One to two sentence summaries (mostly) of yesterday’s action.
Pitt crushed Kent St. (more on this one later) as Ramon and Gray missed only 1 shot — a single free throw — between them.
Partisan crowd in Dayton, 2 seed versus 15, and Ohio St. had to come from behind to pull it out against Dayton should not be filling Buckeye fans with overwhelming optimism.
Steve Alford will now have to wait for Indiana to lose before he can jump home as the Hawkeyes opened the door and Northwestern (Louisiana) St. came back from a double digit second half deficit to win. Shocking in that it was a 3 losing to a 14, but considering it was Iowa and Alford, well…
Bucknell scares the hell out of me. Dropping Arkansas with smart disciplined play on both ends.
Arizona blew Wisconsin out of the joint. I have trouble believing Arizona can play that way again.
Georgetown survived and advanced past Northern Iowa in a game that either team could have won — and at times both tried to give away.
Hoopies put down Southern Illinois early, then kept doing just enough to keep them down.
Memphis built up its lead in the first half, to withstand a run from Oral Roberts, then put them away.
Villanova had no real problems with Monmouth.
Michigan St. concludes an underachieving, enigmatic season by going down to George Mason. A minor victory for doing the right thing as GMU won with its best player suspended for that crotch blow. The coach of GMU did it without pressure and outcries to do something (see, Chris Paul, Skip Prosser, Wake Forest in 2005).
One of the more unattractive games you could see. Not physically brutal, or sloppy just not well played and what seemed like a lot of standing around as NC St. came back to beat Cal.
Apparently, losing its first game in the Big East Tournament didn’t shake the UConn players out of their complacency after all. They did their best to lose, but ultimately the better talent beat Albany.
2nd year coach for 2nd year in a row goes down in an upset. I’m guessing Kansas isn’t feeling much like home to Bill Self after the Jayhawks lose to Bradley. After the pundits flogged Kansas as having a great shot at the Final Four, I think a good number of brackets are wrecked.
But the number of wrecked brackets a UNC loss to Murray St. would have created would have been astounding. Unfortunately, the Tarheels finally got enough separation to hold on.
Everything I said about Ohio State’s win? Apply it to Texas overcoming Penn while playing in Dallas.
Kentucky struggled (of course) put away UAB. That means UAB Mike Anderson can start interviewing at Ole Miss, Missouri, K-State, Iowa State and maybe Cinci. Gives him a head start on the coaches who have teams still playing.
Conference
ACC: 4-0
SEC: 4-1
PAC 10: 3-1
Big East: 5-3
Big 12: 2-2
Big 11: 3-3
MVC: 2-2
A-10: 1-1