Starting To Get To Yesterday

Sorry about the complete lack of posting yesterday. I was busy, and had a chance to watch some of the games but never had a chance to post. I'll spend most of this morning/early afternoon catching up on yesterday's games while getting to today's final set of games as well. So, let's start sooner rather than later:

Georgia 60, Kentucky 56
The first of Georgia's absolutely improbable two wins in one day. Georgia, obviously, has no chance of an at-large berth. Even with these two wins, they're still below .500 at 15-16 overall. The question here is Kentucky, a team that is not the slam dunk at-large team that others think that they are. They'll still probably get into the Tournament, but it's not wholly out of the question that Kentucky won't get in. If we take out the 12-4 conference record for a second, what else do we see on the resume? An RPI of 60, a Sagarin of 59th, a 5-10 record against the RPI Top 10, and a 4-7 record in road/neutral games. They were also 0-6 against the RPI Top 100 on the road - so if they do sneak into the Tournament, bet on them for an early exit. I do suppose the Selection Committee will be a bit wowed by that 12-4 conference record, and the 9-3 record in their final twelve games. But still, Kentucky is not a "lock", and probably should root for teams like Georgia to lose today.

#1 North Carolina 68, Virginia Tech 66
A nice comeback victory for the Tar Heels, who have proven again and again that they're extremely tough to beat in close games. There's something to be said for teams that always seem to survive and win close battles. When it comes to top teams in the country, UNC, UCLA, Georgetown and Wisconsin all strike me as teams that should be considered deep Tournament threats because of that simple characteristic. A problem with Memphis playing in such an awful conference is that they have no experience in close games, other than against UAB and Tennessee. Anyway, as UNC gets closer to wrapping up a #1 seed, the real question from this game is whether Virginia Tech can make the Tournament. And they'll be discussed by the Selection Committee today, but it's just very unlikely that they'll get in. The 19-13 overall, and 9-7 ACC records were good enough for consideration, but the schedule was fairly weak, and the Hokies just could not find a way to beat good teams. In all, they went 1-7 against the RPI Top 50, and 4-8 overall on the road. And while they couldn't beat the good teams, they also struggled with the mediocre wons, with four losses to teams with an RPI of 100 or higher. There's just no part of this resume that seems like a Tournament team, and Tech is almost certainly an NIT team.

#5 Kansas 77, Texas A&M
A bit of an abrupt end to Texas A&M's Big 12 Tournament run, but I'm pretty sure that they did enough damage to assure an at-large bid. The Sagarin Rating is 26th, a place where teams never miss the Tournament from. All of their stats are solid: 5-7 against the RPI Top 50, 8-6 in road/neutral games, 6-6 in their last twelve, road wins over Baylor and Kansas State, and a home win over Texas. It's not overwhelming, but it's extremely hard to see them missing the Tournament now. As for Kansas, this win came within a couple of hours of the defeats of Duke and Tennessee, all results that put them in great position to go for a #1 seed. Figuring that UNC, Memphis and UCLA are all guaranteed #1 seeds (assuming Carolina takes care of business today), that leaves one spot open. Duke is out of contention for a #1 now, which puts it between the winner of Kansas/Texas and Tennessee. To me, the winner of Texas/Kansas will probably get that #1 seed, although I'll have to go through the numbers more this afternoon to be sure.

#2 UCLA 67, #11 Stanford 64
How many close wins has UCLA pulled out in the past two weeks? All of this is definitely great training for the Tournament, where you can't avoid close games. Like I said earlier, you have to consider UCLA a great candidate for a big run in the Tournament because they've been toughened by pulling out all of these close games. So many teams panic on the final possession of a game, but the Bruins are one of the few teams that won't. As for Stanford, this ruins any delusions that they had of a #2 seed, although those chances weren't that great anyway. With this loss they're pretty much locked into a #3 seed. It will interesting to see how the Lopez brothers perform in the Tournament, where they get to ply their trade against teams that haven't faced them before. The Pac-10 has a true round-robin, so all of Stanford's opponents had already seen them before these late season battles. The two brothers are an absolute force on the inside (and I think Brook Lopez should be getting more National Player of the Year attention than he's getting), and opponents that haven't seen it in person before are probably in for a big shock.