Stomp The Lunatic

St. John’s looked like they were going to comfortably head to the Sweet 16 as they had a 14 point lead with 8 minutes to play. But nothing in March is easy.

Over the next three minutes, Kohl Rosario and Melvin Counsil Jr hit three pointers and Darryl Peterson hit some free throws to cut the lead to 5 points.

The Jayhawks keep chipping away, and with 2 minutes to play, Darryn Peterson missed a three-pointer, but Flory Bidunga was there to get the offensive rebound and hit the layup to cut the lead to 1.

Desperately needing to stop the run, St. John’s got the ball into Bryce Hopkins on the wing, and he drills a three-pointer to extend the lead back to 4 points, but the Jayhawks were not done.

Tre White would cut the lead to two with a layup, and after the Red Storm drained the shot clock, Zuby Ejofor missed a three pointer to give the Jayhawks a chance to tie or take the lead.

Kansas’ Peterson drove to the basket with 13 seconds and got fouled as he tried to shoot it from the baseline. And he made both free throws to tie the game.

This led to a weird part of the game. The Jayhawks only had two fouls. So, they started to intentionally foul to not allow St. John’s to get the ball across half court. The strategy almost worked as they got the clock all the way down to 3 seconds when they ran out of fouls to give.

St. John’s got the pass into Dylan Darling at the half court circle and he starts driving hard to the basket. He gets all the way down the lane, and throws up a layup right before the buzzer goes off, and the ball hits the backboard perfectly and rolls into the basket for a 67-65 victory for St. John’s.

The Red Storm survive and advance – awaiting for them in Washington, D.C. will be #1 Duke in the Sweet 16.

In the first 7 minutes of the game, Kentucky jumped out to an 18-6 lead. In the remaining 33 minutes of the game, the Cyclones outscored Kentucky by 31 points on their way to a comfortable 82-63 victory.

The Cyclones defense is just scary – Kentucky turned the ball over 20 times. Tamin Lipsey scored 26 points and Milan Momcilovic added 20 points. And they did all this with Joshua Jefferson, their best player, on the bench with an injury.

Iowa State is heading to Chicago – be scared of the Cyclones.

The Lunatic had a lot of nervousness. The Boilers were down 2 at halftime. So, the superstitious fan that I am, I found my Purdue hoodie and put it on over my lucky T-shirt in a sad attempt to send more Purdue vibes to my Boilers.

So, I got even more nervous when CJ Cox drove to the basket and came down with a knee injury. I am really hoping that he is OK. In the first half, it was Cox’s getting hot with 8 points to stop Miami’s run and close the gap from 7 to a 2 point Hurricanes lead at half.

But Fletcher Loyer stayed hot – scoring 24 points in the game, and Trey Kaufman-Renn displayed his toughness with 19 points all in the paint and 9 rebounds. And eventually, the Boilers extended the lead to a comfortable range. Everyone hit their free throws down the stretch, and the Boilers left St. Louis with a 79-69 victory.

So Purdue becomes the 5th Big 10 team to make it to the Sweet 16 – they will be heading out West to San Jose, CA to face Texas. Boiler Up!!!!!

Thank you to my Boilers – the Lunatic can now happily enjoy the remaining 7 games of Sunday.

When the dust settled, 7 of the 8 protected seeds won their way to the Sweet 16, with only #11 Texas being able to knock off #3 Gonzaga.

Congratulations to our leader after Saturday night’s game, Matt Reilly – who sits all alone on top of the standings at 440 points. In a tie for 2nd are Porter Standley, Mark Walsh, and Sam Franklin – just 20 points behind. And then, in a tie for 5th, we have a 12 way tie between Brent Peterson, Karen Barton, Kathy Godwin, Tony Wilson, Jim Sell, Joanna Crabbe, Al Lester, Donnie McCullough, Eric Brown, Rosemary McKnight and Debbe Evans.

In the Upset Pool, Matt also has taken the lead at 202 points. In 2nd place is Tony Wilson at 187 pts, followed closely by Mark Walsh (181 – 3rd), Corey McConville (174 – 4th) and Lochlan Middlebrook (171 – 5th).

Tons of people are still pretty close to the leaders – as the favorites winning tend to also lead to a very full and close leaderboard. So, we should have an exciting competition to see who can continue to hang in the top ten of the standings.

Sunday will bring 8 more teams to the Sweet 16, and in an interesting twist of fate – the favorites aren’t always the favorite. In three games (Kansas vs. Saint John’s, Virginia vs. Tennessee, and Alabama vs. Texas Tech), the Vegas line actually forecasts the protected seed losing. So, we should be in for some exciting games tomorrow!!!!

The two teams that resembled Cinderella both fell Saturday night. VCU fought hard in the first half, but Illinois jumped out quickly in the second half, and this time, there would be no magically large come-back for the Rams.

The last game of the evening was closer. With about 5 minutes left in the game, Arkansas’s Darius Acuff Jr hit a three-pointer to give the Razorbacks a 7 point lead – very similar to the deficit High Point faced on Thursday to Wisconsin. And we know there was a ton of heart on this team.

High Point’s Rob Martin would quickly go to work, and with 3 1/2 minutes to go, he would drive past his man and quickly head to the basket, hitting a layup that gave him 30 points for the evening.

But just as Martin was putting his team on his back and trying to will them to a victory, Arkansas had Darius Acuff Jr. He would drive back to the hoop to hit a layup and give Arkansas the lead back. Then, after a defensive stop, Acuff drove the lane again and hit a pretty fingertip roll to extend the lead to 4.

This time, Terry Anderson would try to drive the lane, but the Razorbacks’ Billy Richmond Jr was there to block the shot. Of course, that meant Arkansas got the ball into Acuff’s hands. And with the shot clock ticking down, Acuff looked like he was going to drive to the hoop again, and as the High Point defender stepped back into the lane, Acuff stopped, took a step back, and drilled a deep three-pointer to give Arkansas a 7 point lead.

High Point would continue to try to desperately come back, including a crazy deep three pointer around the logo by Braden Hausen. But the lead was too big, and the clock struck midnight on Cinderella. Arkansas had survived and advanced.

It was a truly wild finish in Oklahoma City. Vanderbilt took their first lead of the game with around 8 minutes to go in the second half – as they got hot from three point range. They held onto that 3 point lead going into the final 4 minutes.

Pryce Sandfort hit two free throws to cut the lead to one, and the Cornhuskers switched their defense to a zone, which seemed to give the Commodores trouble. With about 2 minutes, Berke Buyuktuncel hit a layup to give Nebraska a short-lived lead. That is because Vanderbilt’s Duke Miles drove the baseline and hit AK Okeruke in the corner for a three-pointer to give them back a 2 point lead.

Nebraska would try to retake the lead with a three-pointer from the top of the key by Rienk Mast, but it missed to the left. And the smallest player on the court, the coach’s son Sam Hoiberg got the rebound and hit the layup to tie the game at 70 with about 80 seconds to go.

The back and forth continued. Tyler Tanner for Vanderbilt drove hard to the hoop and hit a well-contested layup to take the lead. So, Hoiberg would drive the lane and tried to tie it back up with a layup. His shot was too strong, but ironically, this time it was Rienk Mast who was there to tie the game with a tip-in lay-up.

So, Vanderbilt runs the shot clock down, and Nebraska plays strong defense making it look like the Commodores would not even get a shot off. They found Chandler Bing in the middle of the lane who quickly shot the ball of the pass, but his floater was too strong, and Nebraska got the rebound with 10 seconds.

Pryce Sandfort rushed the ball down the court along the wing, started to drive to the lane and made a nice pass to a streaking Braden Frager down the center of the lane. Frager would drive hard down the lane, and shoot and acrobatic layup that goes in to give Nebraska a 74-72 lead with just 2 seconds left.

Vanderbilt called time-out and set up one last play. But Nebraska guarded any deep passes well, so the play went to Tyler Tanner, who took a couple dribbles towards the half-court line, and launched a 50 foot shot as the buzzer rang. The ball hit the backboard almost perfectly, hit the front of the rim, rattled around looking like it was going to go in, and an unfortunate bounce watched the ball rattle out and fall harmlessly to the court.

So, in what has been a pretty exciting night of basketball, Nebraska survived and advance to make it to the Sweet 16.

I don’t know that I can go as far as saying that #11 seed Texas can be called Cinderella – that is normally reserved for the mid-major conference teams. But the Longhorns, got one of the last 4 spots into the tournament, and have taken that opportunity and decided that they would like to stay for a while.

The game was relatively close the entire 40 minutes, but Texas took a 5 point lead with 2 1/2 minutes to play when Jordan Pope hit a three pointer to give them a 69-64 lead over the 3 seed and WCC champion.

Mario Saint-Supery would get fouled and hit both free throws to cut the lead to 3, and after a defensive stop, he and Graham Ike executed the pick-and-roll to perfection, leading to a huge dunk by Ike to get the lead to 1 point with 40 seconds.

Texas would take the shot clock down, Tramon Mark would drive the lane, and then rifle a pass into the corner to ex-Purdue player Camden Heide, and Heidi drill the three-pointer to give the Longhorns a 4 point lead.

Gonzaga’s Saint-Supery shot a quick three-pointer to try to keep Gonzaga’s hopes alive, but it would miss, the Longhorns would send the ball down the court, and lead to a break-away layup by Matas Vokietaitus to finish the 74-68 upset victory.

I do feel a llittle bad for the West Coast Conference, #3 Gonzaga got knocked out by the SEC’s #11 Texas, #7 Saint Mary’s got knocked out by the SEC’s #10 Texas A&M, and #10 Santa Clara lost in overtime to the SEC’s #7 Kentucky. The SEC simply had their number and sent the West Coast Conference teams home throughout the first weekend.

But we do have an upset after the first three games were large victories by the favorites. We will have to see if they have kicked off a trend for the underdogs.

Well I mentioned the close games currently going on and Duke goes on a 30-10 run and Houston finished the first half on a 19-4 run. I am so sorry to TCU and Texas A&M – I did not mean to wake the sleeping giants. I will try not to mention any other games until they were over – hoping for a little bit of excitement for the evening.

One of the worse things for Cinderella is the second round. Sometimes they have enough magic left in them to make it to the second weekend of games. But often by this point, a couple things happen. A top 8 team gets a scare (such as Duke’s close game with Siena). The other part that is tough is everyone realizes you are no longer a fluke. Teams can go into the first game thinking you have 27 wins mostly by double digits because you beat up on a mid-major conference. Then, you beat a team in the tournament and suddenly everyone knows they need to take you seriously.

That is what happened in our first game of the second round as Michigan never let St. Louis get into the game. They battled, but just as the Wolverines did against many of their Big 10 opponents, they jumped out to a double digit lead and never looked back.

The Michigan State vs Louisville game was certainly closer, but with both teams being so good defensively, the 6-8 lead that the Spartans had most of the second half looked insurmountable. So, two of the best teams in the Big 10 have made their way to the Sweet 16.

As for the current games, the Houston vs Texas A&M game has gotten very chippy – which makes sense on Houston’s physical defense and the the Aggie’s pressing defense. But the game to watch is the one of CBS, as #1 Duke is in another battle against TCU, as the Blue Devils and Horned Frogs are tied at 40 with about 15 to play.