Daily Tourney Talk (Thursday)

Where have all the Cinderellas gone??? With all the parity a lot of people were expecting more upsets. Instead we only got one upset, #11 VCU beating #6 Duke. That was it. No other upsets. Which makes Duke's first night loss in the tourney even more embarassing... Yes, some of the other games were close, but the higher seeds prevailed... No, I don't consider a #9 Xavier beating #8 BYU an upset since #8s vs #9s are an evenly matched...


Round 2 Predictions based on today's games

Predictions for the first four games are further below in this post

Xavier vs Ohio State: The first of the possible 2nd round "story" games has materialized. Thad Matta will face his previous team, who was disappointed to see him leave so soon when the Buckeyes job opened. Matta has the advantage of knowing the Xavier personnel probably better than their current coach. Prediction: Oden blocks out the sun and Ohio State wins a close game

VCU vs Pitt. The tough VCU team will face off the Pitt Panthers who are desperate for March success. Aaron Gray is not as gooey as Josh "Cry In a Towel" McRoberts, but he's not far off. Prediction: VCU (how can I not???)

UCLA vs Indiana: First one to 44 wins! Prediction: UCLA wins in a very ugly slugfest

North Carolina vs Michigan State. Carolina can get away with letting teams like Eastern Kentucky back in, but it may not be as easy when they play at-large caliber talent. The good news for the Heels is that Hansbrough is back, he scored 21 points. Prediction: Carolina wins...

All these Round 2 games will be played on Saturday

Thank you VCU! Thank you VCU for beating the Dookies! Thank you Anthony Grant, Eric Maynor, Anderson, BA, Pella-Rosa, Fameni and everybody else! Thank you for beating the Dookies!!!!!!!!!... If you are not familiar with the Colonial already, check some of the CAA blogs... Despite the Ole defense that got DeMarcus Nelson an easy bucket to tie the game, VCU's Maynor delivered one more time. As Raft would say, onions!... Thank you VCU!

What a wonderful VCU victory and wonderful Duke loss. I bet this will become an instant classic game. Anthony Grant showcased his coaching skills and if you didn't know you would have never guessed this was his first head-coaching job! Of course it didn't hurt being an assistant at Florida last year and cutting down the nets. Awesome with capital A!

Coach Dirty-K, you should have paid more attention when Turnaround Tom Penders said that VCU was the best pressing team: Turnaround Tom knows all about pressing... It will be interesting to hear what Coach K will say during the post-game interviews and press conferences. Will Josh McRoberts cry again? Will Coach K pretend he had a cold all season long and ask the AD to put this year's record on Johnny Dawkins's record and remove it from his?

Now how is the Dirty Rat going to sell high-priced TV ads after losing a first around game to an underdog? The Dirty Rat's Marketing Empire is a sandcastle!

On Timeouts You may have noticed that the media timeouts take slightly longer than regular season games. Not only that, but CBS also converts the first coaches timeout in the first half into a full timeout. During the regular season this only happens during the 2nd half. But this may be a good sign for college hoops: more companies want to advertise!

Desperately Seeking ...Upsets! Upsets where are you? :-)

Round 2 Predictions based on today's games

Maryland vs Butler: Butler cannot afford to fall behind. They clearly need to score more to beat Maryland, unless Maryland has a horrible game. Likely winner: Maryland

Georgetown vs Boston College: The only advantage I can think of that BC has over Georgetown is Ty. Rice. Other than that Georgetown has the edge. So unless Rice has a 30+ scoring game, I can't see BC winning

Washington State vs Vanderbilt: Both teams were playing slow last season, but Kevin Stallings has sped things up (let's not forget he is a Roy/Carolina guy so he is no stranger to a faster style of play), and Tony Bennett is not his dad, he plays faster too. The big question is whether Vandy's offense can score consistently over Washington State's stingy defense

Louisville vs Texas A&M: Pitino's team played like the 1996 Kentucky Wildcats at Rupp Arena in the first half. They will probably need another half like that to have a chance to beat Acie Law and Texas A&M. Billy Gillespie the next Kentucky coach??? (just a thought, not a rumor by the way). Prediction: The magic of Rupp gives Louisville an overtime win

Fallen behind on recruiting? Catch up at Recruiting Wars

First ever live NCAA game on CSTV starts right about now on CSTV (Vandy vs George Washington, national game).

Next wave of analysts on ESPN's 5+ hour impromptu college gameday scoreboard marathon: The one and only Howie Schwab (no chips in hand?) and Digger Phelps. Airs live right now on ESPN!


Cinderella Dreams Smashed by the Gravity of Reality's Anvil
- great line by Bob Ley of ESPN on OTL
* in reverse chronological order

Penn: They gave Texas A&M more than they could handle, and more than most people anticipated as this was not the Penn team of the past, this was a Penn team with a brand new Miller genuine coach (Fran Dunphry moved next door to replace the legendary John Chaney). But ultimate A&M's defense and the one and only Acie Law got A&M the big W.

Old Dominion: Just because you are playing another mid-major it doesn't mean you have a better chance of beating the #5 seed. This game was the biggest slugfest of the tourney so far.

Belmont A quick start against Georgetown was all that was left of the Cinderella dream before the giants of Georgetown stomped on their music sheets and instruments

Oral Roberts had a great first half with first-year coach Tony Bennett and his team having a "deer in the headlights" moment. But two last second buckets at the end of the first half woke up Washington State and the dream was over for the Suttons. Len Elmore apparently did not watch a lot of Washington State games this year as his comments in the first half indicated he was probably referring to the Dick Bennett teams, not the singer's team, which showed up in the 2nd half. You can bet the three Suttons and the two Bennetts were probably up all night breaking down tape. (Not bet like Pete Rose, even if it's always for your team to win).

Davidson lost to Maryland after a valiant effort. Dell Curry's kid has a good game as well.

Time-Warp The team playing at Rupp Arena coached by Rick Pitino looks a lot like the 1994-96 Pitino teams. This must really hurt Kentucky fans as the team coached by Pitino is not Kentucky but Louisville. Tubby's ballline defense cannot produce this type of excitement... Stanford got punched in the mouth and never recovered. Pitino downplayed playing at Rupp just 70-some miles away from their home co(ur)t, but judging from the cheers from the crowd they have a significant home court advantage... Another surprise is the relatively high score between Boston College and Texas Tech... The Maryland vs Davidson game was expected to be a shootout...

Remember you can watch the NCAA tournament games live online on your computer for free at March Madness On-Demand. Broadband is highly recommended for video. Enjoy the tourney and watch the brackets unfold and surprise... New this year: Live Radio Broadcasts, you can get streaming live audio from Westwood One's radio broadcasts of the first 56 games of the Championship, and an exclusive half-time show with Norm Roberts and Bobby "Gonzo" Gonzalez and Jason Horowitz. Also of note the video player is now 480x360 pixels, not quite VGA-size, but 50% increase over last years webcasts.

Let the games begin on CBS!!! Check your local CBS affiliate listings to find out which games are broadcast in your region. Check my TV listings below with links to the CBS schedule page for national listings. How to figure out what games will be shown on your local CBS station?. Here are some rules of thumb (in my opinion, not an official CBS statement): Local teams take priority, in-state teams, in-conference teams. If none of those are playing then they will likely show what they consider either the biggest game or the biggest name (eg UCLA, Duke, Carolina, Florida, etc). Basically they'll show whichever game they think will get more people to watch with local-priority in mind...

Also ESPN has made a last-minute decision to have a 5 1/2 hour college gameday scoreboard show from 9amPT/noon ET through 230pmPT/530pmET (Yes, 5.5 hours). If the CBS games get boring, you can always turn to Tom Brennan, Doug Gottlieb and Dave Revsine yapping for hours (literally!). It also includes live post-game press conferences and press conferences of tomorrow's games with media magnets such as Bruce Pearl and John Calipari (their teams play on Friday). ESPN News may also have live pregame and postgame press conferences...

Also for the first time ever, CSTV (now part of CBS Sports) will feature two live NCAA games. Today they have a pregame show at 130pmPT/430pmET and at 2pmPT/5pmET the game shown nationally will be Vanderbilt vs George Washington (also shown regionally on CBS (I presume in Tennessee and DC areas)).

Let the Madness begin!

A new book called the "The Enlightened Bracketologist" uses the Brackets approach to answer many questions. Written by NY Times sports tv columnist Richard Sandomir. Some examples: Their bracketologists picked the "Raging Bull" as the top sports movie... Homer Simpson faced off Ghandi as the top bald guy...