NCAA Tournament 2000 - Looking back, signs for these upsets existed

Looking back, signs for these upsets existed
By Andy Katz
ESPN.com

The NCAA 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.

Arizona and Stanford were suspect No. 1 seeds heading into the tournament. The Wildcats didn't have Loren Woods for the first weekend because of a back injury. It was later determined that he wouldn't be able to play for the whole tournament. If Richard Jefferson got into foul trouble, the Wildcats would be an easy upset victim. He did, and they were.

Stanford had lost two of its last three games to end the regular season. That timing didn't help the Cardinal, even though those losses were to two teams -- UCLA and Arizona -- that were playing well. Had those losses come against middle-of-the-road Pac-10 teams, we obviously would have said Stanford was stumbling going into the tournament and didn't deserve a No. 1 seed.

Regardless, the Cardinal still lost the games -- perhaps meaning they weren't playing as well as they had during the previous month, when they steamrolled the Pac-10 competition. Stanford coach Mike Montgomery said he didn't feel the team went out playing its best Sunday. He was right -- and all it took was a team finally playing up to its potential (North Carolina) to take the Cardinal out.

Picking Temple to lose to Seton Hall would have been hard to imagine, especially with Shaheen Holloway going down with an ankle injury in the first half. Pepe Sanchez fouled out before overtime, and that contributed greatly to the Owls' loss. Temple was 5-3 without Sanchez this season, 22-2 with him. And in the end, the Owls couldn't survive with him not on the floor.

St. John's had problems closing out games through most of December and January. The Red Storm couldn't shed that characteristic against Gonzaga. This sort of loss was in this St. John's team. We didn't see it coming. We should have.

Maryland and Ohio State had been erratic earlier in the season. Neither was ever dominant, nor were they substantially better than UCLA or Miami in terms of talent. Only the margin in the UCLA victory should have come as a true surprise.

Cincinnati might have been the only predictable early exit. Fair or not, the Bearcats were an easy pick to fall out before the Sweet 16 since they were without player of the year Kenyon Martin. Tulsa was the wrong team to face this early in the tournament, after the Golden Hurricane were handed a No. 7 seed when they deserved at least a five or six.

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.

Co-favorites Duke and Michigan State are still alive in the tournament, despite serious scares in the second round. One of the two could definitely still win the tournament. But Duke took too many 3-pointers against Kansas. Michigan State was too passive in the first half against Utah. Take note of these signs before the next upset occurs.

We were wrong on a number of picks in the second round, but that's not so bad. Bring on a Gonzaga-Tulsa final and listen if anybody says they knew that was going to happen.

Andy Katz is a senior writer at ESPN.com.


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