Saturday, March 19, 2005

Random NCAA Tournament Notes

Just a few notes from the first day of the second round:

The Vermont/Kansas upset seemed to light a spark under the underdog teams today, and there were several major upsets. The best had to be the West Virginia/Wake Forest double overtime thriller. No defense was played at all, but it was still the most exciting game so far. Every time West Virginia seemed to have the game iced, Wake would come down and make a 3. The West Virginia back door cut that resulted Wake blocking the winning layup at the end of the 1st OT was one of the best desperation sequences I've seen in a basketball game. Terrific execution by everyone. Glad to see the darlings of the media, Wake Forest, get beat by the hicks from WV. Take that, Billy Packer.

The Utah/Oklahoma game was one of the biggest turds I've ever seen. The average sequence went like this: Oklahoma comes down and puts up a brick. Utah rebounds, brings the ball up, then throws it into the 6th row of the stands. Meanwhile, the announcers calling the game are too busy talking about how Andrew Bogut has made 6 passes that should be assists, except that the other Utah players didn't make the shots. I was interested in seeing if Bogut would live up to his hype, and he didn't come close. It didn't help that his parents were calling the game for CBS, and seemed oblivious to what a horrible game he was playing. This guy is a lottery pick? Well, so was Luc Longley, I guess (and that comparison isn't a coincidence).

I didn't watch Kentucky/Cincinnati game, because, well I hate both teams. Nice to see Bob Huggins get sent home early again, hope you're next, Tubby.

Finally, Illinois beat Nevada rather easily, which should be a big surprise to the Chicago press. The papers were all over Illinois the last two days, saying they couldn't get past this tough Nevada team the way they were playing, since Nevada had a far superior front court. Some idiot on the radio this morning said that Nick Fazekus reminded him of Larry Bird. Well, James Augustine came out firing on all cylinders, scoring a career high 23 points, with Jack Ingram throwing in 12 (also a career high), while the two of them held Fazekus to 11 points, which is 10 off his season average. A nice piece of coaching in this game from Bruce Weber: as Augustine was showing signs of heating up, Nevada's coach drew a technical, and Weber had James shoot the free throws (he made both). It seemed to only boost Augustine's confidence higher, he was unstoppable after that point. Next up for Illinois, Bruce Pearl comes to town with his Wisconsin-Milwaukee team. I hope the Illini win by 40.


Still another day of second round action left. I for one am looking forward to the Louisville/Georgia Tech tilt. I'd love to see another ACC team get bounced.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Pittsnogle rocked the West Virginia/Wake Forest game! Gansey wasn't too shabby either.

1:24 PM  

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