And the Madness Begins Part II

It's been nearly a week since my last post, but I think I have a pretty valid reason: my sister got married. This leaves me with many things to comment on, as well as the NCAA brackets that were announced yesterday.

So, for the limited followers that I have, you may recall my list if events that make March mad.

1- Unofficial St. Patrick's Day
2- High School Basketball State Tournaments
3- NCAA Conference Basketball Tournaments
4- NCAA Tournament
5- St. Patrick's Day
6- Spring Training
7- Spring Break


Let me focus on numbers 2-4.

#2- I guess that with my background as an Illinois grad, one game of the Illinois tournament has stood out. Not because it was two top schools meeting earlier than they should or because it was actually a good game. It stood out because this game had two Illini recruits playing against each other. These two young men quite possibly will be the next two Illinois Mr. Basketball winners. The two gentlemen I'm speaking of are Brandon Paul (Warren Township, Class of 2009) and Jereme Richmond (Waukegan HS, Class of 2010). Now, this was actually a great game. Back and forth, everything you'd want in any game. It just happened to be between kids who will be attending Illinois in the future. To top it off, with less than 5 seconds left in the game and Warren up by a point, Richmond takes the inbounds pass, strolls up the court, and casually shoots a half-court shot, only to watch it go in. Pretty much like he wrote the script to the game and that was how it would end. Now, Waukegan is set to play Glenbrook North in the Super-Sectional game. And for those who didn't follow the Jon Scheyer recruiting stint...GBN is coached by Dave Weber, brother of one Bruce Weber.


#3- That was simply one game from the high school level. At the college circuit, crazy was around every corner this past week.

Syracuse-UConn: A game featuring 6 overtimes needs no further explanation. Add to that Syracuse playing another overtime the following night and making it to the Big East Championship game.

Cleveland State (Butler), Mississippi State (Tennessee), Northern Iowa (Creighton), and Southern Cal (UCLA) winning their conference tournaments essentially knocked out the following teams: Creighton, Penn State, Saint Mary's, and San Diego St. Creighton and Saint Mary's feel the blow the worst because they thought they had strong enough resumes regardless of win/lose their tournament...nope.

Purdue owns the most regular season Big10 titles with 21. It took them 12 years to win their first tournament title. Iowa somehow has 2 titles. If I'm a Purdue fan, that would make me sick. Luckily, I'm an Illini fan and they have 2 titles, the most wins (22), best winning % (.697), and most title game appearances (6). Another good tid-bit for the Illini is that they are the only school to be in the title game with a double-digit seed (#11 in 1999 and #10 in 2008). Those two years were also the only two in which the Illini missed the big dance.

#4- Arizona, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Dayton. By looking at their seeds and what the past has told us, those 5 teams were the last 5 to make it into the tournament. Arizona and Michigan were probably THE last two teams to enter. The selection committee told us they made it based on their 'whole body of work' and not what they've failed to do in the recent months.

Arizona won some nice games early in the season (San Diego State, Gonzaga, Kansas), but once Pac-10 play began, they were very mediocre. They lost in the first round of the conference tournament and ended the season with a record of 19-13. That's horrible. What happened to 20 wins being the benchmark to at least be considered for the NCAA Tournament? Oh, you know what happened? Mike Slive caved in to the pressure of not allowing Arizona to continue their 25 year streak of being in the tournament. Now, are they a good team? Sure. They have tons of talent and potential that never showed up on a consistent basis during the season. That's what makes them a dangerous team in the next few days. They could possibly put it all together and make a serious run, thus vindicating Slive's decision.
Michigan squeaked in with their early wins over UCLA, Duke, and Illinois. They were middle of the road in Big10 play...won the games they should have and were competitive in most that they lost. This team isn't as scary as Arizona, but could make some noise given the right match-ups.


That's it for tonight. I'd like to make a nice little post regarding the whole tournament and first round games before they happen, but I doubt I'll get to it. If Doug "Do you need a fake credit card?" Gottlieb can make picks on national TV, why can't I?