A day full of sound and fury, where in the end nothing really happened. Two lower seed “upsets,” and one that was expected but didn’t happen. Lots of worries, but ultimately nothing.
Upsets
#12 Pacific over #5 Providence. Providence never seemed to have recovered from being blown out at home by Pitt a few weeks ago. Since then, they’ve lost to BC, then Villanova in the first round of the BET, then this. You could make the argument that they were just as likely to go down as Florida, but Gomes had a good game (25 points, 13 boards). It was the rest of the team that did nothing.
Finally a #9 seed wins. UAB beats Washington 102-100 in a wild one.
Can’t we just play the First Half?
#6 Vanderbilt was trailing #11 Western Michigan after the first half. Late in the game, though, Vandy pulled ahead and kept sinking their shots and free throws. Everyone expected this to be an upset, but it didn’t happen.
In the opening round of a tournament, be it conference or the NCAA, as much as I root against the guy, I would expect a Rick Pitino team to win 9 times out of 10. This was the 10th time. Even whe they are the #10 seed against the #7. Lousiville blew an 11 point lead at halftime to lose by 10 to Xavier.
#11 Richmond playing #6 Wisconsin in Milwaukee. A 7 point halftime lead. Up by double digits in the second half. Then Wisconsin went unconscious and hit 12 of 14 shots to not only turn the game around and win by 12.
Though not actually ahead at halftime, the fact that #15 Eastern Washington was tied with #2 Oklahoma St. should count for something. Of course, OSU blew it open in the second half to win by 19.
Throwing A Scare
Plenty more of these.
#4 Cinci survived against #13 East Tennessee St. Cinci kept getting clutch 3s from Tony Bobbitt (the same guy who got punched in the privates by the DePaul player) to hold off ETSU and their insanely frenetic point guard Tim Smith. A wild one that Cinci won 80-77.
#3 Georgia Tech held on for dear life against #14 Northern Iowa. GT was up by 12 at the half, but fell asleep and let NIU back into the game.
#6 Boston College weathered a #11 Utah comeback to win.
#3 Pitt got past #14 University of Central Florida. Sadly, I was stuck watchign Xavier-Louisville most of the time. I saw the last 5 minutes or so of this game. On the bright side, I don’t think Pitt could shoot much worse. I hope someone posts on this game, otherwise, I will have to rely on the box score and press recaps. I’m going to wait until tomorrow for what that tells me. My gut is conflicted since Pitt was hardly the only team to struggle but win the first couple of days.
Never Really In Doubt
#4 Illinois over #13 Murray St.
#1 Kentucky putting away #16 Florida A&M. Though, only winning by 20 seems surprising.
#2 Mississippi St. taking apart #15 Monmouth.
# 7 Memphis having its way with #10 South Carolina.
#4 Kansas pushing around #13 University of Illinois-Chicago.
Not quite at the same level as the rest, but #3 NC State was never truly threatened by #14 Louisiana-Lafayette
Conference Review
The ACC went 6-0.
The Big East was 5-1.
SEC 4-2.
Conference USA 4-2
Big XII 4-0.
Atlantic 10 2-2.
Big 11 2-1.
Pac 10 1-2.
Mountain West 0-3.
The rest of the field 4-17.
Personal Bracket Thoughts
None of my Sweet 16 was eliminated. Kicking myself for going with Providence. Let my Big East bias pick them despite how little heart they have shown in the last couple weeks.
