There were 32 March Madness games on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I got to watch part of every one of them; it was an orgy of college basketball here in Curmudgeon Central. Not to worry though, I am not going to go through notes on all 32 games – – just a sampling of my impressions while watching these games.
Starting on Friday:
- Michigan St. 72 USC 62: The Spartans’ defense in the second half was suffocating.
- Xavier 72 Kennesaw St. 67: An excellent game in the 1st half had Kennesaw St. up by 7 at the half. The lead stretched to double digits in the second half until Xavier put on a totally dominating 15-0 run to eke out a win.
- Baylor 74 UC-Santa Barbara 56: Baylor is the better team by a lot – – but this Baylor team does not play defense the way previous Baylor teams did.
- St Mary’s 63 VCU 51: VCU does not have a reliable shooter/scorer.
- Pitt 59 Iowa St. 41: Iowa St. made its first field goal of the game at the 9:54 mark in the first half. No contest …
- UConn 87 Iona 63: Two well-coached teams played an exciting first half but UConn was much deeper and much stronger turning the game into a rout for the last 8 minutes or so.
- Fairleigh Dickinson 63 Purdue 58: Purdue could not defend FDU’s fast guards and FDU could not defend Purdue’s size. In the end, David beat Goliath.
- Gonzaga 82 Grand Canyon 72: The Zags only led by 4 at the half and did not look good at all in the first half. They played better in the second half but still looked “off-center”.
- TCU 72 Arizona St. 70: TCU looked awful in the first half; I thought this was going to be a laugher for the Sun Devils in the second half. That did not happen; TCU came out of its fog in the second half and won at the end.
In the games on Saturday:
- Tennessee 65 Duke 52: Duke was simply out-muscled in this game; Charles Barkley described the Tennessee line-up as “grown men”. A production note for the folks doing the engineering here: Up the amps on Stan van Gundy’s microphone; he has good stuff to add to the telecast but sometimes he gets drowned out by crowd noise.
- Arkansas 72 Kansas 71: Arkansas won despite only shooting 3 for 15 on 3-point attempts. Arkansas was down by 12 points in the second half but won on hustle and rebounding.
- Princeton 78 Missouri 63: In this Tiger versus Tiger matchup, Princeton was the alpha male from start to finish.
- Houston 81 Auburn 64: Auburn’s foul shooting was horrendous in the game; they were 19 for 36 from the foul line! I officiated kids’ rec league games with better foul shooting than that.
- UCLA 68 Northwestern 63: Here is exactly what I wrote on my scratch pad during the game:
“UCLA is the least entertaining team still alive in the tournament and Northwestern is second. Meh!”
As for the games on Sunday:
- Xavier 84 Pitt 73: Xavier’s performance in the first half was the best half of basketball so far in the tournament. Xavier led 48-34 at the intermission.
- Kansas St. 75 Kentucky 69: This was the best/most entertaining game in the tournament so far. There was good offense on display and good defense. There were spectacular plays and it went down to the final minute to be decided. Marquis Nowell (K-State) is plenty entertaining all by himself. This was everything a college basketball fan could ask for.
- Michigan St. 69 Marquette 60: Marquette’s Tyler Kolek was the Big East Player of the Year and he was a no-show in this game with 7 points shooting 2 for 8 from the floor.
- Creighton 85 Baylor 76: Again, this Baylor team does not defend like Scott Drew’s Baylor teams of recent vintage have defended.
Memo For Telecast Execs:
Lisa Byington needs a lot of coaching/developing to do play-by-play for such a fast-paced game. She obviously knows the game but does not always “keep up”. Work with her…
- Gonzaga 84 TCU 81: TCU’s intensity in the first half was clearly greater than Gonzaga’s. These are not the Zags of the last couple of years but they put together some offense and played much better defense in the second half to pull out a close one.
I saw two players who did not get a lot of attention from the broadcasters who I think will play in the NBA one of these days – – not necessarily as stars but as important role players:
- Jarace Walker – Houston: He is a freshman and listed as 6’8” and 240 lbs. I believe both numbers. He has work to do on his offensive game but he already has rebounding and shot blocking skills in abundance.
- Dariq Whitehead – Duke: Another freshman with a large frame that can expand into “NBA size” who plays strong defense both inside and on the perimeter.
Finally, I said there was an orgy of college basketball over the weekend so let me close with this from Ogden Nash:
“Home is Heaven and orgies are vile.
But I like an orgy once in a while.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………