Stomp The Lunatic

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.

I should have known something like this might happen. We had a decent amount of upsets on Thursday. Historically, whenever one side of the bracket has a lot of upsets, the other side of the bracket has the favorites take control. We had two 9/8 upsets with Iowa and Utah State. And we had several exciting finishes, including California Baptist making a 18-2 run to almost come back against Kansas and Furman keeping close against UConn midway through the second half.

Happily for the Lunatic, the Purdue game was not close – I get nervous enough when watching the games, and still have nightmares of FDU and St. Peter’s. So, it was so nice to see my Boilers win comfortably and of course, watch Braden Smith break the all-time assist record. My lucky Purdue shirt and socks will be ready to be worn again when we play Miami on Sunday.

Sadly for the Lunatic, the evening games didn’t leave much to blog about. The two closest games happened while I was enjoying the Boilers win, so don’t know much about what happened. UCLA had a 12 point lead over UCF before the Knights started storming back. They managed to cut the lead all the way down to 3 when Jordan Burks hit a three-pointer with 10 seconds left. But Trent Perry would make two free throws and iced the game for the Bruins.

A similar thing happened between Iowa and Clemson, where the Hawkeyes built a 14 point lead with 7 1/2 minutes to play before the Tigers started to claw their way back. Clemson cut the lead all the way to four after Ace Buckner hit a layup. But Iowa ran the clock down on the next possession and Kael Combs drove to the basket for his own layup to extend the lead back to 6, and the Hawkeyes finished off the Tigers.

The late game I watched was Miami FL and Missouri, that was tied at 54 with just 7 minutes to play. Then Malik Reneau from Miami hit a jumper in the lane, stole the ball on the next possession and hit a three pointer from the top of the key to extend the Hurricanes a 5 point lead. This would lead to a run where Miami outscored Missouri 26-12 to finish the game and advance to the next round. So, the Cinderellas of the tournament put up some good fights, but in the end, the favorites pulled away to advance to the next round.

Congratulations are due to our First Round leaders!!!!  Six entries had the incredible performance of going 29-3 over the last two days.  Our leaders are Tony Wilson, Joanna Crabbe, Ava Wiederman, Al Lester, Donnie McCullough, and Eric Brown. 

And if that wasn’t impressive enough to have 6 people get 29 first round games correct, we have another 19 entries who went 28-4.  Just an amazing job by everyone in picking the games!!!!  Since that deserves to get your name in the blog, here we go – our large tie for 7th is between Matt Reilly, Reid Standley, Cinde Schumaker, David Caldwell, Laura Hummel, Tonya Cole, Mark Walsh, Richard Napolitano, Rob Bradley, Sam Franklin, Eric Ziedler, Mike Wyatt, Rob Bradley, Rosemary McKnight, Lehua Martin, Ryan Smith, Dan Fischer, John Green and Bob Degenhardt. Based on such amazing picks, we should have a fantastic contest this year.

In the Upset Pool, our leader is Matt Reilly at 144 points, who correctly got all 8 of the upsets in the first round.  Matt is closely followed by Tony Wilson (1 pt behind in 2nd), Ava Wiederman (3 pts behind in 3rd), Al Lester (4 pts behind in 4th) and Joanna Crabbe and Bob Degenhardt (7 pts behind in a tie for 5th), Laura Hummel, Eric Brown and John Greene (9 pts behind in a tie for 7th), and Donnie McCullough (10 pts behind to round out the top 10).

Normally, the Lunatic would be pretty pleased with going 25-7. But that performance this year has him lingering in a tie for 134th place. So, it looks like a really good stomping has begun!!!

I think it was around the 12 minute mark, but it was so fitting because it is how so many of his assists happened. Trey Kaufman-Renn set the pick and roll, Braden Smith drove to the basket, and quickly bounce passed the ball into the lane to TKR who dribbled once to the basket and muscled his way to a layup while getting fouled.

And the crowd in St Louis went crazy as they knew that was Braden Smith’s 1,077 career assist to become the all-time NCAA record holder in assists, surpassing longtime leader Bobby Hurley.

Congratulations to Purdue’s Braden Smith on his record!!!!!

The big news of the afternoon games while I was at work was that Utah State pulled off the 9/8 upset on Villanova with a big run over the last 4 minutes to take a close game and run away. Wright State and Hofstra gave Virginia and Alabama fits, but the Cavaliers and Crimson Tide did pull away late. And Miami(OH) hot shooting went ice cold against the dominating defense of Tennessee.

But the biggest news was Iowa State’s star Joshua Jefferson got a low ankle sprain and was seen on crutches after the game. They certainly didn’t need him to beat Tennessee State today, but it could become a bigger story if he is unable to play Sunday against Kentucky.

So I have my lucky Purdue shirt on. And my lucky socks in case they are also lucky. Boiler Up!!!