The NCAA tournament is chaos. There is a reason it's called "the madness." It's disjointed, controversial, bizarre, and rarely makes any sense whatsoever.
For instance, of the four teams that played in Philadelphia on Sunday, three of them were named "Wildcats." One such team, Villanova, a Philadelphia school, played their first two games in Philadelphia, same as fellow top-seed UConn, but supposedly didn't have home-court advantage — even though they beat UConn earlier this season on the same court in their biggest game of the year. Villanova is in the Minneapolis bracket. The UConn Huskies are in the Washington, DC bracket. So are the other Huskies, the University of Washington. Confused? Me, too.
According to the CBS scorekeeper in the corner of the screen, BRAD played PITT in Detroit. That game was followed by West Virginia beating Northwestern State (which is located in neither the north or the west). The University of Oakland hosted both games, but only one of the games was part of the "Oakland" bracket, which will reconvene in California next week.
Maybe this is why Jim Nantz called it "one of the wildest weekends ever" — no one knew where they were. It couldn't have been the results. Other than how teams won, closer than expected games and large comebacks, there wasn't a huge surprise all weekend. As you can see, it is virtually impossible to build a coherent essay on the NCAA tournament, so I'm going through it region by region and we'll try and make sense of it for Thursday.
Atlanta Region
Duke did Duke things. J.J. Redick hit threes that mortals miss and get benched for. Their role players played steady. They never looked like they would come close to losing at any time and they never embarrassed any one either. Classic Coach K all around. I'm not sure why every year I think they will blow out the 16-seed they play. I'm sure I have seen it, but the last couple years they just get a nice, easy win and move on and you really don't know what you are looking at heading into the second weekend.
Prior to the tournament, I had them going out either against LSU or one round later to Texas. While Texas could still be a possibility, you can't get too excited about LSU. They didn't exactly manhandle No. 13 Iona and needed a pseudo-buzzer beater to beat Texas A&M. With that being said, they are still a team that theoretically matches up well with Duke. They have long athletes to guard J.J., and someone to bang with Shelden Williams. Perhaps their unimpressive weekend was a case of bad matchups.
About a month ago, I wrote in this space that Iowa would normally be the first team I would take out as an upset. While I didn't write a tournament preview, Iowa's high seed was enough for me stick to my guns and fight the urge to take them out in my bracket. Sure enough, they take a dive in the second half against Louisiana's Northwestern State, leaving them open to one of the most improbable shots in tournament history.
In terms of difficulty, doesn't the NSU buzzer-beater go down as, maybe, the most ridiculous? He shoots it from in the corner, almost behind the basket, for three, and down two points. Is this the first round or a game of horse? If there is a tougher shot, please let me know. He might as well have tried the "Sweet Lou Dunbar Half-Court Hook Shot." Anyway, West Virginia moves on to face Texas (who, surprisingly, few people are talking about), no surprises here. Speaking of which, is there something wrong with taking a team that has been consistently good over the years and may have all five starters in the NBA eventually? I'm pretty excited about having them in the finals. With that being said, the Mountaineers will probably shoot them back to Austin.
Oakland Region
I did not see one second of Memphis this weekend. This is usually good news. CBS only goes to your game if it's in doubt and theirs never really were. Of course, I was at work on Friday, but I never paid attention to their score because there was no reason to. Is this a team that goes to the Final Four? If I had told them they had to beat Oral Roberts, Bucknell, and Bradley in order to face a one-gamer against either Gonzaga or UCLA for a spot in Indy, do you think they would have signed up? Umm, yeah.
Speaking of which, Bradley center Patrick O'Bryant is my new favorite player. He finishes with finesse, plays defense straight-up, passes out of the double team, provides a perfect outlet in breaking the press, and hits free throws in the clutch. Oh, and he's a sophomore. Wow. Can we all chip in for a keep-him-in-school fund to have this guy around two more years? This is the kind of guy that catapults the "Valley" conference into major status. Though if Kyle Korver couldn't do it, it may be impossible.
All this talk and I haven't even gotten to the play of the tournament. For anyone who joined me in astutely taking the SDSU Aztecs to take out Indiana in the first round, you know where I am going with this. If you were dribbling a basketball and someone knocked it out of your hand, you would know it, right? You would know that you didn't just dribble it away. So if that basketball rolled behind the half court line, you would pick it up. In fact, how often do you see a backcourt violation and the player picks the ball up and immediately claims the opponent deflected it? This is the usual course of action. Pickup the ball and argue if necessary.
Instead, with a five-second shot clock difference, SDSU junior guard Brandon Heath inexplicably attempted the block-out bait-and-switch leading to the tie-up, jump-ball-alternate-possession and the inevitable, betyourhousethisshotisgoingdown scramble three-pointer to win the game for Indiana. Of course, the Hoosiers were no match for Gonzaga and pretty much just wasted everyone's time.
When I am president of sports, I would allow for occasional history re-writes: the final bracket would have SDSU as the team that advanced in the second round. Brandon Heath would be stricken from the record. Kind of like how the NCAA did with the Jim O'Brien era at Ohio State last month. It never happened, and if you want to play again, Mr. Heath, we'll have to review if there should be additional punishment. I may have a couple dollars towards the Aztecs, not sure. No one is really talking about this play. Probably because it was: a) after midnight on a Thursday and b) the winner was getting killed by Gonzaga either way.
By the way, I have no idea who wins the UCLA/Gonzaga game and then I will have no idea who wins the regional final. This quarter-bracket was difficult last Sunday night and nothing has changed a week later.
Washington, DC Region
The NCAA tournament is big. You know how I know this? I am in the 99.5 percentile on ESPN.com's bracket challenge. This gets me barely into the top 15,000 in the world. My seventh grade math class tells me there are three million entries on the website. Now, how many people do you know are signed up on ESPN versus those who filled out a bracket that isn't on ESPN.com?
Personally, I think the ratio is like one ESPN bracket for every 40 non-ESPN bracket. More math means there are 120 million brackets lying around on coffee tables in North America. This is almost half of North America. Of course, for every one of me, there is someone like my Mom who mentioned to me in an e-mail that she heard "there was an upset the other day." Great job, Mom, it's good to know she isn't having a secret affair with Dick Vitale, Digger Phelps, or Joe Lunardi.
What does any of this have to do with the Washington Regional? Nothing. Its just a long-winded way of telling you I am in the 99.5 percentile in North America before it all goes up in flames around 9 PM EST on Thursday.I can waste this space because UConn was penned in to the finals on day one and if anyone wants to take Washington/George Mason/Wichita St. for their final four come talk to me about a wager.
Scrappy effort by Kentucky, though — exactly what you would expect from a team that underachieved all year with a ton of talent — close, but no cigar. This bracket is really all about disappointment. Illinois, Michigan State, North Carolina. Talent, talent, and more talent and yet we've got Brandon Roy, George Mason, and the Shockers (who I could have sworn were a wrestling tag team) trying to knock off a team that if kept together for a couple years, would probably make the NBA playoffs in 2008. Assuming they would be in Eastern Conference, of course. In fact, if Isiah Thomas was smart, he would negotiate a deal with David Stern to just take the UConn Huskies and restart the Knicks.
Minneapolis Region
This is my favourite quarter. Only because my bracket is "clean" — all highlighter, no sharpie. Plus, it contains the Boston College Eagles who managed the gambling highlight of the first two rounds. Any time a large favorite can cover a point spread in double overtime, well, that's a treat. Unfortunately for me, I have B.C. and Georgetown advancing to the Elite Eight and that sounded like a lot better idea early last week when the image of Allen Ray's eye outside of its lid was still fresh in my memory.
That injury, by the way, has to rank as one of the top-five grossest injuries ever. His top eyelid was behind his eye! I'm sorry, that's right there with Joe Theismann, Moises Alou, and Willis McGahee. I'm willing to argue it's worse because it was his eye and more impressive because he is back making clutch free throws and NBA-distance threes a week later. It gives me chills just thinking about him telling the story of how the ambulance kept hitting potholes on the way to the hospital in New York. Ugh.
While we are here, I can't be the only one to have seen Ohio State and Tennessee going out this early, can I? I mean, if these teams made the Elite Eight that would be upset. I was discussing with a co-worker the other day about Tennessee specifically. It's an interesting phenomenon as people were talking about how Winthrop could beat them. Two weeks ago, I thought to myself that Tennessee would be a good sleeper in the three, four, or five spot. Then they get a two-seed and they are automatically the worst team of all-time suddenly?
Sure enough, they get ousted, so maybe I don't have a point here, but I would have liked to see what people would say about the team if they were a four-seed on pace for a game against, say, Memphis. Finally, I refuse to even make a statement about Georgetown. I am an incredibly superstitious individual when it comes to things in the same realm as jinxing a no-hitter and the SI cover curse. So let's just say I am looking forward to see how this shakes down and move on.
Final Four
How do you write a conclusion to a story that hasn't been written yet? Well, you don't. Simply stated: UCLA, Texas, UConn, and ... shhhhhh ... Don't tell ... Well, let's just say they are from a capital city and will be looking for a "Dubya" in Indianapolis. Damn, I probably just jinxed them.
Leave a Comment