The 2004 Hemcher Cup Preview Guide
By The Pope of Tribecca, Anthony Lampazzi
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the League Commissioner nor The Commissioner’s Office. This column is the sole opinion of Anthony Lampazzi, no matter how crazy it sounds.
So, since I couldn’t come up with my own forecast guide I decided to ask other people who they thought would win the tournament this year. With that in mind we spoke to some of the foremost basketball minds in the country:
First up Dick Vitale:
AL: So Dick, can I call you Dick? The brackets are out, the lottery has been drawn. Who
do you like this year?
DV: Call me whatever you want baby, ok, first let me say I think Duke got a raw deal in
the bracket, I mean come on, why do they continue to go after Coach K, doesn’t he do
enough, I mean he’s such a good person, a great basketball mind and not that bad looking
either….
AL: Um, Dick, can we get back to the question at hand?
DV: Oh Sorry, as you know I’m a front runner and as such I love what The Boston
General has done up there in New England, year in year out he has a great team and is a
class act, very rarely does he have a down year and I look for him to win yet another
championship.
Well that was worthless, next we spoke to Billy Packer:
AL: Billy, how do you see the Hemcher Cup unfolding this year?
BP: Well, as usual I’m only going to support the best teams around, the second tier,
mid major franchises are a joke in my opinion and don’t even warrant my speaking about
them. So that said I like Knight and Gannon to battle for the title, I mean Knight is the
class of the league and Gannon is one tough little monkey….
AL: Um, monkey? Didn’t you almost lose your job for that statement a few years ago?
BP: Huh? What? Oh, I’m stupid and senile.
Yet another useless forecast from Mr. Packer.
This article is going nowhere fast let me find some other experts, oh here’s Howard Eskin.
AL: So Howard, how are you doing today? Can you give us your prediction for this
year’s Hemcher Cup?
HE: First of all I’m doing fine, I’ve never had a bad day in my life. As far as the Hemcher Cup, let me just say I’m sick of the big NYC money teams thinking they can run away with this thing, I mean Team Zucker, Team Tons? They’ve won like what 2 titles between them and now Team Lampazzi relocates there? What a joke. Four combined total titles and for the first one for Lampazzi no one even has a record to prove he actually won the thing. And I’ll not talk about Team Knight right now because we are currently in negotiations to build my new “Howard Eskin The King of Internet Gambling” site so there may be a conflict of interest there. So that leaves my two philly teams. I love Team Poli but lets face it, the team is a joke, they’ve never won anything and yet everyone keeps talking about how maybe this year will be there year…I got news for you, it’s not their year.
While talking to Howard we had the opportunity to talk to Allen Iverson as he was visiting
with Howard at the time.
AL: Allen, thanks for taking a few minutes, let me say first its an honor to speak to one of the top 25 Hemcher Cup scoring leaders of all time. Based on your experience in past Hemcher season’s I’m sure you can provide some great insight into this year’s likely winner?
AI: Practice?! What are we talking about?! Practice?!
AL: No, actually we are talking about this year’s Hemcher Cup forecast?
AI: Hemcher Cup, what the f#$k is that?
AL: It’s the annual NCAA Player Pool that you played in while at Georgetown, you were the #2 overall pick in 1996.
AI: What? I did? I was? Was I paid for that, because I should have been.
AL: No you weren’t. (The interview came to an abrupt end at this point as four members of Allen’s posse escorted me out of the building at gunpoint)
So lets recap, Vitale likes Team Knight, Packer likes Gannon or Knight, Eskin likes Gannon, and Iverson really had no opinion.
Not much insight so far.
I’m really struggling to find any expert out there who has a valid opinion of this thing; the so called experts interviewed so far have been worthless, there has to be someone out there who knows more about basketball than these four, right? But who, who possibly would know more about college hoops, who???????
Kate Gannon that’s who.
AL: Kate, it’s a real pleasure to have you here, who do you like for the title this year?
KG: My daddy.
AL: Well, that’s good enough for me. This year’s winner will be Team Gannon. Just for kicks, the Stardust Casino released their lines primarily based on input from Kate and here it is:
#6: Team Poli: 200:1
#5: Team Lamp: 199:1
#4: Team Zuck: 150:1
#3: Team Tons: 135:1
#2: Team Knight: 10:1
#1: Team Gannon: 5:2
So there you have it, this year’s forecast. Yeah I kind of mailed it in this year but so what.
Good luck to all and we’ll see you next year.
-AttC