Day Two Recap

There wasn't nearly as much interesting Friday as there was on Thursday (how could there have been?), so I'm not going to go game by game, I don't think.

#12 Cornell 78, #5 Temple 65 (East)

#4 Purdue 72, #13 Siena 64 (South)

Cornell and Siena were probably the two most popular upset picks heading into the tournament. I was on the Siena bandwagon mainly for anti-Purdue reasons, but I went against the crowd taking Cornell. Oh-for-two. Neither of these games were televised in my area, so I only caught bits and pieces when the TV coverage switched and on MMOD. From what I could tell, Cornell just shot the lights out, and given how their second-round opponent, Wisconsin, struggled today against Wofford, a trip to the Sweet 16 seems very possible, if not quite likely.

As for Siena, they held a three-point halftime lead before giving up a big run to start the second. They trailed by quite a bit, then made a late push, and actually would've had the ball with a chance to tie the game if not for a lucky bounce on a Boiler free throw (the ball hit the precise spot where the rim meets the backboard, died, and dropped through). As far as I could tell, the tide turned when the game got physical and the officials, to Purdue's distinct advantage, let the kids play. That's not to say that the Boilermakers got the better of the calls; just that they are far more suited to playing that style.

#10 Missouri 86, #7 Clemson 78 (East)

Missouri's transition from defense to offense needs to be seen to be believed. On multiple occasions against Clemson, Missouri players were running up court before I even noticed their team had the ball. That's not all that remarkable when the change in possession comes from a missed shot; a lot of teams have someone leak out when a shot goes up. But this happened on steals. I've never seen a team more conscious of their transition offense. I'm really looking forward to their matchup against West Virginia (comfortable victors over Morgan State on Friday) in the second round.

At what point does the selection committee stop inviting Oliver Purnell-coached teams to the tournament? He's now 0-6 in tournament games with Old Dominion, Dayton, and Clemson, despite the fact that he's had the higher-ranked squad on four of those occasions, including each of the last three years. I have no reason to doubt those who say that Purnell is a good coach and a good guy, but these results speak for themselves.

#10 Georgia Tech 64, #7 Oklahoma State 59

I don't feel too bad having picked the Cowboys to win this one, considering the margin of victory and the fact that the Jackets made 24 of 25 free throws and didn't make a field goal for the final eight minutes. GT made fewer than two-thirds of their free throws on the year (307th out of 347 Division I teams), so the season-extending near-perfect day at the stripe certainly came as a surprise. (As an aside, Wofford was kind of the anti-Georgia Tech on Friday, missing six of seven second-half free throws in what ended up being a four-point loss to Wisconsin. This performance was more in line with what they did in the regular season, however, where they shot just better than 67 percent from the line).

I do have one issue with Oklahoma State coach Travis Ford, however, who left the Bradley Center in Milwaukee with a timeout in his pocket. I thought he should have called it when the Cowboys got the ball back down three with 43 seconds left, because you can't really trust players to know to go for a quick two and then foul in that spot. He didn't, James Anderson turned the ball over, and then, after another two Tech free throws put the Jackets up five, Ford again didn't call timeout, even as his charges struggled to find an open look (Anderson ended up taking an impossible jumper). The season's on the line, coach. Do your job.

Also, does Keiton Page look like Ollie from Hoosiers or what?

#5 Michigan State 70, #12 New Mexico State 67 (Midwest)

The Aggies found themselves on the wrong end of two questionable decisions by the referees in the final seconds, leading SI's Luke Winn to tweet immediately following the game that they had been given a rawer deal than Robert Morris against Villanova on Thursday.

The first was a lane violation on a Raymar Morgan free throw with 19 seconds left. Troy Gillenwater was ruled to have stepped in the lane early on Morgan's miss, giving Morgan a reprieve, of which he quickly took advantage. Video replay after the game showed the call to be technically correct, but I still have problems with the call. For one, you see lane violations far more often than you see lane violations called, and this particular situation seems like an odd place to start being a stickler for the rules.

The second problem I have with the call goes to the heart of why stepping into the lane early is illegal, for which I can think of two justifications: To prevent distracting the shooter, and to prevent one player from gaining an unfair advantage on the rebound. Neither was a concern in this instance. Gillenwater's violation could hardly be discerned (I certainly didn't notice it while watching live); it wasn't a demonstrative hop-in, hop-out. I doubt Morgan noticed it at all. To the other point, Gillenwater had to re-establish himself outside the lane, and thus did not gain any advantage. If anything, he probably was into the lane for the rebound a fraction of a second later than he would have otherwise.

Speaking of fractions of a second, the second late call that went against NMSU came after they missed a shot on the ensuing possession, with the rebound going out of bounds off the Spartans. The clock showed just three-tenths of a second remaining, and NMSU appealed for the referees to check the tape to make sure they the clock was right. The refs declined to do so, even though it seemed clear to me watching live that the clock had briefly continued to run after the ball had touched out of bounds. (Indeed, video replay confirmed after the game that there should have been an additional three-tenths, for six-tenths total.)

It seems silly to quibble over three-tenths of a second, and most of the time, it is. The one exception, however, is when the added time would take the game clock from three-tenths of a second or less to more than three-tenths. Why? Because the powers that be in basketball have scientifically, though not altogether convincingly, decided that you cannot catch and shoot a basketball in less than four-tenths of a second. So going from .3 to .6 would have given the Aggies more of a chance to score on that final possession.

What's particularly obnoxious about this is that the officials often go to the tape in this situations, and they didn't this time. I'd like to see a more uniform system, even if it's something small like "automatically check the tape when the clock has three-tenths or less." NMSU coach Marvin Menzies was frantically appealing for the officials to review the tape. The problem with allowing a coach to ask for such a review is that the ensuing delay effectively serves as a timeout, something Menzies didn't have at his disposal. That would then be an incentive to automatically ask for a review even when one clearly wasn't warranted.

Anyway, I thought this was plainly a bad job by the officials. I also felt that the Spartans got the benefit of a few tough calls down the stretch even before the final 20 seconds.

Sweet 16 Breakdown: West and East

A lot of people lament the lack of upsets in an NCAA Tournament, and I agree that upsets are a big part of what makes it March Madness. But like last year, the first year in which all four No. 1 seeds reached the Final Four, the chalkiness of this year's Big Dance means we're in store for some great basketball over the next few weeks. The barrier broken this year is that it's the first tournament in which the top three seeds in each of the four regions survived the first weekend. There's really only one somewhat surprising team in the Sweet Sixteen (though yours truly's bracket correctly had them advancing), and Arizona, being more or less a basketball power over the last couple of decades, is hardly the dictionary definition of Cinderella.

WEST
#1 Connecticut vs. #5 Purdue. I had Washington here in Purdue's spot and am a little surprised at how well the Boilers played at times during the tourney's first weekend. They were a highly ranked team early in the year, however, before injuries hit Robbie Hummel, so perhaps this is just them living up to expectations.

Either way, I don't think they have enough to beat Connecticut. I don't think the Huskies are unbeatable, but I think that the team to beat them needs to have a very strong post player. Hasheem Thabeet dominates most opponents defensively, but is a bit of a shrinking violet when faced with an opposing post player of above-average caliber. (Witness his pedestrian performances against Pittsburgh and Georgetown this year.) Purdue doesn't have that trait.

#2 Memphis vs. #3 Missouri. I haven't seen much of Mizzou this year -- to the point where, late in the season, I looked at the rankings and exclaimed, incredulously, "Missouri is ranked tenth?!?!?" I know that they like to play up-and-down, they are deep, and they can score points in bunches. Memphis is like that, too, however, and in addition to being more talented and deep than Mizzou, they are also better defensively. That gives them the edge in what will be a frantic affair.

EAST
#1 Pittsburgh v. #4 Xavier. I picked North Carolina to win it all this year, mainly because I picked them at the beginning of the year and I see flaws with all the other contenders. Carolina has its flaws, too, including my pet flaw, the one that had me ranting all last year, which is that they don't play enough defense to win a championship. In large part due to my regret for selling myself out like that, then, I was remorseful for my selection and began convincing myself that Pittsburgh was the team to beat this year. Then they go out and barely squeak by East Tennessee State and a better-than-you-thought Oklahoma State team in the tournament's first weekend.

Ironically, I think Pitt's defense isn't quite good enough to make me confident that they'll win. It's ironic for two reasons: one, because that's why I'm not confident in my Carolina pick; and two, because defense was Pitt's calling card when they rose to national prominence under Ben Howland (now the head man at UCLA -- which had defensive problems of its own in getting pasted by Villanova in the second round). Because of that reputation, and because head coach Jamie Dixon was a Howland assistant, I think recent vintages of Panthers have gotten underserved reputations as good defensive teams. In fact, I think -- with no statistical backup -- that each successive edition of Pitt under Dixon has been a little bit worse defensively than the previous one.

It follows, then, that I don't think all that highly of this Pitt team defensively, and that is going to be a problem against any solid team, which means it's going to be a problem against any team left in this tournament. I don't know enough about Xavier to say if the Muskies are the team that will take the Panthers out, but I do know that I won't be terribly surprised if it happens.

#2 Duke v. #3 Villanova. This is the matchup I'm most looking forward to, a couple of guard-oriented teams with a star forward who can score inside (Kyle Singler for Duke, Dante Cunningham for Villanova). Both teams rely heavily on the three-point shot, and both have capable but limited role players up front (I give the advantage to Nova here). Duke is perhaps one player deeper in the backcourt and on the wing.

A lot of people would give the coaching advantage to Duke's legendary Coach K, but that does an injustice to Nova head man Jay Wright. Wright has had the same kind of team he has this year in previous years, and he has had great success in the past -- coming within a missed traveling call of upsetting eventual champion North Carolina in 2005, running into a juggernaut on a roll -- a juggernaut on a roll that was a particularly bad matchup for Nova's guard-oriented team -- in Florida the following year. Wright is every bit the coach Coach K is.

This game is really a tossup. If one team shoots well and the other doesn't, it'll prevail. (Duh.) If both teams shoot well, it could easily be "last possession wins." If neither team shoots well, it's a tossup. Both teams have guys who can get to the bucket and finish (Gerald Henderson and Nolan Smith for Duke; Corey Fisher and Scottie Reynolds for Villanova), which is imperative when the jumper isn't falling. It may come down to something like free throws, in which case I guess I like Duke by a thin margin, as I think Singler is better at drawing fouls than Cunningham and the officials always seem to send Duke to the line more than their opponents.