Tournament Thoughts: Second Round Saturday

#1 Florida 61 #9 Pittsburgh 45
Typical game of what you would expect from Pitt. They beat you up and hang in there. Typical of what you would expect from Florida, eventually their athletes were too much for Pitt to keep up with, and once they started nailing shots they pulled away.

#4 Louisville 66 #5 St. Louis 51
There are no more 5 seeds left in the tournament.

St. Louis actually gave Louisville a game for a little while but then they gave the ball to Luke Hancock, he hit a couple threes and that was that.

#2 Michigan 79 #7 Texas 65
Our third straight nondescript game of good team beats bad team by a lot. Except Michigan had this one in hand the whole way.

I think there is a strong chance we will get a national championship rematch in this regional final. Michigan would have to beat the Mercer-Tennessee winner and Louisville would have the tougher task of facing Wichita State or Kentucky.

#4 San Diego State 63 #12 North Dakota State 44
North Dakota State actually hung in for a little while but couldn't match the athleticism.

Great performance by Xavier Thames. He killed NDSU every way possible.

#2 Wisconsin 85 #7 Oregon 77
Probably the most aesthetically pleasing games of the day. With 7 minutes left in the first half more points had been scored in this one than in the Syracuse game, which had been in play for twice as many minutes.

I'm very surprised that Wisconsin was able to beat Oregon at their own game. But they are not as slow and lumbering as they have been in previous years under Bo Ryan. They have a lot of guys who can shoot and the like to spread the floor and pass it around to get the defense moving.

They hit 11 of 28 from 3 with 6 different players making at least one.

Thus ends the long career of Mike Moser. He started at UCLA, went to UNLV and finished up at Oregon. He played the 2009-10 season at UCLA, sat out a year, played 2 at UNLV but because he graduated he got back that lost year of eligibility.

You know you're getting old when the guys you used to watch now have sons in college. Last year it was Tim Hardaway Jr. and Glenn Robinson III on Michigan, this year it's Devin Marble on Iowa and Traevon Jackson (son of Jimmy) playing for Wisconsin. Looks just like him too.

By the way, Jackson had a great game, 16 points, 8 rebounds and 5 assists.

#4 Michigan State 80 #12 Harvard 73
I don't know if we proscribe certain traits to Harvard's players just because they're from Harvard or if they really exhibit them in greater frequency than players from other schools. But the poise, intelligence and decision making of these players is amazing. But I don't want to diminish their abilities by calling them "scrappers." They can run and jump and shoot.

At first it seemed like they were a little worried about Michigan State contesting their shots, so they shot too fast. They were worried about getting beat down the court on a fast break so they didn't go after offensive rebounds. But once they settled down and realized they could play with these guys, they made an amazing comeback.

At 15 minutes of the second half Harvard trailed 53-39. 8 minutes later they led 62-60. A 23-7 run in 8 minutes against a team many people are expecting to win it all. Impressive stretch of basketball.

But Michigan State just has too many weapons. They got back to their game and hit some 3s and held off Harvard.

One weapon they don't have is Denzel Washington. Both Greg Gumbel and Doug Gottlieb called Denzel Valentine that.

#7 Connecticut 77 #2 Villanova 65
Early in the game Villanova led 19-9. UConn made it 20-13 by the under 8 timeout. Allie LaForce interviewed Jim Calhoun, briefly and awkwardly, and he said he thought the team was on the verge of something, and it was, as Verne Lundquist pointed out several times, the old coach saw it coming.

The only guy more correct about this matchup than Calhoun was me. I have a long of history of correctly predicting the #2 seed that will lose in the second round. But I almost never picked the right team to do it. This time I did. Part of my reasoning was that this would be an old school Big East game, which favored UConn, and indeed it was.

Shabazz Napier just took over this game. He scored 25 points on 9 of 13 shooting, in just 25 minutes due to foul trouble. He was awesome.