Tournament Thoughts: First Round Friday

I had no time to take notes today, and if I had I would have no time to compile them into coherent thoughts. I'm lucky I even had time to watch the games, which I barely did, doing a lot of recording and scanning.

What follows is just the most important things of the games of the day. But I'm trying a new way, using the final score so when I read these 5 years from now I'll remember what the hell I was talking about.

#14 Mercer 78 #3 Duke 71
And there is our first major upset. I really thought Duke was good enough to go to the Final Four. I wouldn't even say they flamed out here, Mercer just played an incredible game. But this is the second time in 3 years that Duke was a huge favorite and lost in the first round (remember Lehigh?)

If I had to put a finger on what went wrong I would say they didn't play good defense, allowing Mercer to shoot 55%.

But also Duke fell in love with the 3-pointer, 37 attempts. But maybe a bigger problem, and a harder one to explain is how they made only 7 out of 25 2-pointers.

No one is ever going to say Coach K is not a good coach but he may be falling victim to a couple things here. First, he is such a great recruiter and his program has so much tradition that he consistently gets the best players in each incoming class. But, those guys leave after 1 maybe 2 years. And he's not having time to teach them a team game.

So they don't play great defense and they stand outside shooting 3s because to do otherwise might require more years in the system, so they go back to individual skills. And a team like Mercer more experienced is able to beat them.

But is he supposed to say no to Jabari Parker?

#6 Baylor 74 #11 Nebraska 60
Nebraska may have played the worst first half of any team in the tournament. They scored only 16 points and made only 6 field goals. They came back with 44 in the second half but Baylor was coasting at that point.

#3 Creighton 76 #14 Louisiana-Lafayette 66
This game was closer than the final score would indicate. ULL led 50-46 with 12 minutes left, but Creighton stayed true to themselves, passed the ball around made some 3s and went on a 22-10 run, which pretty much sealed it.

#2 Kansas 80 #15 Eastern Kentucky 69
This game was also much closer than most of us thought it would be. They were actually tied 32-32 at the half. But eventually Kansas's size took over, they dominated on the offensive glass and EKU ran out of gas.

But Kansas went 0 for 7 from 3. If they have to go up against a zone team like say, Syracuse, and they can't hit outside shots, the zone can pack it in and clog up the middle.

I still think Kansas is an excellent team with or without Embiid, with a good chance to win it all.

#8 Gonzaga 85 #9 Oklahoma State 77
This game was completely marred by bad officiating. They called 61 fouls, resulting in 78 free throws of which the teams made only 62 percent. At times it seemed like the refs were mad at Oklahoma State, particularly Marcus Smart. Some of those calls were ridiculous.

Smart is definitely leaving after this year and if he can control himself and behavior like a professional I think he is going to be a great pro. I don't like him and the way he behaves but his talent is unquestionable. 23 points, 13 rebounds, 7 assists and 6 steals.

At the end of the game Oklahoma State employed the strategy to foul Gonzaga big man Przemek Karnowski. Announcer Andrew Catalon called this "Hack a Polack." Karnowski actually is from Poland. But I guess the PC thing to call people from Poland is Poles. He was sitting with another Polack, Mike Gminski, who immediately pointed it out. Catalon apologized, he probably didn't realize it can be seen as derogatory. I don't think this is a big deal. Nails is furious and expects Catalon to be fired.

#6 North Carolina 79 #11 Providence 77
Another case of a smaller team building a lead and having it snatched away by a larger team's offensive rebounding. With 4:30 to get Providence led 71-66. On its next two possessions UNC missed shots, got the rebounds, made shots and tied the game. But that wasn't all, with the score tied at 77 James Michael McAdoo grabbed not one, but two offensive rebounds leading to the two game-winning free throws (which he needed 4 attempts to make).

#12 Stephen F. Austin 77 #5 VCU 75
This is probably the game I will remember most from this first round. JeQuan Lewis will go down in history as one of the biggest goats. How do you foul a 3-pointer shooter ever? But especially with a 4 point lead and 5 seconds left in an NCAA Tournament game. Don't even contest the shot, don't even try to rebound a miss, just get out of the way. Horrible.

But because these are college kids and not paid professionals it does make you sad to see a guy walk off the floor like this, knowing he cost his team the game.

#11 Tennessee 86 #6 Massachusetts 67
Another one for the play-in game teams. Seems like at least one of them every year plays on Tuesday or Wednesday then wins again in the first round.

#1 Virginia 70 #16 Coastal Carolina 59
This game was close much longer than it should have been but eventually Virginia's defense clamped down. With 8:52 left CC hit a 3 to tie the game at 47. Over the ensuing 8 minutes they scored 7 points and UVA scored 23.

Evidently a Chanticleer is some kind of rooster.

#8 Kentucky 56 #9 Kansas State 49
This game had the weirdest start to any game I've ever seen. Kentucky got a technical free throw because Kansss state walk-on Brian Rohleder, who played only 31 minutes all season, earned a technical foul for dunking in warmups before the game. NCAA rules prohibit dunking with less than 20 minutes until tip, and Rohleder's dunk came with 19:58 showing on the clock.

A rule is a rule and I don't really blame the officials for enforcing it, though it would have been easy to look the other way because it was only 2 seconds into the no dunk time. But this rule makes absolutely no sense. Why oh why is it on the books? I bet it will be abolished this offseason, though the NCAA is so provincial they may keep it just out of spite.

#4 UCLA 76 #13 Tulsa 59
So the first round didn't end with another major upset. Duke was the only one of the top 12 teams to lose. But 5 of the 5s and 6s lost. In each of the previous 6 years a 13 has beaten a 4, for a total of 7 times. 6 of those 13 seeds went on to play a 12 seed in the second round. There is no real reason why upsets like that should be bunched together, but they seem to be. Stephen F Austin did it's part and Tulsa kept it close for a while, but UCLA starting hitting some shots, getting some runouts, and now they get SFA in round 2.

As much as I like the fact that Danny Manning is the coach of Tulsa, by the end of this game I was sick of hearing about him too.