DEATH STARE. Charles Matthews remains the most expressive Michigan player in recent history.

A rousing hurrah was detected. Beilein:

John Beilein, on WTKA this morning, said he wishes he could have been inside "one of the local drinking establishments" during the Florida game to witness the reaction to Isaiah Livers' dunk.

— Andrew Kahn (@AndrewKahn) March 26, 2019

Poole working through it. Ethan Sears looks at Poole one year after the shot:

The questions about the shot against Houston flowed towards Poole on Saturday. Inevitably, they always will. Jordan Poole will never escape it.

One day after the season, Poole was working with Isaiah Livers in the gym and stopped to take a picture. Livers made fun, saying something to the effect of, “You made the big shots, Mr. Big Shots.” Poole snarled.

“I don’t wanna be known for only just the shot,” Poole said. “Know what I’m saying? Being able to put all the hard work that I have in, being able to start, get the opportunity. Last year I think I only played 11 minutes, something like that, in that game.”

[After THE JUMP: the worst tournament in sports tops itself!]

Michael Avenatti is bad at crime, and this is relevant to us now. Dude got arrested for attempting to extort Nike. The attempted grift was thus: fired AAU coach threatens to rat on Nike's participation in the same kind of recruit purchasing that various Adidas runners got jail time for.

Bol Bol and his handlers also received large sums from Nike. The receipts are clear as day. A lot of people at Nike will have to account for their criminal conduct, starting with Carlton DeBose & moving higher up. The diversion charade they orchestrated against me will be exposed

— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) March 26, 2019

DeAndre Ayton was also named as a guy who took the money.

Avenatti took this information-type substance and threatened to have a press conference at a time set up to maximally damage Nike's stock price, and then demanded millions of dollars to bury it. Nike recorded the conversations and turned them over to the feds.

The interesting bit for people hoping that amateurism will collapse in on itself:

Nike has won the current news cycle as it relates to Avenatti. The apparel company exposed Avenatti’s alleged scheme and, by working with law enforcement, prevented him from publicly accusing the company of involvement in a plot to pay high school basketball recruits.

The win might not prove lasting. Avenatti, as noted above, would likely be convicted if he goes to trial and could then be sentenced to prison. In lieu of that “worst-case” outcome, Avenatti could negotiate a plea deal with prosecutors—the same prosecutors who have prosecuted Adidas officials. In any plea deal, prosecutors would require that Avenatti turn over evidence and perhaps implicate other persons.

Could Avenatti hand over to federal agents texts, emails and other implicating records? Would those records reputationally harm Nike the same way that Adidas has been reputationally harmed by the college basketball corruption probe? Could he “name names” that are well known in basketball—be they Nike officials, college coaches or NBA players—who would then become the target of FBI agents?

If he's got the receipts and is given a deal to turn them over so that the Adidas investigation keeps going and going there may have to be a reckoning. Yeah yeah pipe dream.

It's just a blip. This is indeed the chalkiest tournament ever, at least to this stage. Cue complaints:

As is increasingly the case in recent years, the power conferences rule. The Sweet 16 is comprised of five teams from the Atlantic Coast Conference, four from the Southeastern, three from the Big Ten and one apiece from the Big 12 and Pac-12. The only outliers are Gonzaga from the West Coast and Houston from the American Athletic, and both of those come with asterisks: the Zags are a perennial basketball power; the Cougars have become Houston billionaire and NBA Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta's boutique college program.

"Increasingly the case." Cumong man. You have to go all the way back to 2018 to get a bracket insanity like Loyola-Chicago coming out of a South Regional in which the Sweet 16 had an 11, a 7, a 9, and a 5. Virginia went down in flames to UMBC in… 2018. Sometimes favorites do win.

I do think there is a little something that might be setting up chalkier tournaments: the committee is less bad at its job. Is Wofford a 7 seed ten years ago? Probably not. If they'd thrown the Terriers on the 11 or 12 line they'd be playing a worse team in round two and would be more likely to blow through them.

The worst tournament in sports tops itself. The NCAA hockey tournament has been seeded and announced. Congratulations to one-seed Minnesota State:

Enjoy your road game thousands of miles away from Minnesota. Meanwhile Duluth got shipped to Allentown, Pennsylvania. That's the "Midwest" regional, because Philadelphia is in the Midwest now. It is a cool 18 hour drive from Duluth.

Bowling Green and Arizona State are also forced to head halfway across the country. The only team in that regional anywhere near it is Quinnipiac, the three-seed. And they're three hours away.

Duluth was thinking about bidding with its home arena, but didn't bother because the committee refuses to put regionals at college hockey rinks:

The University of Minnesota Duluth and Amsoil Arena decided to sit out the most recent round of bidding for NCAA Division I men’s ice hockey regionals despite a door opening last year for a school to host a regional once again at its home rink.

DECC Executive Director Dan Russell said the DECC and UMD did not submit a bid for Amsoil Arena to host the 2017 NCAA West Regional because the NCAA made it clear in the bid form that it was looking for a neutral site, not a home site.

Notre Dame got one at home because literally no one else bid, and apparently there is no arena anywhere in the Midwest people are willing to bid at.

How long will this madness continue? Every single non-revenue NCAA playoff features a bunch of home games. Except college hockey. The current system annually throws up farcical results like a 1 seed playing 4 seed Providence in Providence, and it lurches on.

On the other hand. Minnesota State's average age is 22 and seven months. They're the third-oldest team in college hockey. They have three seniors. Every single Minnesota State player is a non-prospect who spent two or three years after high school playing junior hockey instead of being in college. Great system.

Cut, and eligible. Tate Martell bailed from Ohio State when they brought in Justin Fields, and was recently declared immediately eligible at Miami. This was largely because OSU gave him the cold shoulder:

Leach, according to a UM source, made the case that after landing quarterback Justin Fields from Georgia, Ohio State made no efforts to keep Martell. This argument carried weight with the NCAA.

After Ohio State landed Fields, the relationship between Martell and the Buckeyes obviously was impacted, and “no efforts were made by Ohio State to rectify the feelings between the two,” the source said. “Tate felt it was in his and Ohio State’s best interests to transfer.

Ohio State did not object to that or try to get him to change his mind.” …

“At that point,” according to a UM source, “he’s run off and now has to find a new home and found [UM].”

Not quite cut, but when they bring in another quarterback and you can't get them to answer the phone the direction they want you to take is clear.

Martell's transfer doesn't mean there's a transfer free-for-all on the horizon. It was "enormously helpful" that OSU did not object to any of Martell's arguments, per his lawyer, and his argument largely rested on the fact that OSU wanted his scholarship back. In situations where that's not the case waivers won't be granted. Probably.

The Martell case may in fact create some relief for guys who get run off.

Etc.: Hire Big Boutros! NCAA tourney games have worse shooting than you'd expect. My money is on Pope Thrower.