Stomp The Lunatic

VCU came all the way back from down 13 at half, but Oklahoma’s star player, Buddy Hield would not let his team lose.   Hield put up 36 points – with the majority of them being in the second half, and led the Sooners to a 4 point victory.

So, another Cinderella goes down.   And Syracuse just went on a 14-2 run to push their lead over Middle Tennessee State – so another small conference school team is on the ropes.

How exciting was that.   Stephen F Austin looked like they were going to make sure another Cinderella advanced to the Sweet 16, as they went on an 8-0 run to take a 75-70 lead.

Demetrius Jackson hit a layup with a minute and a half to play to cut the lead to 3 points, and then cut the lead to 1 with two FTs as he was fouled on a drive.   Then, potentially, the most important moment happened.  The Irish brought in reserve guard Rex Pflueger to play defense.

The Irish did manage to stop the Lumberjacks from scoring and got the ball with 15 seconds to try to win.  Demetrius Jackson drove to the basket and shot up a wild shot that missed.  But Zach Auguste kept it alive by getting the offense rebound, but his layup also ends up short.   And with 1 second left on the clock, the defensive specialist that plays only 13.9 minutes and averages 2.5 points per game, tips the ball up and watches it go in to be the hero for the Irish.

The Lumberjacks got off one last half court prayer, but it did not go in, and cruelly, the clock struck midnight on the Cinderella Lumberjacks.  Kudos to Stephen F Austin for a fantastic game and a fantastic season – but the congratulations go to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish for not giving up when the game was slipping away from them (not to mention give the ACC their 5th Sweet 16 team).  And as March manages to do, Rex Pflueger becomes another unlikely hero who has saved his team’s season with a last second basket to allow them to survive and advance.

As you can tell by getting three teams wrong in the bracket, I did poorly compare to my other bracketologists.   Ironically, I did pretty close to the more mainstream folks from ESPN and CBS.  But, some of the other experts (and many of the other people who just do this because they like basketball) did much better than I did – I would have finished pretty close to the end of the Bracket Matrix standings.

But as I looked closer at it, I think it did tell me some interesting things (which I updated on the Bracketology page).   I am definitely glad I did this exercise – even though I would like to be closer, the more I look at my bracket, I think I did better.  A good example is that of the 13 first round upsets, I had seeded 6 of them better than the committee (including seeding Wichita St and Gonzaga much better).  I also give credit to much of my early success this year is due to the large amount of scouting of team’s resumes to come up with a bracket.

And since Villanova is beating Iowa by 30, I might do more looking at the differences in the bracket.

I will do a side note – I know Saturday I created a conspiracy theory due to the Kentucky / Indiana game.   So, I did an analysis to see if there was something suspicious.   If you look at the committee’s seedings and the bracket procedures, the Kentucky / Indiana game wasn’t a conspiracy as much as the necessary result of the committee’s procedure to fill the bracket.  The biggest difficulty was because the committee’s rules force them to put the 4 Big 12 teams and 4 ACC teams that were top 16 in different regions.  Because Iowa St couldn’t be put in Kansas’s region, Duke couldn’t be in UNC’s or Virginia’s region, and Cal couldn’t be in Oregon’s region, it basically forced where Kentucky (as well as the others) would be placed.   And with 3 of the Big 10 schools being 5 seeds, it was pretty much inevitable that Kentucky would draw a Big 10 school in their region (assuming they weren’t upset).

It still doesn’t stop the questions around the seedings (so I guess there could be some conspiracy of looking ahead).   But knowing how hard it is to seed the teams by going through the exercise myself, I imagine it is pretty hard for them to know they were setting up a Kentucky / Indiana matchup (because of all the other procedural rules).  So, while I think the seeding was still bad, it looks like the committee’s hands were forced once they came up with that ranking vs. a malicious attempt to make Kentucky’s road extra hard.

After a record setting 13 upsets in the first round, Saturday saw the top teams from the major conferences fight back.  Only two underdog by seeds were able to break the ranks of teams like Kansas, UNC, Virginia, Miami FL, Duke, Iowa St.   And it is hard for me to call Indiana – the Big 10 regular season champion a true underdog (they just should not have been playing Kentucky).  So, that really leaves just Gonzaga as a Cinderella story (and even that feels a little bit off with all the success Gonzaga has had over the years).

But 6 more double digit seeds (Syracuse, Middle Tennessee St, Stephen F Austin, VCU, Northern Iowa and Hawaii) will try to make their Cinderella run to the Sweet 16 today.  And one of them at least is guaranteed a trip as Syracuse and Middle Tennessee St play each other.    So should be another fun day of basketball.

Well, hopefully better than watching what Villanova is doing to Iowa right now…… No rooting interest – just not fun to watch a team getting blown out of the gym.   I feel a little bad for the Iowa Hawkeyes – this was a team that had made their way into the top 5 of the polls and have seemed to self destruct at the end of the season losing 5 of 6 going into the tournament before an overtime victory against Temple set up this unfortunate meeting with the Wildcats.  And I can’t put my finger on what happened to cause it.

North Carolina went on a strong run in the second half and ran away from the Providence Fryars to take the evening’s last Sweet 16 spot.

The Tar Heels made the ACC 4-0 today – which is pretty impressive.   It also happened to be a night where many Cinderellas were sent home from the dance – as Gonzaga was the only higher seed to win.

Congratulations also to our current leader, Doug Crowe – who with 410 points in the Standard Pool and 224 Upset Points – is leading both pools.

And to think, if it wasn’t for a victory in the West Coast Conference championship, the Zags would not even be playing in this tournament.

Everyone knows Gonzaga is for real, after they went and obliterated Utah 82-59.  Not sure that we are allowed to because of all their past success – but since they are a double digit seed from a mid-major, we have our first true Cinderella!!!!!

And thanks to their victory, they have also ensured that we will have at least one double digit seed playing in the Elite 8.   That is because they will play the winner of the #10 Syracuse vs #15 Middle Tennessee St winner.   Go Gonzaga!!!!!

There will not be a third straight Final Four for Kentucky, because on this day, the Big 10 regular season champion won a terrific game 73-67 to move on in the East Region.  With the game tied at 50 with about 8 minutes left, the Hoosiers went on an 8-0 run to take control of the game and managed to hold off Kentucky’s late charge through some clutch defense and hitting their last 5 free throws.

Congratulations to the Hoosiers for making it to the Sweet 16, where they await the winner of the North Carolina / Providence game.

Meanwhile, it looks like another Cinderella season is ending as Iowa State is up 15 points on Little Rock.   However, Butler is giving the top seeded Cavaliers everything they can handle as they are tied with about 4 minutes left in the first half.

Looked like Duke was going to run away from Yale, but the Bulldogs came back.  But Cinderella ran out of time and the defending champions have made their way back to the Sweet 16.  Congratulations to Duke.

Wichita State made it interesting as they chipped away at what at one point was a 21 point lead, but Miami FL’s Angel Rodriguez led Miami to finish off the Shockers.

Congratulations to Miami for being the first team to make it to the Sweet 16!!!!

The Wichita State / Miami FL game has just tipped off in a day that totally doesn’t resemble a typical Round of 32 Saturday – but should be some fantastic basketball.

Here is our fantastic set of games today. (with both seeds and coaches poll ranking)

12:15 pm – #3 Miami FL (11) vs #11 Wichita St (29)

2:40 pm – #4 Duke (20)  vs #12 Yale (T37)

5:15 pm – #4 Kentucky (13) vs #5 Indiana (12)

6:10 pm – #4 Iowa St (19) vs #12 Little Rock (T39)

7:10 pm – #1 Virginia (5) vs #9 Butler (T37)

7:45 pm – #1 Kansas (1) vs #9 Connecticut (27)

8:40 pm – #3 Utah (14) vs #11 Gonzaga (T30)

9:40 pm – #1 North Carolina (3) vs #9 Providence (28)

 

At first glance, it isn’t that far out of whack.   You could make an argument that while Little Rock and Yale are mis-seeded by coaches ranking, we all know that small conference champions tend to get 12 seeds (and that is why they are so dangerous).

Two glaring teams that are mis-seeded are Wichita St and Gonzaga – but if their poll rankings made them 7/8 seeds, it probably is a break for a 3 seed to play them.  But here is a great piece of information.  Vegas has listed Wichita St as a favorite and Gonzaga / Utah as a pick-em game.  I don’t think I have seen a double digit seed listed as a Vegas favorite/even match against a protected (top 4) seed – definitely don’t think I have seen two on the same day.  And I don’t think that this is saying anything about Miami / Utah – it is more about the talent of Wichita St and Gonzaga.   (Editor note: of course, as I write my rant below, Miami has jumped out to a 19 point lead – go figure what happens in March).

But the match up that really still has me riled up is Kentucky vs Indiana.  If you believe the AP poll, both these teams should be 3 seeds.  Coaches poll has 3 seed vs 4 seed.  Either way, there is not any good reason that the SEC and Big 10 champions should be playing this early in the tournament – and quite honestly, it feels wrong that the reward for winning this game would be to have to play the ACC champion and second ranked team in the tournament (assuming North Carolina handles their business against Providence).

I would like to believe that it is just an accident, but I am starting to have a conspiracy theory here.   If you look at the last 2 Final Fours, 6 of the 8 schools came from the Big 10 (Wisconsin in 2014 and 2015, Michigan St in 2015) and the SEC (Kentucky in 2014 and 2015 and Florida in 2014).  And last year’s champion was from the ACC (Duke).  It almost looks like the committee is making sure this doesn’t happen again by putting their champions all in the same region and make them knock each other out so only one of them can get to the Final Four.

I like to believe it is just dumb luck – but I do think it is an interesting coincidence that Kentucky has made it to the Final Four the last two years, was co-champs in the regular season, won their conference tournament – and their reward is to have to play the regular season champ of the other conference that has sent the most recent teams to the Final Four and potentially the #2 team in the tournament just to get to the Elite 8.   I don’t even like Kentucky – and I still question how fair this is.