Burlison on Basketball

Frank Burlison | High School Basketball | College Basketball

Two TV screens did the tourney trick Thursday

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  LAGUNA NIGUEL – The dazzling play of Murray State sophomore-and-never-to-be-junior Ja Morant wasn’t the only highlight of Thursday’s first 16 first-round NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Tournament games.

  It just seemed as if that was the case . . .

  It wasn’t just the gaudy numbers he produced – 17 points on just nine shots from the field; 11 rebounds and 16 assists – nor the surprisingly lopsided win over Marquette in the West Regional game in Hartford (welcome to geography, NCAA tourney-style) that made the best guard in the world not playing in the NBA the de facto star of stars Thursday.

   No, it was also because of the way he became an oh-so-exact definition of “putting defenders on their heels” every time the ball was in his hands and the way in which, no matter much wow factor he generated in any given moment he’d exceed it within the next possession or two.

   The defending national champion (Villanova), one of the true bluebloods in the sport (Kentucky) and – quite possibly – the best team in the sport (Gonzaga) are among the other 14 teams that will be playing second-round games Saturday.

   But there is no more eagerly anticipated Round of 32 game Saturday than the Florida State vs. Murray State clash.

  Morant saw to that Thursday.

   *The Big Ten and Southeastern conference entrants were a combined 9-0 Thursday.

  SEC squads LSU, Florida and Auburn – you can’t come any closer to losing while not losing than did the Tigers against New Mexico State – had to tough out their second-round reservations while Kentucky had a figurative bye against Abilene Christian.

  Michigan State, Michigan, Purdue and Minnesota experience relative levels of comfortable margins of victory but the Maryland Terps needed to break-up a back-door pass in the closing seconds against Belmont to keep the Big Ten from going a collective 4-1 Thursday.

   And, by the way, I know having eight teams from one conference (Ohio State, Iowa and Wisconsin play Friday) creates some logistical issues in a 68-team bracket.

  But couldn’t the Championship Committee have found a way to prevent a second-round game between Big Ten teams (in this case, Minnesota and Michigan State, Saturday, in Des Moines)?

   *Best performance on a winning team by a player not named Ja Morant: Maryland freshman center Bruno Fernando, with 14 points, 13 rebounds, four assists, two steals and two blocked shots.

  *Best effort in a losing cause: Senior forward Dylan Windler had 35 points (including seven 3s) and 11 rebounds in Belmont’s loss to Maryland.

   *My pecking order, best Friday first-round games: 1. Utah State-Washington; 2. Mississippi-Oklahoma; 3. UC Irvine-Kansas State; 4. Iowa State-Ohio State; 5. Cincinnati-Iowa; 6. Arizona State-Buffalo; 7. Liberty-Mississippi State; 8. Wisconsin-Oregon; 9. Duke-North Dakota State; 10. Houston-Georgia State; 11. St. Louis-Virginia Tech; 12. Texas Tech-Northern Kentucky; 13. VCU-Central Florida; 14. North Carolina-Iona; 15. Virginia-Gardner Webb; 16. Colgate-Tennessee.

  *My pecking order, best Saturday second-round games: 1. Maryland-LSU (NBA prospects galore); 2. Murray State-Florida State (guess); 3. Michigan State-Minnesota (the Big Ten tourney resumes); 4. Michigan-Florida (Big Ten-SEC Challenge, Part II); 5. Villanova-Purdue (Wildcats take another step toward consecutive national titles – albeit the steps will have to be a whole lot bigger the next two weeks); 6. Gonzaga-Baylor (hard to see it being too tight); 7. Auburn-Kansas (least gifted Jayhawks team Bill Self has coached but, damn, he’s a phenomenal coach); 8. Wofford-Kentucky (Guarding the 3-point line, 101).

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