UConn senior Kevin Freeman gets a hug from Huskies coach Jim Calhoun after the defending champs were knocked out Sunday.
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Player to watch
Ty Shine. This could have been a backup point guard's worst nightmare -- forced into heavy duty against the fearsome teeth of the Temple matchup zone. Instead, Shine, well, shined with 26 points, including 7 of 11 3-pointers after Shaheen Holloway went down with an ankle injury.
Random thought
If Duke had lost to Kansas to become the third No. 1 seed to go down, would CBS have called "do-over" on the weekend and replayed the games Monday and Tuesday?
Stock Rising
Tulsa coach Bill Self. Can you be any more of a hot coaching commodity? Tubby Smith got Tulsa to back-to-back Sweet 16s in 1994 and '95, but no further. Self has a very real shot at leading the Golden Hurricane to the Final Four.
Bracket buster
Forget it. When five of the top eight and eight of the top 12 seeds are gone before the second weekend, nobody can be happy. Less than half of the so-called protected seeds (top 16 teams) survived what turned out to be the wildest second round ever.
Sweet 16 game we'd pay to see
Duke-Florida. Call it the Steve Spurrier special, since he coached at both schools and this is going to be a run-and-gun affair. Duke led the nation in scoring at 89.4 points per game in the regular season; Florida was fourth at 84.8. Florida gets the advantage on depth, but Duke evens that with experience. And young gun Billy Donovan would certainly like to add Coach K to the list of luminaries he's knocked off.
User Message of the Day
I thought Temple was supposed to win the championship. I guess somebody forgot to tell Seton Hall. What a fool, what an idiot I was, thinking Temple was a champonship team. Where was the heart? The mental toughness? The famous matchup zone that somehow let Seton Hall hit a three at the end, the ONE thing they couldn't let happen?
-- hoopla23
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Daily Word: 20/20 hindsight
The selection committee doesn't have to take into account a team's
vulnerabilities, but analysts do.
Most of us failed to pick up on the not-so-hidden signs that were out there. That's why we're left Sunday wondering how two No. 1 seeds, three No. 2 seeds and three No. 3 seeds can be gone before the Sweet 16.
What we forgot to address, or chose to ignore, were the recent
deficiencies among these higher seeds.
If you would have taken a casual look at this Sweet 16 at the beginning of the season, four schools would have jumped out as having no chance to make it this far: Wisconsin, Seton Hall,
LSU and Iowa State. Examine the rosters closer and we should have guessed
that LSU and Iowa State really did belong.
For more of Andy Katz's Daily Word, click here.
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QUESTION OF THE DAY
Which Sweet 16 team surprised you the most? |
ESPN.com's Andy Katz
While it's easy to give the nod to Wisconsin, the Badgers did get to feast on a depleted Arizona team. That's why Seton Hall is my choice. The Pirates were simply bad two weeks ago at the end of the Big East season. They lost three of their last four games and were out in the first round of the Big East tournament. But they played with more emotion in the first round in the dramatic win over Oregon. Beating Temple without Shaheen Holloway was truly remarkable. Tommy Amaker got to the Sweet 16 a year before he brings in the No. 1 recruiting class. Who said you need great players? Seton Hall doesn't have the elite
players, at least not yet. But that didn't matter in the first two rounds.
ESPN's Dick Vitale
I would rate the surprises as follows: Seton Hall, then Wisconsin and North Carolina. Hey, Seton Hall is my alma mater, class of 1962, baby! Tommy Amaker's team kept hitting its 3s against Temple and that is the great equalizer in college basketball. You have to give Dick Bennett credit for the defensive job done against Arizona. North Carolina played with a passion against Stanford.
ESPN's Digger Phelps
Seton Hall gets my vote for the biggest surprise in the Sweet 16. I don't consider Gonzaga that much of a surprise because of Matt Santangelo and Richie Frahm. Seton Hall beat a solid Oregon team in overtime, then showed a lot of heart to beat Temple, especially with Shaheen Holloway going down early. There have been a lot of surprises, and Wisconsin over Arizona has to rank up there, too.
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TOURNAMENT CHALLENGE
The Madness is under way. This year's pool is larger than ever, with 590,000 brackets submitted. Click here to check your brackets. Some interesting tidbits:
Sunday's carnage chewed through another set of bracket favorites. Temple (8.6 percent), Stanford (8.5), Ohio State (2.6) and Cincinnati (1.5) were all among the top nine choices to reach the national title game.
Temple was the fourth-favorite team to make it to the Sweet 16, garnering a spot there in 77 percent of all brackets. Stanford was close behind at 72 percent, followed by Ohio State (64 percent).
Only 1.4 percent of all brackets had North Carolina advancing to the Sweet 16. Seton Hall also received Sweet 16 consideration on 1.4 percent of brackets.
More people bracketed Florida into the Sweet 16 than Illinois, despite the Illini having a higher seed.
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ESPN BRACKETS
Bracket fever has hit ESPN! We have our own Tournament Challenge group, and you can check it out. First, you'll need to log on to the Challenge main page with your entry, and then check out the Featured Group Great Minds of Bristol U. to see our predictions for the NCAA Tournament. Jay Bilas survived the first weekend the best, holding a 10-point lead over Andy Katz. Each correctly picked eight of the Sweet 16 teams. However, both saw their Final Four cut to one (Michigan State). |
Cinderella Watch
Seton Hall might be the closest we have to a Cinderella this season, but more due to circumstance than anything else.
The Pirates began overachieving in January, racing out to an 18-4 record. But then the walls came crashing down. Seton Hall lost five of its last seven games, limping into the field as a No. 10 seed.
Shaheen Holloway reversed those fortunes in the first round with a wild dash to victory, sinking Oregon in overtime. Then the Hall had to go extra time again, this time pushing mighty Temple (the first time a team has won back-to-back overtime games in the tourney since 1980). Only the Pirates had to do it without their heart and soul because Holloway went down with a gruesome ankle sprain.
No problem. Behind Ty Shine's heroics, Seton Hall sent Temple home earlier than anyone expected. Bam! Instant Cinderella (although we won't try to force the glass slipper on Holloway's bum wheel).
In that sense, Seton Hall not only achieved the unexpected, but did it against worse odds than they had going into the game. But the Cinderella moniker won't last long. Next season, Tommy Amaker is bringing in one of the top recruiting classes in the country. Expectations have been exceeded this season, but it will only make the desire to see their team get this far even more rabid among Pirate faithful.
Enjoy the innocence while it lasts. Come this time next season, the Pirates could be the No. 2 seed getting knocked out by an upstart arriving before its time.
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