LAGUNA NIGUEL, Ca. – I’ve followed NCAA tournaments very closely since, say, 1971 or so – yes, I’m old as, well . . . I’m old.
But without doing a whole lot of time-consuming season-by-season research, I can’t recall a first week to an NCAA Basketball Tournament that was as mind-whopping as this one was.
Let me count the ways, in reasonably pecking order:
- The first No. 1 seed – regionally, much less nationally – fell to a No. 16 as the Virginia Cavaliers were blitzed by Maryland-Baltimore County.
And, for those to suggest “that just shows you the Cavaliers were ‘overrated’”, consider this:
Coach Tony Bennett’s team won 20 of its 21 games against ACC competition (including three games in the conference tournament). And its record against 16 remaining teams in the tournament is 6-1.
And they were 3-0 against Louisville, which plays an NIT quarterfinal at home Tuesday night against Mississippi State. And they were 3-0 against teams that lost second-round NCAA tourney games (Rhode Island and UNC twice).
- The entire Pacific 12 Conference was out of the tournament by Thursday night with UCLA (to St. Bonaventure) and Arizona State (to Syracuse) losing First Four games on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, respectively, in Dayton, and Arizona getting pummeled by 13 seed Buffalo – by 21 points – Thursday night.
Arizona came into the tournament playing very well and was led by four returnees who playing starters’ minutes on a Sweet 16 team a year ago. The Wildcats also had the prohibitive favorite to be the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft in June in DeAndre Ayton, the most gifted “big” in college hoops since Anthony Davis was a Kentucky freshman.
- Defending champion North Carolina – with a multitude of key players who were parts of the teams that lost at the buzzer in the 2016 title game and won it all last season – were slapped around in the second round by Texas A&M . . . also by 21 points.
- Michigan State came into the season as my – and lot of folks’ – choice to win the national title based upon the quality of its returnees (notably Miles Bridges), its newcomers (6-foot-10 Jaren Jackson) and, of course, the presence of Hall of Fame Coach Tom Izzo.
The Spartans came into the tournament with a 29-4 record and No. 3 seed but struggled to get by 14 seed Bucknell (82-78) and then fell apart against the No. 11 seed Syracuse and its zone defense.
- ACC members Clemson, Florida State and Syracuse joined Duke in the Sweet 16 – and Virginia and North Carolina didn’t.
- Cincinnati – which, with the exception of No. 1 seeds Virginia and Villanova, played at as consistently a high-quality level of any program in the country – saw a 22-point advantage in the second half slip away in a stunning defeat to Nevada Sunday.
Because of injuries, the Wolf Pack has basically been playing with just seven scholarship players.
And this is also a team that lost to San Diego State by 17 points in the Mountain West Conference tournament semifinals.
- A second No. 1 seed – Xavier – also didn’t extended its season into the second weekend of the tournament.
- For the first time ever, none of the top four seeds from a regional was able to advance to the regional semifinals.
And that’s the South Regional, where No. 1 Virginia was beaten by No. 16 Maryland-Baltimore County – which was knocked by No. 9 Kansas State; No. 2 Cincinnati was tripped by Nevada; No. 3 Tennessee was toppled by No. 1 Loyola-Chicago in the second round; and No. 4 Arizona fell to Buffalo – which was then knocked off by Kentucky.
- And then, of course, there were the buzzer-beating decisions: Loyola-Chicago (over Miami) and Houston (over San Diego State) in the first round (along with Rhode Island’s OT win against Oklahoma) in the first round and Michigan (Houston seeing the tables turned on it) and Loyola-Chicago (Tennessee), again.
- Nine of the 16 semifinal game slots for Thursday and Friday are filled by programs that weren’t among the Top Four seeds in their regions.
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