Sports

NCAA tourney truths lost in noise of nonsense

Funny how it worked out, Saturday. After five hours and two games of endless analysis — alerts to changes in defenses, tempos and 60-70 other things — it came down, again, to what we saw and not what we were told.

Butler over VCU in the first game was determined by roughly 10 inside VCU shots, including put-backs, that were about to fall through but rolled out. Start to end, VCU seemed cursed — or Butler blessed — by rims that just weren’t in the mood for VCU.

Is that credible analysis? VCU was in large part beaten by rotten luck? Why not? That had at least as much to do with the result as 2-1-2 zones or low-wing screens. For a VCU fan, the view had to be excruciating.

THE POST LINE: ALL THE ODDS

COMPLETE NCAA COVERAGE

Same kind of thing in UConn over Kentucky. For all the well-intentioned, detailed analysis spoken by Clark Kellogg and Steve Kerr on CBS, Kentucky lost because, for starters, it took a bunch of rushed, rotten shots.

And can credible analysis no longer include the most fundamental of fundamentals? In a 56-55 final, after all, the losers were 1-for-5 from the foul line. Why was that less important than everything else?

After one of those FT misses, UConn rebounded and quickly ran the other way for two points. UK otherwise would’ve retreated to play five-man defense.

But that’s the stuff lost on modern analysts. The game hasn’t changed as much as its analysis has.

Sterling’s radio calls still off the wall!

Saturday, my first time tuned to a regular-season Yankees radiocast since last season, the very first pitch: Russell Martin hits one deep. John Sterling starts his home-run call, then hollers, “It’s off the wall!” Finally, he says it was caught by right fielder Magglio Ordonez.

Twenty-two years of hundreds of such butchered calls later, Sterling still doesn’t know to wait before hollering one or two bad guesses.

*

The Barry Bonds trial has become exactly what it had to become: a yardstick for common sense.

It doesn’t matter what a jury decides, those previously inclined to give Bonds the benefit of the doubt now know he was a slugger on steroids.

And again, as in the Roger Clemens case, we’re asked to believe that a fabulously wealthy, world-class athlete would have anyone other than a clean doctor or a certified nurse inject him with anything.

*

That’s right, kids, dads and student-athletes of all ages, on a school/work night, today’s NCAA final again will tip close to 9:30 p.m.

At least on Saturday afternoon, Charles Barkley, on CBS, was nice enough to treat all to the gutter vulgarity “s–mbags.” Is he really worth the compromise?

*

So Alex Rodriquez, as seen on YES tape, posed a triple into a double in a tie game in the Yanks’ opener. Yesterday, he made the last out of the first with a drive to the left-field wall. Did he run? Neither YES video nor Michael Kay or Ken Singleton told us.

*

Cablevision’s dishonest ads are endless. A new one about how Cablevision-owned IO has the Knicks, now with Amar’e Stoudemire, Carmelo Anthony and Chauncey Billups, in HD, but rival FiOS/Verizon doesn’t, is typical. Conflicted-by-interests Dolanvision won’t provide the Knicks (or local NHL teams) in HD to Verizon. Because it owns cable systems and programming, it uses its programming to hurt competing systems.

*

You know you’ve made it when … Stoudemire and Anthony last week visited Grover to shoot a “Sesame Street” segment, scheduled for the fall. T is for technical. Technical. Can you say, “Technical”?

*

With one game left, The Post’s young NCAA Tournament handicapper, Howard Kussoy, is a sick 22-7-1 vs. the spread. If there’s ever a time to retire from such a gig, it’s now, on top, as the greatest tout of all-time. Pack it in, brother, there’s no place left to go but down.

Let’s hope Mets keep prankster in ‘Family’

IF it’s not too late, here’s hoping SNY spares the employment of the young wise-guy responsible for that “Family Guy” Mets’ mockery accidentally inserted from SNY headquarters at the close of Friday’s Met opener.

More than 35 years ago, as Post copyboys, Peter Keepnews (real name, now a noted jazz writer/critic) and I were messing around with some hot-type copy bound for the composing room. The Post was running a series from a book about Thomas Jefferson, and Peter mockingly inserted the word “boring” in the duplicate of the copy, an insert intended for my amusement only.

You can guess the rest: Along the top of Page 1 of the next edition appeared a bold-faced box alerting readers to the next “boring” installment from the book. Not sure how it happened, but we know we had something — everything — to do with it.

But our jobs were spared.

Besides, ever since Friday’s “Family Guy” incident, the Mets are 2-0. Have fun with it, SNY, at least until the Mets lose. Then can him.

*

This column long advocated the inclusion of rules experts within NFL pregames. So, when Fox last season added the league’s former head of officials, Mile Pereira, well, hooray.

During this NCAA tourney, CBS/Turner used John Adams, head of college refs, to clear up matters. That was good, too.

But now over to ESPN, where anything worth doing is worth overdoing.

Friday, during Red Sox-Rangers, Texas’ Mike Napoli was called out for running inside the first-base line when he was hit by the catcher’s throw.

The play and call were self-evident. ESPN nonetheless made a big issue of it. Repeated replays forced extended and needless dialogue among Dan Shulman, Orel Hershiser and Bobby Valentine.

Still, ESPN wasn’t done. It now has former MLB ump Jim McKean on call. So it cut the view of the game in half to go to McKean in studio, where he explained what needed no more explaining. And then ESPN showed more replays, and a four-way discussion of the call began, and continued and continued.

ESPN beat the thing to death. It’s the ESPN way!