First Round March Madness Notes …

Briefly today on the heels of watching basketball tournament games for about 12 hours yesterday …

It is hardly commonplace for a team to score 100 points or more in a tournament game, but it happened thrice yesterday:

• Michigan 101   Howard 80
• St. Louis 102   Georgia 77

What is even more interesting to me is that Michigan and St. Louis will play each other tomorrow and I was interested to see what the oddsmakers were thinking about that game.  Here is the current line which may change dramatically between now and tomorrow:

St. Louis vs. Michigan – 12.5 (161.5):  The Total Line opened at 158 points and has risen steadily since posting that line last night.  I will not be surprised to see it go higher still.

Speaking of that Georgia/St. Louis game, if you ever want an example of a game where both teams wanted to play “helter-skelter basketball”, you need look no further than that game.  At one point in the game, St. Louis led by 40 points and was still scurrying up and down the court on every possession.

AJ Dybantsa is fun to watch in addition to being an exceptional basketball talent.  BYU lost to Texas by 8 points yesterday, but it was surely not his fault; there were times in the game where it looked as if he was playing the entire Texas defense by himself.

If the Duke/Siena game were a horse race, you would say that Duke won by a nose with a furious stretch run.  Early in that game, Duke was playing about as listless a game as I’ve seen by a tournament team; they had all the intensity of an intrasquad scrimmage.  When it seemed to have finally dawned on them that they might actually be headed home in embarrassment, it was like flipping a light switch.  At one point Duke held Siena scoreless for more than 5 minutes down the stretch to eke out a win where Duke was favored by 29 points at gametime.

High Point sent Wisconsin home yesterday.  High Point lives and dies with three-point shooting and up-tempo offense; if they are on, they can play with anyone.  Wisconsin also likes to play fast; so, the game was a track meet to some extent.  One thing about Wisconsin is that they have “team speed” in the sense of getting up and down the court very quickly, but they do not have what I call “defensive speed”.  When an offensive set gets the defense in an unbalanced state, the Wisconsin defenders are not quick to adjust and to re-establish a cohesive defense.  High Point exploited that very well yesterday.

Both Nebraska and Troy had never won an NCAA Tournament game in school history.  Well, Nebraska is officially off the schneid now after beating Troy 76-47 yesterday.

Charles Dickens would have described the TCU/Ohio St. game yesterday as:

• A Tale of Two Halves.

TCU led at the half 39-24 and appeared to be able to put the game on cruise control for the rest of the day.  Not so.  Ohio State dominated the second half and had one last gasp with a three-quarter court shot to tie the game and send it to OT.  TCU moves on … barely.

Penn was outclassed by Illinois; the Illini also posted a triple-digit score in the game winning 105-70.

In the late game, Gonzaga won a nail-biter over a 14-seed in Kennesaw St.  Davis Fogle came off the bench for the Zags and scored 17 points which facilitated the 9-point margin of victory.  The Zags center, Graham Ike, was an interior force in the game scoring 19 points and grabbing 9 rebounds.

I do have one general observation about the games overall yesterday.

• Enforcement of the rules related to traveling was not made a point of emphasis for this season or for this tournament.

Finally, since this weekend will be devoted to wall-to-wall basketball as a sort of gluttony for the eyeballs, I’ll close with this observation by author Julie Burchill:

“Gluttony and idleness are two of life’s great joys, but they are not honourable.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………