Friday, March 20, 2015

Tournament Thoughts - Early Friday

We start day 2 with Kansas and New Mexico State. Kansas is the two seed a lot of people think is ripe for an upset. But I think they're good, just played a tough schedule.

Not much to comment on from Kansas's blowout.

Sim Bhullar's brother, Tanveer is 7'3" 355 lbs and hardly plays. He did make both his shots.

Every year I pick Michigan State. Some years they let me down, but they usually always play well and Coach Izzo always makes good decisions late in games. Ok, not always, but they had a big enough lead to hold on.

A couple of Michigan State players have nice sneakers, kind of remind me of mint chocolate chip ice cream.



Wyoming has Larry Nance Jr. that's a sure sign of aging, when you start to watch the kids of players you used to watch.

Northern Iowa looks good. Lots of guys who can knock down shots. Have I mentioned I picked them to make the Final Four? Go make me proud Panthers.

Great run by Wyoming to cut a 21-point deficit. UNI helped them out by shooting quick 3s. Larry Nance Jr got hot. He's 6'8" and can shoot. Maybe he'll get a luck from an NBA team.

Kurt Warner representing Northern Iowa!



In the Christian Laettner 30 for 30 Bobby Hurley was 18 and he looked 10. Now he's about 40 and looks like 50.



So there will be no 12-5 upset this year, despite a couple close calls.

Buffalo had so many chances but could just never seize the lead. That's why size matters, WVU got that huge offensive rebound that gave them another possession, which turned into the back-breaking 3-pointer.

So Belmont couldn't pull off the upset but they did give us one of those nice moments where an underdog makes a run and they showed the guys in the bench in warmups going nuts.

The winner of this year's Coach Memorial You Can't Teach Height Award is UC-Irvine's 7-foot-6 center Mamadou Ndaiye. There used to be a guy of the same name who played at Auburn and briefly in the NBA.



Terrible end of game performance for UC Irvine. Wasted an entire possession with a tie game, committed a dumb foul in the corner and then couldn't even get a shot to tie the game.

It's just crazy that practically every single close game goes against the team I picked.
Purdue, Buffalo, Wofford, UC Irvine, LSU, SMU. All of them had good chances to win, and I lost every single one of those games.

Maryland holds off Valpo. Drews are now 0-2 in this tournament.

All the 4s and 5s survived, pretty sure that has never happened before. Now onto the final session of the best two days of the years.

2 comments:

  1. Wasn't there a Mack-tar Ndiaye from UNC?
    For the Laettner doc, it was very good - particularly the pop culture references which were nice flashbacks - but it could have been 5 min. All they needed was everyone to say he,s a dick but one of the best college players ever. And Laettner could have agreed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, there was a Makhtar N'Daiye from UNC. In Africa Ndaiye is like Smith or Jones.
    I thought the documentary was pretty good. Made me feel differently about Laettner. But he's still a dick for stepping on the guy's chest.

    ReplyDelete