Send it in, big fella! Casey Calvary swings from the rim after throwing down a mighty dunk on Louisville's Tobiah Hopper.
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Player to watch
Tayshaun Prince, Kentucky. With Desmond Allison out, the Prince of 3s came up huge with 28 points. His patience at the end of regulation saved the 'Cats -- a lot of players would have hoisted the bad look he got with about 12 seconds left; instead, he passed it back, found a screen or two along the baseline and got the best look at a 3 all game. OT, baby!
Random thought
Can we exchange the Purdue-Oklahoma second-round game for an Ultimate Fighting match between Brian Cardinal and Eduardo Najera?
Stock Rising
Dick Bennett. The Wisconsin coach rallied his team to win five of its last six to make the tourney, and then the defensive whiz devised a plan which held Courtney Alexander, the nation's leading scorer, to 11 points -- 14 below his average.
Bracket buster
We'll give Northern Arizona props for putting a scare into at least 50 percent of all office poolers. St. John's had been the odds-on favorite to make it out of the West. Now the Johnnies face Gonzaga, a team that knows something about busting brackets.
Second round game we'd pay to see
Texas vs. LSU. Big bodies banging inside, outside shots raining down, lightning-quick guards pushing tempo -- plus the boys from the Bayou will want to prove their first-round follies aren't going to be the norm.
User Message of the Day
It was a bit scary, but the Johnnies pulled through, as they have all year. They refuse to blow teams away, but never falter when a run is made against them. Why is St John's out in the West, playing in Arizona against an Arizona team? The NCAA wants to screw with them. But the Johnnies will not be intimidated nor denied...
-- shah11
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Daily Word: First-timers avoid upsets, find NCAA legs
Leave it to Gonzaga to be the only lower seeded team to advance to
the second round on the first day of the NCAA Tournament.
The Bulldogs, who are comfortable in Cinderella's slipper, picked
apart Louisville in a 7-10 matchup that was akin to last year's
first-round upset of Minnesota in the West Regional.
But the upset bids that fell just short -- from St. Bonaventure to Northern Arizona to
Central Connecticut State to Southeast Missouri State -- shouldn't come as a
surprise.
Iowa State and LSU, two teams that escaped upsets to CCSU and
SEMO, were easy targets because they had no experience in the NCAA Tournament. Disregard
the Cyclones' No. 2 seed, Big 12 titles or even the name recognition of
Marcus Fizer. He had never played in a tournament -- neither had Jamaal
Tinsley, and Larry Eustachy's last NCAA game was a first-round loss to
Maryland when we was Utah State's coach two years ago. Iowa State's jitters
were natural when the game got tight in the second half, but Fizer and company
lived up to their seeding by pulling away after the game was tied at 69 with six minutes, 10 seconds left.
LSU fit the same profile as the Cyclones. Stromile Swift, Jabari
Smith, Torris Bright and crew were all making their maiden NCAA trip, albeit armed with a
No. 4 seed and a SEC West division title. SEMO, a first-timer too, had every
reason to think it could win, and nearly did, with both teams figuring out
how to get through a tournament game together.
For more of Andy Katz's Daily Word, click here.
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QUESTION OF THE DAY
Who is most ripe for an upset Friday? |
ESPN's Jay Bilas
Illinois: Penn is a really good team that can control tempo. The Quakers have capable players, and they have played well against very good teams. It's an easy game to look past with Florida right behind in the second round. I picked Illinois to win, but I think Penn could be dangerous if Illinois is not in the right frame of mind to play.
ESPN's Len Elmore
Miami (Fla.): While I love the Hurricanes, their sixth seed may be a little too high because of their inability to score consistently. Arkansas is hot coming off a great performance in the SEC tournament. The Razorbacks force a lot of turnovers and have great stamina. If they go on a roll, I'm not sure if Miami has enough offensive firepower to withstand it.
ESPN.com's Andy Katz
Connecticut: The Huskies are facing the most dangerous No. 12 seed in Utah State. The Aggies shouldn't have been a 12 seed, considering they won 19 straight games. Utah State has the defense to stifle Connecticut's perimeter game. The Aggies mix up their defense enough on the perimeter to fluster Khalid El-Amin and Albert Mouring. If that occurs, the Huskies will be in trouble along the perimeter. Connecticut can't beat Utah State simply by going inside to Jake Voskuhl and Kevin Freeman. Two No. 5 seeds have already taken out 12 seeds, leaving only two available upsets for the trend of a 12 beating a five to continue. It has happened every season since the 1989 tournament.
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Cinderella Watch
The clock struck midnight so many times Thursday that we almost chucked the damn thing out the window and went with a sundial. Oh, the agony of the would-be Cinderella!
Imagine the day we would have had if a few key plays had gone the other way. What if...
• Northern Arizona's Ross Land -- the type of one-dimensional player tourney upsets are built around -- had a second dimension that was either ball-handling or passing?
• Jaraan Cornell misses one of his three 3-pointers in the final nine minutes vs. Dayton, or the Flyers' Brooks Hall doesn't miss one of two free throws with 6.7 seconds left?
• St. Bonaventure cuts off Tayshaun Prince's curl with seven seconds left in regulation, or if Tim Winn's long 3-pointer at the end of the second overtime caught a lucky bounce into the hoop instead of rattling out?
• Southeast Missouri State's Roderick Johnson had balanced himself a bit more before throwing up a 3-pointer amid traffic with almost no time left? The shot would have tied the game, and with a little luck he might have drawn a foul from the LSU players clustered around him.
• Central Connecticut State hadn't dug itself into a 19-point first-half deficit and used all its energy just to fight back and tie it at 69?
When all else fails, turn to what you know: Cinderella emeritus Gonzaga pulled an upset as a No. 10 seed. Some things never change.
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