WKU Beats Calipari, Breaks Top 40

 John Calipari's 1996 UMass team barely survived their first round game of our 16 new teams, with an 80-78 win over Liberty 2023. Western Kentucky 1966 also barely survived, beating Buffalo 2004 by an 84-82 score.

The both won two more games to face off in our championship today, and despite two of his teammates fouling out, Clem Haskins (22 points, 10 rebounds, 5 steals) was just too much in a 74-67 win for the title of our 16-team tournament.  We ranked Western Kentucky 115th of our all-time great teams based on their cards, but they rose to 39th with the 4 wins, while UMass dropped from 53rd to 73rd.

UMass 1996-NM State 1970 Final Four Before Packers-Cowboys Kickoff

The Green Bay Packers at Dallas Cowboys playoff game will still be more than two hours away as we  roll the first dice of our tournament Final Four between New Mexico State 1970 (List E, page 19) and UMass 1996 (List D, page 24) in the Value Add Basketball Game. We will be done with our dice rolls in time for the Packers - and are as focused as the rest of Wisconsin after this announcement today that the former Chaplain of the Packers is the Chair of my Board.

John Calipari's UMass teams was our 1-seed with a +2 team rating, making them just a couple of points favorite against New Mexico State with a -1 (1 point worse than the average great team in the game, but that equals about a +16 against the 100th best team any given season). However, New Mexico State's 3 future NBA stars have dominated Richmond (77-54) and upset Temple (77-60) to look very impressive, while UMass barely survived a 33 point performance by Darius McGhee for a 78-76 win against Liberty 2023, then had an even closer scare in a 75-74 win against Cornbread Maxwell and UNCC.

The question might be why we are playing off basketball teams on an NFL playoff day, but luckily the NFL itself has allowed the same by moving to all primetime games Saturday, Sunday and Monday to allow great college hoops in real games during the afternoons. Illinois and Memphis are looking good in actual afternoon games and even Green Bay the college basketball team is playing a game this afternoon before the Packets kick off in Dallas.

Below is the starting line-up for the game.

New Mexico St. 1970	Season Actual
Charlie Criss	12.5 Pts-nba
Jimmy Collins	24.3 Pts-nba
Roy Neal	5.5 Pts
Jeff Smith	12.8 Pts
Sam Lacey	17.7 Pts-nba
Chito Reyes	8.2 Pts
Milt Horne	4.4 Pts
Bill Moore	2.0 Pts
John Burgess	4.7 Pts
Lonnie Lefevre	1.3 Pts
Massachusetts 1996	Season Actual
Edgar Padilla	8.9 Pts, 3.5 Reb, 6.7 Ast
Carmelo Travieso	12.6 Pts, 3.2 Reb, 2.1 Ast
Donta Bright	14.5 Pts, 5.8 Reb, 1.7 Ast
Dana Dingle	10.1 Pts, 7.4 Reb, 1.5 Ast
Marcus Camby	20.5 Pts, 8.2 Reb, 1.8 Ast-NBA
Charlton Clarke	1.4 Pts, 0.5 Reb, 0.7 Ast
Tyrone Weeks	5.8 Pts, 5.2 Reb, 0.4 Ast
Rigoberto Nunez	0.5 Pts, 1.0 Reb, 0.3 Ast
Inus Norville	2.4 Pts, 2.1 Reb, 0.0 Ast
Ted Cottrell	0.9 Pts, 0.9 Reb, 0.0 Ast

We did make a very minor tweak to the Stamina on the New Mexico State cards, lowering Roy Neal's Stsamina from 37 to 23 and having him play the last 23 possessions only, and increasing the Stamina of Chito Reyes and John Burgess from 7 to 14 and having them. It looks like four others were clear starters, and those three were the 5th through 7th spots in the rotation. Here is the slightly revised lineup looking at Stamina at the bottom.

The following is the opening lineup. Players with dimes get the ball on 2 of the numbers on the 8-sided die, while players with a penny get the ball on only one number.

The once we got to the 23 possession, below, all starters were in to finish the game, so all coins were on the top row.