South breakdown

Soldiering on with random thoughts on each region of the upcoming NCAA tournament.

(Midwest | East)

* Frankly, I find this region kind of boring, and I'm struggling to find things to write about. The consensus seems to be that the road is paved for top-seeded Duke to make the Final Four. With arguably the field's weakest #2 and #4 seeds, the selection committee certainly didn't make life overly tough on the Blue Devils. This Duke team is the most complete in years, though they are heavily reliant on Jon Scheyer, Kyle Singler, and Nolan Smith. But in Brian Zoubek, Lance Thomas, and the Plumlee brothers, the Devils have at least something resembling a frontcourt. They are the favorites to come out of this region, and I don't see much standing in their way.

* Villanova may not have deserved the #2 seed it got. They lost five of their last seven games and I don't think anyone who watched the two teams at the end of the year could honestly say that the Wildcats were better than Georgetown. Given, however, that the Hoyas finished the regular season with the eighth-best record in the Big East and that the group of #3 seeds is otherwise pretty weak, perhaps Villanova simply got their seed by default.

Underestimating 'nova teams under Jay Wright has been risky business in the tournament, however, and he's got his usual guard-driven attack. Scottie Reynolds has grown up as much as anyone in the country, and they have a bunch of really good perimeter players. The real difference between this team and the one that advanced to the national semifinals is that they are missing Dante Cunningham, but just as there aren't a lot of obstacles for Duke, there aren't that many for Villanova. A matchup with Duke in the regional final would pit Wildcat swingman Taylor King against his old team.

* Other than Villanova, the teams that might give the Blue Devils the most trouble play each other in the first round. I saw California when they came down to LA to play USC, and little Jerome Randle is as good a player I've seen this year. Louisville has had its ups and downs, but those ups include beating Syracuse twice. I give the slight edge to Cal, because the Bears are experienced and consistent on the perimeter, whereas the Cardinals, particularly Edgar Sosa, are up and down.

* One team that might have challenged Duke is Purdue. Up until a few weeks ago, the Boilers were in contention for a top seed themselves, but a season-ending knee injury to Robbie Hummel sent them stumbling down the stretch. Whether their high seed is reflective of the committee's opinion of Purdue's potential without Hummel or more of a result of their actual performance (they scored 11 points in the first half of a 27-point loss to Minnesota in the Big Ten semifinals) is unclear, but they are certainly a different and less intimidating team than they were in January. Siena, their first-round opponent, is a popular upset pick, and even without knowing anything about the MAAC champions other than they were something of a darkhorse to start the year, it's a selection I'm tempted to make, just based on Purdue's recent struggles.

* Notre Dame is as interesting as any team in the tournament. Never known for their defense, the Irish were forced to slow their tempo way down and focus on locking the opposition up when Luke Harangody went down late in the year. ND responded with six straight wins -- including two over Pittsburgh and one over Georgetown -- before narrowly losing to West Virginia in the Big East quarters.

Harangody has been back for the last few games, but this is very much a "new' Notre Dame team, with Harangody even still coming off the bench. What's interesting about them is that unlike most grind-it-out teams, about which you worry about falling behind in a tournament setting and then not having the firepower to catch up, the Irish are theoretically the same team that was lighting up the scoreboard earlier in the year. An ability to switch styles, if necessary, might come in handy. They have their work cut out for them, however, first against an Old Dominion team that beat Georgetown in December, and then probably a very explosive Baylor squad.

* A quick note about the 7/10 game between Richmond and St. Mary's: Spiders point guard Kevin Anderson and Gaels center Omar Samhan both aren't as good as people will tell you leading up to this game. Anderson is quick and explosive but makes too many bad decisions; Samhan is slow and unathletic and relies on major conference size to excel in a mid-major conference. These two teams seem to be the darlings of many prognosticators, but I don't see either of them really challenging Villanova in the second round.

Sweet 16 Breakdown: Midwest and South

Pitt and Xavier played more defense than I thought, and Missouri outgunned Memphis, but I was right on elsewhere: Duke lost to Villanova in large part because Gerald Henderson and Jon Scheyer combined to go 4-for-32 from the field, and Connecticut was too strong for Purdue. Let's look at tonight's games:

MIDWEST
#1 Louisville vs. #12 Arizona. As a commenter to yesterday's post mentioned, I'm something of a sucker for Arizona when it comes to the tournament. Given that I'm not all that high on Louisville -- I watch them and I just can't figure out how they are good as they are -- the temptation is there to pull the trigger on a Wildcat upset.

I don't think it's going to happen, though. The 'ville is a bad matchup for the 'cats. As well as Nic Wise has played this year -- I distinctly remember asking aloud at some point this year, "When did Nic Wise get good at basketball?" -- he's still prone to getting a little out of control, deadly against a team that uses full-court pressure the way the Cardinals do. Arizona doesn't have another really solid ballhandler in the backcourt, and they might do well to have Chase Budinger help bring it up.

While it's not all that rare that you see players on opposing teams who will end up in the NBA, it is a little more rare when those players go head to head. Watching Budinger go against Terrence Williams should be a lot of fun, and Williams will want to avoid getting into a scoring contest with Budinger, which given his unselfish nature, shouldn't be hard to do. Potential lottery picks Jordan Hill and Earl Clark will battle it out down low, too. Give the advantage on the inside to Louisville -- Hill also has to deal with Samardo Samuels.

It could happen, but it would take a near-perfect game from the Wildcats.

#2 Michigan State vs. #3 Kansas. A couple of big-name programs who quietly had very strong years, and yet neither of these teams really strikes you as a scary one. (I'm pretty unimpressed with the whole South region.) The point guard matchup should be a good one, with Big Ten Player of the Year Kalin Lucas going up against Sherron Collins. Lucas is a blaze with the ball, while Collins, though plenty quick, is a bit more powerful.

I honestly don't have much to say here -- let's just pick the Spartans and move on.

SOUTH
#1 North Carolina v. #4 Gonzaga. The Tar Heels are beatable, but I think it's going to take a team that is a little bit better defensive than the Bulldogs to do it. Carolina's point guard, Ty Lawson, is going to play despite a toe injury, and though he was hampered somewhat in the first two games, he's still plenty quick enough with the ball to wreak all kinds of havoc on the opposition.

Inside, I think Tyler Hansbrough is probably too tough and physical for Josh Heytvelt, who seems less and less interested in mixing it up underneath as his career goes on. Similarly, as much as I like Austin Daye, I'm not sure he's big and strong enough to be effective for a full game against Carolina's depth.

#2 Oklahoma vs. #3 Syracuse. The game of the night, if you ask me, and it's actually the early game in this region. Syracuse was one of the hottest teams coming into this tournament, and Oklahoma one of the coldest.

The Orange seem to be a popular pick, and I can see why. The two teams have such contrasting strengths that it's as easy to envision Jonny Flynn sojourning into the lane time and again, zipping passes to Eric Devendorf and Andy Rautins for open threes as it is to picture Blake Griffin finding holes in the Syracuse 2-3 zone and going for one of the 20-point, 20-rebound games that seem to be his signature.

I think Syracuse can win this one, but Oklahoma is the favorite. The Orange defense has not been as good this season as we've come to expect from them, and it's not because they don't get out on three-point shooters. There are too many holes in the middle of that zone, and you can't give Blake Griffin the ball there. He's got the combination of size, strength, and ballhandling ability that he can do a ton of damage from the high post. Griffin does like to spin dribble a little too much, a move that can be dangerous in traffic, and so Syracuse forwards Rick Jackson, Paul Harris, and Kristof Ongenaet should be prepared to step in and take the charge. Getting Griffin in foul trouble would be huge.

Earlier in the season, I might have said that Arinze Onuaku was a decent matchup for Griffin, but knee injuries have really slowed him late in the season. He's just not the same player, and I don't think he can effectively play Griffin on either end. His reduced mobility, too, will be a problem on the glass. Rebounding out of the 2-3 is always tough, and that's exacerbated when you're up against an athletic, mobile guy like Blake Griffin. And Blake's older brother, Taylor, is no slouch either.

I'd like the 'cuse a bit more if Paul Harris were playing better, but he hasn't been himself for several games, dating back to the Big East tournament. Flynn is every bit the point guard that Lawson and Lucas are, and Rautins and Devendorf are marksmen. I'm just not sure Syracuse has enough to overcome the Sooners' obvious interior advantage.

Pittsburgh 70, Georgetown 54

I'm ack in DC for a few days and checked out this one with my cousin and a few friends. After Georgetown so thoroughly outplayed UConn in Storrs earlier in the week, I was expecting a better game than I got. If it weren't for DaJuan Summers hitting some very difficult shots -- he had 15 at halftime and finished with 22 -- it wouldn't have been much of a ballgame. As it was, the Panthers had it well in hand by the last several minutes. I was sitting right by the Pitt section -- those folks travel well. And they've been rewarded -- the Panthers are the nation's new number one team for the first time in history, after North Carolina's stunning loss to Boston College in Chapel Hill last night (so much for the undefeated season I had been predicting).

Sitting up in the 400 level -- "the Hill" as its known in the Verizon Center, a nod, of course, to Capitol Hill -- it was hard to appreciate just how dominant Pitt's DeJuan Blair was, so it was something of a surprise afterward to see his stat line of 20 points and 17 rebounds. His counterpart, Greg Monroe (who I raved about recently) had a decent game by the box score with 15 points and eight boards, but Blair thoroughly outplayed him. I don't want to say that Monroe needs to become more physical because I think his future is on the wing, but for Gerogetown's purposes, I'm sure they'd like him to bang a bit more.

Speaking of Monroe and Blair, after last Monday's performance against UConn, I was curious to see where Monroe ranked on the NBA draft sites, nbadraft.net and DraftExpress. Neither site had updated its mock draft since the game when I first checked, and neither site had Monroe listed.

I kept checking, and while I didn't find Monroe on nbadraft.net right away, I did find that Monroe had moved from off the board to number three overall on DraftExpress, while UConn's Hasheem Thabeet -- the 7'3" junior who Monroe badly outplayed -- had dropped a few spots, from (I think) five to eight. I can't tell if DraftExpress has updated its mock since Saturday, but Monroe is still at three and Thabeet is still at eight, with Blair at 20. I'll keep an eye on it to see if it moves further.

Over on nbadraft.net, and again, I don't know when the update occurred, Monroe is 20th, Thabeet's third, and Blair is 29th.

These rankings really don't mean anything, but I thought it was interesting to see Monroe debut so high on the DraftExpress board and to see him jump Thabeet.

You can catch Georgetown in action tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern at Notre Dame on ESPN. The Irish were surprise losers to St. John's on Saturday.

-I want to follow up on this post: Louisville lost at home to UNLV before squeaking by Kentucky on Edgar Sosa's bomb (video in link). I still think Louisville could be in a lot of trouble, but it would be even worse without a single respectable non-conference win. Sosa might've saved the Cardinals season with that shot. Anyway, the 'ville opens conference play on Wednesday at South Florida, then enters their toughest five-game stretch of conference play: at Villanova, home vs. Notre Dame, home vs. Pittsburgh, at Rutgers, at Syracuse. This just seems like a volatile group and a bad start could really be curtains for them.

Opening Night in the Big East

The Georgetown-Connecticut game marked the opening of ESPN's Monday night Big East coverage, although not technically the beginning of the weekly tripleheaders dubbed these many years Big Monday. The Big East is incredibly deep this year, with eight teams currently ranked in the ESPN/USAToday poll and a ninth -- West Virginia -- just two spots out of it after dismantling previously unbeaten Ohio State in Columbus on Saturday. (The AP poll has seven Big East teams in the top 25, though Marquette and West Virginia are Nos. 26 and 27, respectively). It's just going to be a fantastic season, with ten tournament bids a real possibility.

ESPN's Andy Katz wrote a nice breakdown of the conference, and he makes the point that if the league wants to get ten teams in, it won't be enough for those ten to get to 8-10 by virtue of beating the bottom six teams in the league (likely to be Rutgers, South Florida, Seton Hall, Providence, St. John's, and DePaul) seven or eight times. They'll need at least a couple of wins against each other.

For similar reasons, these non-conference games that are wrapping up (with a few exceptions) this week take on an increased importance in a year where the conference is so stacked. Let's take a look at the ten realistic contenders for tournament bids from the Big East, and see what their non-conference slates look like. I'll take them in the same order Katz did.

Cincinnati: The Bearcats 60-45 loss at Memphis (after the Tigers dropped out of the Top 25 for the first time in a few years) hurts, particularly since fellow Big East foes Georgetown and Syracuse have already beaten last year's national runners-up. Losing to Xavier is nothing to be ashamed of, though dropping a game to Florida State hurts. Still, they have wins at UNLV and against Mississippi State and UAB, so they're in decent shape at 3-3 against potential tournament teams from major conferences.

Connecticut: The Huskies will be fine, provided that they don't make their listless performance against Georgetown a habit. Victories over Miami (FL) and Wisconsin on their way to winning Paradise Jam, along with a win over Gonzaga in Seattle gives them a nice non-conference slate. They can get some insurance, not that they'll need it, on February 7, when they host Michigan (and old foe John Beilein, the former head coach at West Virginia).

Georgetown: Beating Maryland and Memphis more than offsets losing to Tennessee in a very hard-fought game at the Old Spice Classic in November. Given that the Hoyas already have a huge conference road win, they're in fine shape. Like UConn, they have one more out-of-conference test, January 17 at Duke.

Louisville: The Cardinals have a couple of really troubling losses, to Western Kentucky and Minnesota. They rebounded a couple of days ago with a convincing win over UAB, but the Blazers are down to something like six scholarship players, so that victory doesn't look as good as it might have at the beginning of the year. They don't have any other good wins, but they do have two more opportunities to make life easier for them once their conference slate starts. They play UNLV on New Year's Eve at 6 p.m. Eastern, and given that Cincinnati has already beaten the Rebels this year, the Ville could very well have to win that one to avoid needing to be better than .500 in Big East play -- which is more doable for them than it is for others, since they have seven games against the league's bottom six and only get the league's true heavies -- Pittsburgh, UConn, and Georgetown -- once each. They've also got Kentucky on January 4, and although the Wildcats beat West Virginia earlier this year, UK might be the kind of team where a loss to them looks worse than a win over them looks good, if you get what I'm saying.

Marquette: The Golden Eagles have a couple of decent wins against Wisconsin and North Carolina State, a good loss against Tennessee, and then kind of a bad loss to Dayton. That's not really anything to be ashamed of, but Marquette is done in non-conference play, and they're right on the fringe of the top 25 right now. What's more, they finish up with a wicked schedule. Check out this five-game stretch to finish up Big East play: at Georgetown, vs. Connecticut, at Louisville, at Pittsburgh, vs. Syracuse. Brutal. Given the emphasis the selection committee seems to put on the way a team is playing heading into the tournament, Marquette may not have done enough out of conference to survive losing four out of five to end the season, followed by an early exit in the Big East tournament. They haven't made things impossible for themselves, but they are going to have to play awfully well to feel comfortable on Selection Sunday. That loss to Dayton could loom large.

Notre Dame: The Fighting Irish nipped Texas by a point in the Maui semis, lost to Carolina in the final, and slipped up against Ohio State in Indianapolis in Luke Harangody's first game back after missing two with pneumonia. They are fine barring a major collapse in conference play, though a win at UCLA on February 7would certainly help.

Pittsburgh: No one win really jumps out at you. They won at Florida State, but beating the Seminoles, even in Tallahassee, is hardly the kind of win a team hangs it hat on. They beat Texas Tech and Washington State on consecutive nights in November in New Jersey, but I just watched the Cougars play terribly in a loss to LSU, and the Red Raiders lost to Lamar earlier this year and got beat by 45 at Stanford their last time out. Still, they've taken care of business, and honestly should be good enough in the Big East that their non-conference schedule won't matter. Incidentally, they are not quite done with out of conference opponents, as they've oddly scheduled a home date with Robert Morris for February 2.

Syracuse: Losing to Cleveland State at the Carrier Dome wasn't good, but for the first time in a couple of years, the Orange have done quite a lot in the non-conference. Beating Florida and Kansas back-to-back in Kansas City to win the CBE Classic was big, and they added a big win at Memphis on December 20. These teams aren't the same squads that are responsible for the last three national championships (and one national runnerup-ship), but they are good wins over name teams away from home. Syracuse just needs to stay the course in the Big East to get a bid.

Villanova: No bad losses for the Wildcats, their lone blemish being a nine-point defeat at the hands of Texas, then ranked No. 6. No spectacular wins, either. Monday's 62-45 win over Temple looks good if you consider that the Owls beat Tennessee on December 13; it becomes less impressive when you realize that Temple then lost to Long Beach State, and had previously lost to Buffalo and Miami (OH). Katz says that a November 19 triumph over Niagara is 'Nova's most meaningful win, which isn't likely to get too many people that excited about the Wildcats. They're out of non-conference opportunities, but have climbed high enough in the polls that something like .500 in the Big East should get them there.

West Virginia: It would have been nice to beat Kentucky and Davidson, but the aforementioned trouncing of Ohio State in Columbus this weekend makes up for a lot of that. The Mountaineers have two games against each of Louisville and Pittsburgh, which is tough, but it cuts both ways: It can just as easily be seen as two extra opportunities for a big resume win as it can be seen as an extra two automatic losses in conference.

Have a good New Year, all.