Saturday, March 19, 2016

Tourney Day Two

Hey Everybody,

Your brackets are done. You thought you were onto something, headed in the right direction, then something tripped you up. Believe me, I know. I have your brackets in my hands.
  • Dayton featured a guard named Scoochie Smith. As a Smith, I know differentiation is important to stand out. You can't do much better than Scoochie for that. But Syracuse won, making them avowed enemies of Scoochie fans worldwide. So add "ended Scoochie's career" to your list of reasons to be wary of Coach Boeheim.
  • Wisconsin won a game in which they scored 16 points in the first half. Their 1st half total set a record low for the NCAA Tournament. Yes, a record low. A record low, dating back to when dunks were illegal, shorts didn't quite cover players' briefs, and teams had to provide their own rattan for basket repairs at halftime.
  • VCU "upset" Oregon St. in yet another game that suggests that the Selection Committee needs to change its process for seeding the field,
  • Michigan St. lost. The hyperbole was immediate and effusive. As a result, I'm glad to welcome Giddy Potts to the the permanent parts of my NCAA tournament memory bank, where he joins Kevin Pittsnogle, Ali Farokhmanesh, and others.
  • Oklahoma flirted for most of their game with becoming the second 2-seed of the day to lose. They gutted it out against the Roadrunners, which is good, because we're better for having a tournament with Buddy Hield in it. 
  • Hawaii beat California. It was an upset, but I don't really know anything about either team, so I'll use it to point out how awful the Pac-12 has been. You're probably not a Pac-12 fan, so let's talk about disappointment:
  • West Virginia got blown out by Stephen F. Austin. At the end, the guy from Vikings was doing Steph Curry impressions against Bob Huggins' team. It was surreal.
  • The best game I ever watched was also the one that broke my heart worst. I watch Laettner hit that shot hundreds of times a year. I'm afraid Bryon, our resident Longhorn, is going to share that experience for the next decade, at least. Texas-NIU was a classic. 
  • Cincinnati lost on a made dunk that was waved off by a fingertip. I don't know any Cincy fans, but I will give any I meet a hug today.
  • I told Allison during the day yesterday that Friday would probably be calmer, from an upset perspective. Regression to the mean and all that. I was wrong, and I was wired at almost 1 AM this morning from watching the ends of NIU-Texas and Cincy-St. Joseph's.

No comments: