game between Xavier and Saint Joseph’s that went down to the final shot.
This is part II of the Joe Lunardi interview.
BK: How about the NIT? Are you up on how the NIT is selecting teams this year.
JL: We know what they published, we really don’t know what they are going to do. We are told they are going to seed teams one-to-40. Then give the top 24 a bye and seed, select and pair. Than means if you are in the top half of the bracket you will get a home game and if you are in the bottom half of the bracket you are going to get a road game all the way through to New York. It would lead you to think they are going to use NCAA Tournament criteria and simply pick the next 40 teams. Let’s say the 40 that just missed being selected. They have added their own automatic qualifier for teams that win the conference regular season and lose in their conference tournament. That has never been a criteria before and I think that is an outstanding idea. They are also going to allow losing teams in, those with records under .500 into the tournament which I think is a bad idea. If you can’t get to .500, even if you played the Lakers 30 times you have not earned a post-season berth. It will be interesting to see how they break it out and break it down and how much of this is just going to be more home games for power conference teams for power conference teams to cash in. We just don’t know yet.
BK: Describe for me when you start putting all this information together to do your bracket predictions?
JL: Well the last couple of days has not been a good representation of that.
BK: I know that you start real early on your predictions.
JL: That is because people want to read it early. I mean, last year I was in New York for the NIT finals, and ESPN wanted me to go on the air and say who next year’s NCAA teams would be.
BK: Do you really know what you are doing or just guessing?
JL: I do the best I can with what I have. I did get probably three of the four number one seeds for this year back then. So maybe it wasn’t such a bad exercise.
BK: What do you do to prepare to make you projections?
JL: During the off season I don’t do anything. In fact, I try to clear my entire memory bank. If you walked up to me in July and said, “How about that battle for the last at-large bid?” I would be in another World. I am into the beach, golf and leaving work early.
BK: And your family?
JL: And my kids and wife! Oh absolutely they are ready for me to come home. I may have to use MapQuest to get home. I read the same preseason publications as everybody else. I talk to some coaches, media and by November I am going to be juiced and ready to go. I will do an early season bracket and then I will start getting serious in January. This year after the Super Bowl we will start updating it twice a week because of automation. The internet has made that possible. As soon as we are done I will go back to the hotel and crunch today’s games and numbers to try to have an intelligent bracket up in the morning.
BK: Based on where the season is right now, give me some tips as to what we can expect.
JL: I think we are getting down near the end here where maybe there are eight or 10 teams for three or four spots. That is pretty typical. By this time tomorrow night, there will maybe be one or two spots up for grabs, if any, depending on who makes the finals of these other conference championships. There are four, actually five championships on Sunday now that the Southland Conference plays theirs on Sunday for reasons that are beyond me. It may be just be more working out the seeds. Saturday is the day when the bubble decisions are made. I think the last couple of teams in will wind up being maybe Seton Hall, maybe another Missouri Valley team.
BK: Now that you are a regular on ESPN, how often are you recognized when you are out somewhere?
JL: In an arena I am recognized a lot. I went to a game at Southern Illinois in January. We (St. Joe’s) were in St. Louis and it was just a little over an hour away, so I went down to see what was going on in the Missouri Valley Conference. I was treated like a rock star. I signed autographs, they chanted my name and put me on the local news.
BK: You have established yourself as the doctor of bracketology so what is next for you?
JL: Hmmm… going back to work on Tuesday? I have lived almost every sport-media fantasy that I could have had. On Sunday at five PM, they are going to do an hour of bracketology on ESPN and it is going to be my picks and what they mean. I don’t know if I could take it to a higher level, short of being the chairman of the selection committee, in that case you would be my vice-chairman.
BK: That is a nice place to end this interview. Thanks for taking time out from your busy schedule to chat.
JL: It was a pleasure.
Notes
- Xavier is only one of 10 teams in NCAA history to win four games in four days in their conference tournaments.
- Jeff Archiable, who has a talk show on 1450 AM (the local ESPN affiliate) is my kind of sneak. He is here to cover the championship game. In college, he used to make up companies (media outlets), design letterhead and send in a request for credentials. He went to a bunch of Indy Pacer games and had the time of his life, for free!
- The Saint Joseph’s cheerleaders threw t-shirts up into the crowd. Then 98 percent of the blue-clad fans that were from Xavier cheered wildly started tossing them back onto the court. An announcement threatening ejection ended the reverse t-shirt toss and was met with a chorus of boos.
- 9,373 fans that attended the championship game were loud, especially when you consider the arena hold 16,200.
- This win makes Xavier a perfect four-for-four in Championship game appearances (having won in 1998, 2002 and 2004).
- With just 1.3 seconds left in the game, Xavier’s Justin Doellman blocked a shot by Dwayne Lee and the ball went out of bounds. Several fans thought the game was over and ran on the court, and they are fortunate that the officials did not call a technical.
The best of the A-10 Tournament
Best band: Dayton, they had great uniforms and played with some life.
Best cheerleaders: Fordham, because they didn’t have any dudes cheering! They were all cute, but in the World of looks, five unattractive women are better than one man. The Xavier girls all had nice stems, no chicken legs in that group.
Best fans besides Xavier: Dayton – they had 4,000 fans come down for their first round loss, and that was not a good turnout for their fans.
Best 3-point shooter: Chet Stachitas, Saint Joseph’s (.556 from the field)
Best rebounder: Curtis Withers, Charlotte (12.0 rpg)
Best defensive player: Dwayne Lee, Saint Joseph’s and Justin Cage, Xavier
Best game: the Championship game, as it had drama to the end.
Worst game performance: George Washington’s 68-53 loss to Temple in the quarterfinals.
Worst uniform: hands down it was Xavier’s Josh Duncan’s knee-high blue tube socks.
Most famous person to attend the tournament: Oscar Robertson. Honorable mention: Byron Larkin (former Xavier great), Jason Williams (former Duke great), Joe Lunardi (ESPN analyst)
All-tournament team
Justin Cage, Xavier
Mardy Collins, Temple
Bryant Dunston, Fordham
Chet Stachitas, Saint Joseph’s
Josh Duncan, Xavier
MVP: Justin Cage
