Frank Burlison

When it comes to the world of sports, and especially the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Tournament, “momentum” isn’t something you bring into a game with you:

It’s what you can build, and build upon, in 40 minutes.

That was the case in Thursday NCAA tourney second-round game played in Salt Lake City between Mountain West Conference champion and West Regional No. 3 seed New Mexico and Ivy League champion and 14 seed Harvard.

The Lobos, under the guidance of a coach (Steve Alford) who was the best player on an Indiana team that won a national title 26 years ago, were the choice of many to bag the four wins needed to go from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles (for the regional semifinals and final) and on to Atlanta for the Final Four.

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LAGUNA NIGUEL, Ca. – And now, on to that very painful process known as “round by round selections in the NCAA Tournament”.

Please don’t take out a second mortgage to show your faith in my projections!

 

MIDWEST

  Round 1: No. 16 Liberty d. NC A&T; No. 11 Saint Mary’s d. Middle Tennessee.

  Round 2: Upper, No. 1 Louisville d. 16 Liberty; No. 9 Missouri d. No. 8 Colorado State; No. 12 Oregon d. No. 5 Oklahoma State; No. 4 Saint Louis d. No. 13 New Mexico State.

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LAGUNA NIGUEL, Ca. – All of the pre-NCAA Tournament field and bracket speculation, via the work of the seemingly countless – and meticulous – “bracketologists”, has, in essence, rendered “surprise” almost non-existent each Sunday evening at this time of the year.

The projection of the 37 at-large selections to the 68-team field has become something approaching an exact science.

The only thing approaching something beyond eyebrow-raising when the 2013 bracket was unveiled involved the seeding of the teams – and several of the matchups (and potential matchups).

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LAS VEGAS – Suppose, if you will, that a survey was taken early last week of all of the media that covers the basketball programs from within the Mountain West and Pacific 12 conferences whose questions included:

Who will be the Most Valuable Players in the respective tournaments?

In the MWC, junior point guard Kendall Williams of regular-season champion New Mexico – the conference’s 2013 Player of the Year – would have received a lot of support.

So would have 2012 POY Jamaal Franklin of San Diego State and so would have soon-to-be NBA lottery selection in MWC Freshman of the Year Anthony Bennett of UNLV.

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LAS VEGAS – If you’re easily seduced by the color red, large and noisy crowds and a couple of entertaining and gifted college basketball teams, that the Thomas & Mack Center, on the UNLV campus, is the place to be mid-Saturday afternoon.

Unless you’re already in possession of a ticket, though, it’s probably wise not to invest the time and effort into showing up for the 3 o’clock tip-off for the Mountain West Conference Tournament championship game that will be played between the host Rebels and the regular-season New Mexico Lobos.

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