As I was watching the San Diego State \/ Alabama game, the Miami FL Hurricanes jumped on the last remaining #1 seed. With about 15 minutes left, it was a 2 point lead at 51-49. With about 10 minutes left, Miami’s Wooga Popler hit a three pointer to give them a 70-53 lead. So while many of us were watching what the Aztecs were doing, the Hurricanes went on a 19-4 run to knock off the Houston Cougars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To put into perspective how impressive Miami was on offense, the most points that Houston had given up this season was 77 to South Florida. Only 3 other teams scored more than 70 against the Cougars (Alabama, Memphis and UCF). Miami won 89-75.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Miami’s Nijel Pack shot 7-10 from three-point range for 26 points, Isaiah Wong added 20 points, and the Hurricanes shot 51.7% from the field and 44% from three-point range.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, in the last post, I mentioned the Lunatic curse taking out Alabama. But I don’t think this is all the Lunatic’s fault. Maybe I can be blamed for Purdue and Alabama, but for the first time in history, there will not be a single #1 seed playing in the Elite 8. But it doesn’t stop there. At this point, 8 of the top 9 teams on the Selection Committee’s seed lines have been eliminated – as only #2 Texas is still hanging on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lets put that further into perspective (assuming I have done my counting from Wikipedia correctly). Since 2014, 13 of the Final Four teams have been 1 seeds (40.6% of the Final 4 teams) and 7 of the Final Four teams have been 2 seeds (21.9%). I stopped in 2014 because that is last time a team seeded higher than 2 won (#7 Connecticut). In those other 7, 6 of the winners were 1 seeds and 1 was a 2 seed (Villanova in 2016). So, 7 of the last 8 tournaments were won by a 1 or 2 seed and there is now only one 2 seed left (and they still need to play their Sweet 16 game).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Longhorn fans should be scared to hell right now – not only are they only 1 or 2 seed left, but they are part of the Lunatic’s Final Four. That is a lot of pressure to deal with, but add into it that their opponent Xavier is a very good team and it should be an exciting finish in Kansas City tonight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And while a lot of eyes will be on if Texas can be the only team from the top 8 to make the Elite 8, I would be remiss to mention that 15 seed Princeton is playing Creighton right now and leading 34-33 with 5:37 left in the first half. In this tournament, it would not be a surprise if Cinderella decided to stay a little late at the dance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Regardless, congratulations are due to the ACC co-regular season champions. This is back-to-back years that Miami has made it to the Elite 8, which is an impressive achievement. Watch out Kansas City, the weather forecast is for a Hurricane to come to town. The only question left is whether that Hurricane will head south to Houston next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I was watching the San Diego State \/ Alabama game, the Miami FL Hurricanes jumped on the last remaining #1 seed. With about 15 minutes left, it was a 2 point lead at 51-49. With about 10 minutes left, Miami’s Wooga Popler hit a three pointer to give them a 70-53 lead. So while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2023-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2567"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2574,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2567\/revisions\/2574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}