Day 3

Friday was essentially 100% chalk. The two upsets were 9-8 victories, which barely count as surprises. Moreover, I checked the betting lines and Vegas predicted victories for both Utah State and Iowa. Chalk all around.

The Madness gets its name because of upsets, which are fun but must be rare by definition. Thursday brought us High Point, a classic upset that will long be remembered. Friday gave us UK-Santa Clara. Sure, the Blue Blood won, but endings like that don't come around very often. [Editor's Note: Santa Clara coach Herb Sendek will be happy to tell you that his team would have won if the refs had acknowledged the timeout he was signaling. Fair. Although apparently you can't call a TO when the other team has been handed the ball, which is what happened. Regardless, it's also reasonable to point out that his players shouldn't have gotten so caught up in celebrating that they forgot to guard - or preferably foul - Otega. There are myriad reasons that the final 15 seconds of regulation shouldn't have happened. Which is the reason it was magical. Back to the Notes.]

What I'm hinting at is this: has the NIL era killed the upset and by extension the tournament? In the first round, a bunch of high major schools scored over 100 points in games that were over soon after they began, which is not so fun. One of those teams appeared to be Kansas, which then tried to gift the game to Cal Baptist in the second half. That was compelling. As was TCU's upset of UNC. Siena, Wright State, Hofstra and McNeese State all lost but made fans of the higher seeded teams pretty nervous (looking at you Duke supporters like Debbie). Plus the High Point and Otega-Tron instant classics. Some of the games that weren't so close featured truly extraordinary individual performances. 

My take is that the game and tournament are as good as ever. Paying players means that we keep some of the talent in college for an extra year or two before they head off the to Association. If that means we get a few more first round blow-outs, so be it. That's another reason to not, under any circumstances, expand the field. That was the chalkiest first round I can remember, and it was still loads of fun. The recent changes in college sports are all for the better. March Madness ain't broke, please don't try to fix it.

I got on here to move the Day 2 posts off the main page. Somehow I spewed out 400+ words before the Saturday games even started. After being nailed to my couch for 13 hours yesterday. Something is seriously wrong with me. I'll be back soon with thoughts on...

Michigan's Aday Mara, a Spaniard, is limited athletically. But he's 7'3" with long arms. Physical gifts he knows how to exploit. St. Louis had no answer for him on either end. Mara finished with 16 points, 5 rebounds, 5 assists, 6 blocks. Pretty good day at the office.

Let's pause here to acknowledge an amazing play from the first half. Lindeborg threw a perfect 3/4 court alley-oop pass to Mara for a reverse dunk. I've literally never seen that before.

Robbie Avila (LeBron Frames) picked up two fouls less than two minutes into the game. St. Louis let it ride. They finally took him out and the Billikens immediately went on a 9-0 run to take a 1-point lead. St. Louis reserve Brady Dunlap was primarily responsible, nailing multiple 3s. St Louis kept it close into the second half, but there was no denying Michigan's size and talent. The Wolverines steadily pulled away, winning by over 20.

This is the end of the line for Cream Abdul Jabbar, who just played his last college game. Avila couldn't deal with Mara. He had 5 assists but only 9 points on 3-13 shooting.

Robbie Avila's first name is Roberto. His father is of Mexican descent. Avila has expressed interest in playing for Team Mexico in the Olympics. 

St. Louis runs the Princeton offense. They sure love back door cuts, initiated by Avila in the high post. They run some really nice sets. Coach Josh Schertz knows what he's doing.

Michigan's Elliot Cadeau is partially deaf in one ear and partially blind in one eye. Michigan is going to be around for a while. We'll revisit Cadeau as well as Michigan's star, Yaxel Lindeborg (who had 25 today).

The short-handed Cards didn't quit against Sparty, which didn't put them away until late in the second half. Coen Carr came to play for MSU, with 21 and 10 to go along with a couple highlight jams. The kid has uncommon hops, reportedly a vertical leap of 51 inches. To put that in perspective, uber-athletic Anthony Edwards' vertical jump was measured at the combine as 42 inches.

The Ville missed Mikel Brown, no doubt. But this team never really clicked even when he was available. Maybe a better way to put it is that they peaked in December, when they played like a legit Final Four team. Raises questions. Having Brown in and out of the lineup no doubt influenced chemistry. I'm not going to crush coach Pat Kelsey, who is a massive upgrade from Kenny Payne.

The Texas Christian mascot is the delightfully unique horned frog. Trouble is, it's not a frog, which is an amphibian. It's a lizard, specifically the Texas horned lizard, which is a reptile. These critters, a type of iguanian lizard (genus Phrynosoma), are commonly known as horned toads or horny toads (!). That's confusing. The bottom line is that nature includes no thing called a horned frog.  Still, nice mascot. It has a name: Super Frog.

TCU's calling card is defense. Duke failed to score a field goal over the last 4:48 in the first half, going into the break clinging to a 4-point lead. TCU was effective closing out on shooters, limiting Duke to 30% (3-10) from deep. The second half started with more of the same. Tough TCU defense rattled the Blue Devils, who were ineffective inside and out. Duke was sluggish, while TCU was energized. A beautiful steal and fast break by the Frogs gave them the lead with 16 minutes remaining.

TCU's big got in foul trouble and Duke emphasized getting Cam the ball on the block. He got two and-ones in a row. Duke pushed a lead to double-digits as TCU went ice cold offensively. A deserved technical foul on TCU coach Jaime Dixon didn't help. Just like that, TCU was the team that was rattled and they never recovered, losing by 23. Cam Boozer came alive in the second half, finishing with 19, 11 and 4.

Duke big man Patrick Ngongba returned after missing four games with a foot injury. Ngongba had a weird stat line: 4 points, 4 rebounds and 4 assists in 13 minutes but also 4 personal fouls and 4 turnovers. 

Duke moves to the Sweet 16. After surprisingly difficult games against Siena and TCU, there are some red flags for the top-seeded team. Porous defense and turnovers (17 today!) to name two.

Texas A&M presses and runs (and runs and runs). Houston locks down on defense (although their offense is much more efficient this season). Defense won the first half, with A&M putting up an uncharacteristic 28 (they average over 80 a game). Houston went on an 18-0 run over 7:43 minutes, which finally ended with a free throw with about a minute left in the first half. That was all it took. Houston toyed with the Aggies in the second, cruising to a 29-point victory.

In the first half, Houston coach Kelvin Sampson gave one of the worst in-game interviews I've ever seen (that didn't involve an openly hostile coach). Complete word salad. Dude acted like he'd taken an extra Ambien before tip-off. Fortunately, his team was focused. Sampson has transformed Houston into a consistent contender. Impressive.

Former Kentucky coach Tubby Smith went to High Point. A journeyman coach, he ended his career at his alma mater. You will not find a more humble, Down to Earth person than Tubby Smith, who grew up in North Carolina as one of 17 siblings (!). I assumed, therefore, that High Point (which is near Greensboro) was a gritty little school serving the middle class. I couldn't have been more wrong. Turns out tuition, room and board runs you north of 70K at High Point these days. Their dorms, which are considered the nicest in the country, provide free laundry service for students. Get this: they have fake airplane interior on campus to mimic what it would be like to sit next to an executive on a plane. I'm not making this up. Did I mention that they spent $170 million on their new basketball arena? Given all that, it is actually not surprising that High Point chartered a private plane to take students to the first round tournament game in Portland. Just like when I was at school.

The Hogs, a 4-seed, ended up with a pretty favorable path to the Sweet 16. A dominant win over Hawai'i in the first round earned them a date with the Billionaire Boys Club of High Point. That's a 13-seed and then a 12-seed for those of you scoring at home.

Arkansas has all the athletes, right? None of them could stay in front of High Point's Rob Martin. That dude is cat-quick. Chase Johnston went back to living beyond the arc, nailing a 3 to give High Point the lead with 3 seconds to go in the first. Arkansas got a couple free throws to retake a 1-point lead at the half. Wow.

Acuff and Martin couldn't guard one another. Both got to the rim at will and finished. Martin had 30. Acuff got 36.

Arkansas has no bench. Literally. They contributed 2 points. High Point's bench poured in 37. Twenty-five of them came from Cam'Ron Fletcher, a former Kentucky player who was coached by Cal for a season. Another guy who has played for six years, moving from Kentucky to Florida State for three years, then Xavier and finally High Point. This is possible because of an added year of eligibility for the Covid season. At Kentucky, he was not a highly recruited freshman but he had big ideas about how much he could contribute. Evidently he complained so much about playing time, he was asked to leave the team and re-assess his commitment. He returned for a few games, still didn't play much and decided to transfer.

Martin and Fletcher and the whole High Point team played their butts off. They were right there down the stretch. A couple of 3s wouldn't go down. And then Acuff, who was unstoppable at the rim, pulled up for a 3. Money. That ended up being the turning point. Arkansas to the Sweet 16, 94-88.

In the first half, Gonzaga built an 8-point lead and looked ready to take over. Texas wasn't having it. They locked down on defense and hit a 3 right before the half to take the lead, 35-33. This one pivoted on the big men (see what I did there?). The Zags' Graham Ike is a beast down low. He looks huge, but he's actually only 6'9". Ike hasn't faced many as big as Texas' Matas Vokietaitis, who is a legit 7'0", 255 pounds. The Lithuanian went nose-to-nose with Ike all night like Ali and Foreman. 

Texas built a 6-point lead down the stretch. Two Texas 3s went half-way down and popped out. An Ike dunk pulled the Bulldogs to a 1-point deficit with 40 seconds to go. Shockingly, Texas' Cam Heide nailed a corner 3 with 15 seconds remaining. Heide had played only 13 minutes and had no points before he took that shot. A missed 3 by Gonzaga led to an exclamation point run-out finger roll from Vokietaitis. Texas wins, 74-68. A First Four team, this was Texas' third win in five days. 

Big win for Texas coach Sean Miller. The guy can coach, but I'm not a fan. He was at Xavier and got his big break landing the Arizona job in 2009. That's what happens at a place like Xavier. After 12 seasons, Arizona fired him for egregious recruiting violations. It's all legal now, true. But it wasn't then, and he didn't bend the rules, he obliterated them. It was so bad, the FBI tapped the coaches' phones. Those seedy conversations were all played in court. Sean Miller didn't end up in jail, he ended up back at Xavier! He immediately turned the program around, beating Texas in a First Four game in his second season after returning to Cincinnati. Texas was looking to move on from coach Ron Terry, so they hired Miller. When it comes to college sports, I am more than a bit cynical. But I found this disloyalty shocking. Sean Miller left Arizona in disgrace; he was radioactive; no way he should get to rehabilitate at a school as good as Xavier. Cincy was not so forgiving the second time around, and I don't blame them. Tonight, Miller took full credit for the big Heide shot. Jerk.

VCU staged a comeback for the ages against UNC. They dug themselves a hole again against Illinois and couldn't climb out. The Illinois offense is just too good. Next up for the Illini and their second ranked offense: Houston and the 4th best defense in the country.

Terrific game, played in Oklahoma City which is 6-7 hours from Lincoln (that one's for the kids!). It was essentially a home game for Nebraska. Big Red showed up and showed out. Down the stretch, Nebraska's defense was slightly better than Vandy's offense. Vandy's Tyler Tanner, who tallied 27, threw up an Otega-like shot from beyond half court for the win. It banked off the backboard, went halfway down and rattled out.