Tournament Thoughts - Early Thursday

It's very rare you see Notre Dame being the more athletic team on the floor. Usually they just have a bunch of slow white guys who can shoot.

I don't have a lot of confidence in Northeastern after hearing their coach fell off the Al Skinner coaching tree.

UAB just seems nervous. Shooting terribly, dropping passes. They likely won't be able to come back if they fall into a huge hole against Iowa St.

Fred Hoiberg doesn't age.

UAB did withstand that initial punch from Iowa State and got back into the game by grabbing a lot of offensive rebounds, which is easier when you miss a ton of shots.

The downside of Greg Anthony's prostitution arrest: all the announce teams got shuffled, Verne and Raf got separated so did Ian Eagle and Jim Spanarkel. Eagle and Spanarkel were the longest running team, at 17 years.

I hate cliches like "they wanted it more" but UAB is trying a lot harder, running faster, boxing out more than Iowa State.

Terrible late game strategy by Notre Dame. Up 6 under 3 to go and Jerian Grant holds the ball for 30 seconds and chucks up a bad three. Then they fall asleep on defense and allow Northeastern an easy backdoor bucket. The luck of the Irish certainly with them. They tried to blow this game. Why throw an 80-foot pass? Someone come to the ball! But they played great defense in the final possession with a 2-point lead and that was good enough to hold on.

When Niang passes and gets other people involved Iowa State's offense works great. When he gets the ball and shoots it without passing, it doesn't work for them. He doesn't have the hot hand in this game, other teammates particularly Thomas do, but he doesn't seem to recognize that. He finished 4-15 from the field (pitiful considering most were within 10 ft) with 3 turnovers.

So that's the first big upset of the tournament. A lot of people had Iowa State going to the Final Four. I had them losing to SMU on Saturday so this actually works out pretty well for me.

Georgia State's coach looks so silly rolling along the sideline on a stool.

I have no idea why Georgia State chose to slow the pace. They had the ball up 1, slowed it down and it all went to shit. They were pressuring Baylor and forcing turnovers and then they stopped, and Baylor went on a 10-0 run.

Georgia State has Kevin Ware. Surely you remember his gruesome injury from when he was with Louisville 2 years ago.

Funny thing, when Baylor got the lead, they tried to sit on it, and GSU went off, especially the coach's son.

And bang, there you have it. The first big ONIONS!!!!! moment of the tournament. Incredible shot by Hunter, the coach's son, knocking dad off his stool. Incredible. If he hadn't hurt himself after the conference title game he would have done it after this one. Amazing. That's why we love the tournament.

Two No. 14 seeds won in the same tournament only twice, in 1986 (Arkansas-Little Rock over Notre Dame, Cleveland State over Indiana) and 1995 (Weber State over Michigan State, Old Dominion over Villanova).

This Butler-Texas game seems to me to be one of those overachieving hard-working teams that plays good basketball against an undisciplined underachieving team with lots of talent. But I prefer talent which is why I have Texas winning this one.

Larry Brown is going to die on the sideline. He does not look well. He's only three years older than Boeheim. Is that what we have to look forward to in year 3? A decrepit corpse on the sideline?

What a comeback by SMU! That little guy Nick Moore was awesome. 19-0 run!

I never believe in momentum and these games often prove it. Teams get their doors blown off for a few minutes, then hit a couple shots and of the sudden they have all the "momentum." If it's that transient it probably doesn't mean anything at all.

Bryce Alford on fire. It is a good day to be a coach's son.

Oh what a terrible ending to a great game. Very hard to say but I don't think that was goaltending. What a terrible finish to a very exciting game. SMU was in this cage of their own creation though, with a very bad turnover when they should have been sealing the victory.

It always figures that the team everyone is criticizing about their bid is the one that wins a game, and now they have a very good chance to make the Sweet 16.

It seems like D'Angelo Russell is going to be a very high pick in the NBA. And he certainly is a very good player but it seems to me a lot of these athletic wings types have been busts in the NBA.

That was a vicious elbow to Russell's face. It should have been a flagrant 1, excessive contact, but because it wasn't intentional it didn't rise to the level of a flagrant 2. They got one right, huge turn of events.

VCU gave that game away. Way too many mistakes, bad turnovers, ill-advised shots.

But an overtime game was an exciting way to end the first session of games.