What a wild and wacky first day
Some are calling the first day of March Madness the greatest opening day of all time. Five double-digit seeds — #14 Ohio, #13 Murray State, #11 Washington, #11 Old Dominion and #10 St. Mary’s — advanced, one off the first day record of six set almost twenty years ago. Three games — BYU/Florida, Villanova/Robert Morris and Texas/Wake Forest — went into overtime, and it took BYU double-overtime to finally put away the Gators. There were only two overtime games during the entire 2009 tournament.
In total, nine of the 16 games were either went into overtime and/or were decided by five points or less. Three others — Baylor/Sam Houston, Ohio/G-Town and Butler/UTEP — were compelling for other reasons. Baylor had to fend off a feisty #14 seed in the waning minutes, and Butler was down to UTEP by six at halftime before unleashing a barrage of threes in the second half. The Bulldogs hit eight threes in the first 12 minutes during a 28-6 run that left the Miners wondering what the hell happened.
And Ohio…it’s not like the Bobcats looked like a quality mid-major primed for an upset heading into the tournament. They were 7-9…yes, 7-9…in the MAC heading into the conference tourney where they needed four straight wins — including impressive victories over regular season champ Kent State and defending champion Akron — just to get a bid after battling key injuries and suspensions all season.
Again, it was the long ball that was the great equalizer. The Bobcats hit 13-23 threes against the Hoyas, but most of the damage was done by Ohio’s starting backcourt, junior Armon Bassett (5-10 3PT, 32 points) and freshman D.J. Cooper (5-8 3PT, 23 points). And it’s not like Ohio was a prolific three-point shooting team coming in. The Bobcats made about 36% on the season, which put them #89 in the country. Their 7.3 made threes ranked #65 in the country.
The vaunted Big East had a pretty rough go of it, losing three teams — G-Town, Notre Dame and Marquette — and almost losing another (Villanova). That doesn’t bode particularly well for my Final Four picks (Syracuse, West Virginia).
From a bracket standpoint, it wasn’t a great day for my picks, but it wasn’t a disaster either. I went 9-7, but only lost one Sweet Sixteen team (Georgetown), while nailing a pretty big upset (Murray State) that knocked out a #4-seed Vanderbilt team that was a fairly popular Sweet Sixteen pick. Moreover, five of those seven losses — UNLV, SDSU, Texas, Marquette and Notre Dame — were by three points or less. Conversely, I won five tight games — Murray State, BYU, New Mexico, Baylor and Villanova — so I don’t feel too bad.
The mission for the first two days is not to lose any Elite Eight or Final Four teams, and as few Sweet Sixteen teams as possible. Even with all of these upsets, 15 of my Sweet Sixteen teams are still alive, and my Elite Eight and Final Four picks are in solid shape…at least for now. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
From a statistical standpoint, it wasn’t a terribly good day for Jeff Sagarin’s ratings, which went just 7-3 in games where one team had at least a three-point advantage in his Predictor rating. Then again, two of those losses — Vanderbilt and Texas — came on the last shot, so the record could have easily gone 9-1 (or 4-6, had BYU, New Mexico, Baylor and Nova lost their tight games).
On the other hand, Ken Pomeroy’s Pythagorean win percent went 7-1 in games where it gave the favorite a 70%+ chance to win, 0-1 in the 65%-70% range, and 5-2 in the 50%-60% range. (There were no games on Thursday that fell in the 60%-65% range.)
All in all, it was a helluva ride, and Friday is going to be hard-pressed to match Thursday’s excitement. I’m particularly looking forward to Temple/Cornell, Purdue/Siena, Xavier/Minnesota and Oklahoma St./Georgia Tech, but really, there are a number of great matchups throughout the day.
Photo from fOTOGLIF
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