Tournament Thoughts - Second Round Saturday

That was an unexpected blowout. But here's the thing with VCU, something I've said about Syracuse over the years. When you play VCU you know what kind of defense they are going to play. It's on tape, it's been written about, that pressure defense is what they do. It's a very effective system, and they are good at executing it, but you can study ways to beat it. Michigan just has a lot of athletic guys who can handle the ball, and shoot it.

And Mitch McGary had a great game inside.

Rachel Nichols looks good. Maybe someone at CBS gave her some better makeup advice than she was getting at ESPN.

Charles Barkley is losing his voice. That would be a positive development as far as I am concerned.

Steve Rushin had a great line. He said he named his bracket "I say tomato, Snoop says Tom Izzo." I remember when the Jay-Z song "H to the Izzo" came out the Michigan State cheerleaders would laugh every time he walked by, so he asked them why and they played that song for him. I bet he never imagined his last name would be so prevalent in pop culture.

There's a reason why Michigan State always does so well in the tournament, they have size and they have good guards. I think they have also done what Syracuse tries to do, get good but not great players. Guys who will stay 3 or even 4 years and Izzo coaches em up and they always perform well in the tournament.

Usually the first round games are frantic with a lot of blowouts in there. And when you get to the second round you still have the ejnoyment of a ton of games, but you usually get a lot of close contests. Not today. Michigan won by 25, Michigan State by 22 and now Louisville by 26. What happened to parity?

Horrible start for Harvard. And it never got any better. Fourth straight blowout of the day. This has to be killing the TV ratings.

April showers bring May flowers and first round upsets bring second round blowouts.

Arizona looks like a real dangerous team though. They could face Ohio State in the next round, and could definitely win that game.

Great win for Harvard, and I don't mean to sound like a sap but for those players and fans, winning just one game is a great accomplishment.

Even the big upset of the day wasn't even close. Oregon now has a case to say they were grossly underseeded, but the committee may have done them a favor. Think about it. Would you rather play a 5 and a 4, or a 8 and a 1, or a 7 and a 2. As a 5 its hard to win one game, but you probably are more likely to win two games, than if you have to go through a #1 seed.

I have seen the graphic explaining the difference between a Flagrant 1 and a Flagrant 2 way too many times in this tournament. And only once, maybe twice did I think the fouls were reckless or dangerous. Other times it's just guys playing basketball who happen to hit the other guy.

Butler is such a good team. Brad Stevens is a good coach. This team is completely different than the 2010 title game team, and they are still very, very good. They are building a Gonzaga of the Midwest. And when Marquette made the comeback, led by Vander Blue (he's having himself a tournament), Butler didn't blink.

Vander Blue, ONIONS! Down 69-66, gets the pass in the corner and nails it.

Oh jeez, Rotnei Clark took a terrible shot, 6 seconds remaining and he totally chucked up a 3 he didn't need when Butler was only down 2. Terrible decision. Very un-Butler.

Very creative tournament summary during the Butler-Marquette game. Normally they show one conference doing well, one doing poorly. But in this case they said the 68 bands played "Living On a Prayer" and "Bad Romance" 312 times. And Allie LaForce picked up 4,000 twitter followers. An excuse to show her on camera, yes, but smart producing.

Horrible choke job by Gonzaga. Normally when a big favorite gets down early and they make their comeback and take a big lead (Gonzaga was up 7 with 5 minutes left), they don't let the underdog back in it. But then Wichita State went nuts, bombing 3s and not only did they get back in it, they actually took a comfortable lead in the final minute.

Now I have to listen to another week of Mrs. Poop saying the administration at Wichita State University is being negligent by not changing the team name and instead allowing people to use the crude Shocker hand symbol as a proxy for the Shockers teams.