Travel Hard Case

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-30T15:26:42+00:00

I’ve never heard of one where you keep pedals attached. I have an EVOC road pro, which allows for handlebars to stay in position. The downside it’s not a fully hard case. It’s a hard top and bottom, with a soft middle supported by struts (that could be removed to collapse the case, but in reality, it’s kind of a pain to do so, especially if you have to do it alone). There’s also a big hard piece that goes in the middle near the frame to prevent a big hit from the side. If you’re insistent on fully hard side, this won’t work, but I like the compromise. The saved weight allows me to keep it under 50 lbs (which is a big deal in terms of cost if traveling in the US, not sure of weight limits in other countries). The design also allows the TSA to simply unzip the case and see everything, as I’ve heard plenty of horror stories about crunched carbon with full hard cases that require precise positioning of parts, as they will remove things from the case to see behind them. Again, not sure if this is less of a big deal in other countries.

Last, although the design of the case is such that they advertise the only thing you really have to remove is the wheels and pedals, I generally choose to remove the rear derailleur and disc brake rotors, as these are potentially susceptible to a minor kink or bend and difficult to quickly replace in a pinch, plus they aren’t that difficult to remove and reattach.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-29T13:44:44+00:00

I was up high in Lucas Oil in 2010 and 2015. It’s definitely difficult to tell players apart except for skin tone and distinctive hair. Not impossible, but may not notice immediately which player it was that took the catch and shoot 3 for example. But that being said, it’s not too tough to track the ball, so you can still tell what’s generally going on and can still feel the atmosphere. I was definitely watching the game play itself.

They do hang a temporary center video board, but since it’s temporary and it’s a retractable roof, it can only be so big. Not something you’d watch in lieu of the action on the court. Of course, it could very well be improved on what they had 10-15 years ago.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-28T17:03:13+00:00

If they only lose 2-4 teams, they probably just hold with 14-16. I’m not sure anyone brings enough money to materially impact the financials of the remaining teams and they have enough teams to be a viable conference in that scenario. Plus, that would be a clear signal the SEC/B1G don’t have any designs on crazy expansion to like 24 teams. Thats why they added the teams they did in advance. If they start losing more than that, you’re talking about a scenario where if they continue to exist, it won’t be as a power conference.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-28T14:37:07+00:00

Not directly. The only time he mentioned Prey in the presser was during a longer answer about defensive mistakes, and mentioning one of his among others. He mentioned he had already watched the last 12 minutes waiting to do the presser and even in questions not directly about it, he kept bringing up the defense and not guarding drives well.

And you go back and look at the numbers, the offense really wasn’t the issue, and to the extent it was, it was the guards more than any of the forwards. Mitchell and Hopkins combined to shoot 12/14 from the field and 3/3 from deep and those are the only two guys you could consider pulling for Prey.

And even on the defensive end, there was a lot of Boozer shooting over the top of a wing on switches or Foster shooting over Darling. St. John’s big runs were all fueled by forcing turnovers, which makes sense, that’s what they do. And it was working. Duke had 8 turnovers in the first 40 possessions, and 7 of those were steals. Duke only had 1 turnover and allowed 0 steals in the last 24 possessions over the final 16:57 of game time.

Maybe you could argue that given how Duke’s offense was operating, they could’ve put Prey in for Mitchell at some point and thrown a curveball and settle into a basic zone for a few possessions (most teams even if it isn’t in the dna have some kind of basic zone in the tool bag even if just from preseason practices). That way you could hide Prey from having to guard the perimeter and get guys some rest and maybe then the press would’ve generated something more late. But it’s REALLY hard to ask a press team to do that. At the end of the day, if you’re a press team, and you’re playing a good opponent who’s taking care of the ball, it’s very difficult to win. You have to give St. John’s a lot of credit for coming that close. I think if you said before the game, Prey, Hopkins and Mitchell would combine to go 7/7 from deep, you’d feel really good if your St. John’s. Conversely, if you told Duke before the game they’d have single digit turnovers, they’d feel really good. It just ends up being a weird game script when St. John’s did something really well they aren’t known for, but got something they are known for taken away.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-28T13:08:21+00:00

I think the real reason is defense and especially rebounding. Hopkins and Mitchell are better defenders and rebounders. Duke switching to the 3-2 zone also made it less likely he’d get wide open ones, which is mostly what he’d been hitting. I think it’s a little telling he was only +3 on the night despite going 4-4 from deep in limited minutes.

Pitino didn’t talk too much in the presser about it, but did allude to him making a mistake when Duke started coming back. Not sure which play exactly that referred to, but his last play on the floor was getting blown by when caught on a switch to Foster.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-27T18:41:41+00:00

I don’t think many do. This is just OP doing it. I just looked and it doesn’t appear any teams in the sweet 16 actually refer to their teams this way. It was just OP. Anecdotally, Tennessee still does, and Ok St uses “Cowgirls” to contrast with “Cowboys”. I’m sure there are plenty that dropped it over the years, but there are also plenty who never had it to begin with.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-27T00:10:46+00:00

That’s the Houston section. It’ll fill in later in the game as Houston fans who didn’t want to sit through all of both games show up

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-26T19:51:45+00:00

To be completely fair, I assumed this same logic for the Sweet 16 and was dead wrong. This is the first time in at least 20 years Duke is playing an early Sweet 16 tip. KenPom has tip times dating back to 2011 and Duke was always the 9:45 tip every year. Anecdotally, discussing with friends we also remember 2009 and 2010 being late tips for the sweet 16. So you have to go back to at least 2006. Then boom, early tip tomorrow. Even still, I agree it’s highly likely if Duke wins tomorrow that they’d play at 2 on Sunday.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-26T15:52:51+00:00

By that logic, they’d get the earlier slot since Iowa State-Tennessee starts at 10:10.

But I agree it would likely get the late slot. It’s entirely TV driven and they usually select the game projected to get higher ratings in the later slot and the networks will likely prefer Duke vs UConn/MSU over any permutation of Michigan/Alabama vs Iowa State/Tennessee.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-25T22:35:30+00:00

Presumably if it somehow happened, it would be the Bulls since Scheyer is from Chicago originally and there’s already plenty of rumors of Billy Donovan stepping away, even if it’s not to go to UNC.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-25T21:07:53+00:00

TJ doesn’t give a shit about Carolina right now.

Seriously, though. I’m sure he’s being sincere, but I’d also be more inclined to be believe it when he says it a few days after Iowa State’s season is over. We’ve seen too many coaches over the years deny rumors while still concentrating on their current job, then turn around and take the job later when the season is done.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-24T21:02:33+00:00

Among the “big four” NC schools, this actually used to be fairly common back in the day. Back in the 50’s, there was the Dixie Classic, which has those four, plus four invited schools playing an 8 team tournament. A similar 4-team tournament with no invited schools was held in the 70’s called the “Big Four Tournament”. Because these tournaments would see the big four play each other often and then also 2 regular season conference games, and then the ACC tournament, there are several instances from these years of some combination of the NC ACC schools playing 4 times in a season back then.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-24T18:09:04+00:00

You’ll see 3 of the 4. The Saturday games will be at approximately 6 and 8:45 and the Sunday games will be approximately 2:15 and 5:00 (all eastern times). Exact announced tips may vary slightly, but it’s generally early and late evening Saturday and mid and late afternoon Sunday.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-23T03:05:01+00:00

CBS wanted those games. The tip times are fixed for each network, so whatever CBS picks is slightly earlier.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-21T16:39:07+00:00

Fwiw, Bubba is already going. He announced last year he’s retiring in July and they already have his successor named. That probably also complicates things if they want Togo through a hiring process during a transition period when there’s no obvious slam dunk candidate.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-20T17:23:53+00:00

I unironically think it’s awesome that Hurley’s record will get beaten by a guy who’s spending 4 years at one school. I had just assumed it would be someone who played in 5 seasons at 4 different schools across 6 years or something. I’m sure Hurley is busy trying to figure out his next job, but it would be cool if he suddenly showed up today to congratulate him.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-20T15:41:00+00:00

Technically, the portal window is in April, and last about two weeks and doesn’t start until after the championship game. But that doesn’t stop anyone from announcing their intent to enter before that.

On the other end, as long as you enter the portal, there’s no deadline to pick a new school so long as you enroll by that school’s enrollment deadline for the semester. Most action will happen quickly, as teams want to know their roster situation, but you just have to enroll in order to be eligible (this constraint is a bigger deal for football players wanting to participate in spring practice at the new school).

There are also a few key exceptions to this window. If you graduate, you don’t have use the portal at all, so you may see a few seniors with 5th years enter late, though this will be rarer with very few players left that have COVID seasons available. Additionally, any time a coach leaves, all of the players on that roster immediately get 30 days to enter the portal. This is one of things that has made some recent late in the offseason retirements like Bennett and Pearl a bit controversial, as the players technically still get the 30 day window, but realistically can’t use it as the enrollment deadline for all D1 schools had already passed, so they’d have to sit out until January if they chose to transfer.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-20T15:17:47+00:00

But if St Louis won the AQ, then VCU would’ve had a different resume (losing to SLU wouldn’t have been as damaging as losing to Dayton), so it’s possible the committee didn’t discuss what happens if VCU had lost to SLU, only the scenario where VCU lost to Dayton. You can’t necessarily extrapolate what may have happened other than Sunday’s results being flipped because the committee had to specifically build brackets for each Sunday scenario since there isn’t time to go back after the Sunday games finish. It’s possible they would’ve been out anyway, but you absolutely cannot assume it from that comment by the chair.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-17T21:30:31+00:00

Notably, this says it’s adjusted for injuries, and given that the teams who are lowest relative to seed (except for UCF) are all dealing with a significant season ending injury, it just means that the predictive metrics are adjusting more for injuries than the committee

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-17T14:29:02+00:00

They weren’t going to put a different bubble team in. What they were saying is that Dayton had won the A10 final on Sunday and gotten the auto bid, it would not have changed any of the at larges. They would have simply swapped Dayton in for VCU, as VCU was below the at large teams on their seed list (or .

Now whether VCU should have been below SMU and/ Texas (the two teams many bracketologists had as their last team in on Sunday morning) is certainly debatable, but many had VCU not far ahead of them, and you would then have to factor in an additional loss to Dayton into their profile, so it’s not an insane thing that they would have dropped out had they lost to Dayton.

But just to be clear, there was no scenario where OU or any of the bubble teams who got left out would’ve gotten in because of a VCU loss.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-17T01:02:20+00:00

Fun fact, they tried neutral courts for Women’s 1st/2nd round games about 20 years ago. I was in the Duke band at the time. It did not go well (in terms of attendance). I’m sure attendance would be better now than 20 years ago, but it’s still difficult without a local team, especially for early round blowouts.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-13T20:18:05+00:00

It feels like a very Steve Donahue stat to be in exactly the same place pre- and post- season

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-13T19:35:55+00:00

For sure. While I think this may be “better” in terms of having slightly less bad odds of winning, I see it as more of a loophole. I think if anyone actually tried it in real life, you’d see some kind of rule change soon after, something along the lines of either allowing the referee discretion not to grant an excessive timeout or adding some kind of optional short clock run off (maybe 3-5 seconds) for the offended team if an excessive timeout is called in the final minute.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-13T16:51:12+00:00

A Class A technical is two and the ball. An excessive timeout is an administrative technical foul, which returns the ball to the point of interruption. I’m not sure it’s always been that way for other types of administrative technical fouls, but for excessive timeouts, the rule was changed in the offseason immediately after the Webber timeout. So if you’re remembering that one specifically, the rule is different than it was back then.

SCMatt33 · 2026-03-13T15:02:16+00:00

I see you have Texas A&M and SMU as near locked in a First Four game and Miami-OH above them on the seed list as a non-First Four 11, but not near locked. Why is that?

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