I didn’t mean to not give Xavier and South Florida their due.   They were just victims of my need to get some sleep and it being really late.

But Tu Holliday led the Musketeers with a basket at 21 seconds to top off a rally.  Xavier came back from being down 10 in the second half to knock off the Irish on the early minutes of St. Patrick’s Day.   The only luck that the Irish had on St. Patrick’s Day was bad – with 2 seconds left, Notre Dame had a chance to tie the game from the FT line.  And Eric Atkins hit his first FT of the one-and-one, only to have it waved off due to a lane violation when the Irish left the 3 pt line too early to go for the rebound.   Then, they got an intentional foul called on them when they grabbed a Xavier’s player jersey – giving the Musketeers 2 FTs and the ball.  I am OK with the lane violation call, but the refs messed up with the intentional foul.  It might be the right call according to the book – but if you are going to let someone slap a person across the arm to stop the clock at the end of the game, I don’t see the difference between that and grabbing someone’s jersey to stop them from getting the inbounce pass.

As for the South Florida game, here is the fun stat of the game.  The Bulls started off the game hitting their first 2 FGs.  They then went for nearly 16 minutes – missing their next 22 shots from the field.   And after going 3-27 from the field in the first half, they found themselves only down by 4 points at halftime.  In the second half, Temple continued to struggle to score against the Bulls’ stifling defense, but South Florida started making some of their shots – and they slowly but surely built a double digit lead to finally win by 14.  And so as we did last year, one of the First Four entrants has won its next game, and is one victory away from the Sweet 16.   Can the Bulls repeat what VCU did last year?  (can VCU repeat what VCU did last year?)    Strangely, South Florida will be the favorite to make the Sweet 16 – since they will play 13 seed Ohio on Sunday – guaranteeing that we will have at least one Cinderella left by the end of the weekend.  Actually, we will be guaranteed at least two – since Xavier vs. Lehigh will also produce a double digit Sweet 16 team.

In the first 23 games, only 3 upsets according to seed had happened (VCU, Colorado and NC State).  Then, in the final 9 games, we had 7 more upsets (Norfolk State, St. Louis, Ohio, Lehigh, Purdue, South Florida, and Xavier).  Only top seed Michigan State and 2 seed Kansas were able to withstand Cinderella’s revolt.    Will Saturday return to Thursday’s form of the dominance of the favorites.  Or will Cinderella continue to try to stay and dance.