The Night Cap

A few thoughts after all of the games from Day 1:


The Big Least strikes again:
What a bad day for the Big East Conference. This was supposed to be the best conference ever, but they responded with an 0-3 dud of a day. UConn and Villanova should have walkovers on Friday, but a sub-.500 first round is very possible. Certainly not what anyone expected.

Vindication for the Mid-Majors:
The big conference teams, despite the past few years, still continues to take the mid-majors lightly. You could see that in teams like Seton Hall, Oklahoma and even Nevada (the WAC is a Big Conference compared to the Big Sky), which seemed to show no panic at falling behind early. They just assumed that it would be easy to come back, so there was no need for urgency. Yet neither team put regained the lead all game. They just assumed that a comeback would appear.

12 Seeds continue their fun:
As I pointed out earlier, 12 seeds are incredibly dangerous. You have teams with chips on their shoulders, that have been disrespected, yet also have enough talent to be at-large teams or (at the very least) bubble teams. And you have 5 seeds that are looking ahead to the next round despite having talent that is not much better than their opponents (as opposed to, say, 2 seeds, who can take an opponent lightly and pull the game out with superior talent). So far, 12 seeds have 2 wins, which is pretty much an average first round. A very possible Kent State victory over Pitt on Friday would mean 3 wins for 12 seeds, which has happened as recently as 2002. Seeing as how poorly the Big East has played this tournament, I wouldn't miss this game.

Good 2nd Rounds games already set:
Duke v GW will be a good one, but I'm looking at Indiana/Gonzaga as the best game to be played on Saturday. Indiana has a ton of talent at every position, and definitely more overall talent than Gonzaga. They have a coach in Mike Davis who is a great recruiter, but an awful in-game coach, which means that Indiana has been losing to inferior talent all year. Anyone watching their game vs. San Diego State saw how Indiana played best when plays broke down and players were able to improvise. Meanwhile, this Gonzaga team is different than past Gonzaga teams in the fact that they have a superstar who can take over games. I believe that Adam Morrison will be the reason that Gonzaga finally makes the Sweet 16 for the first time since their emergence on the national scene in 2001. He will disappear from games for a while when his intensity isn't there, but he always seems to come up big when his team needs him. I can't wait to watch Morrison start nailing threes with his team losing in the second half. Can he pull his team to victory? We'll find out Saturday.



More to come after some of the Friday games end.