South Rgional
The Back-in Bracket:
Each of the top nine seeds lost its last game. Auburn, the top seed, was whipped 69-57 by Kentucky in the Southeastern Conference semifinals. UCLA, the fifth seed, absorbed an 87-70 drubbing at Arizona. St. John’s, the third seed, was spanked 82-63 in the Big East final by Connecticut–in the Johnnies’ familiar Madison Square Garden, no less.
And then there was Indiana, the sixth seed. The Hoosiers took an 82-66 pounding by Illinois in the Big Ten quarterfinals. The loss extended a troubling postseason trend for the Hoosiers, who are 2-6 in Big Ten and NCAA postseason play since 1995.
But while the Hoosiers can’t be thrilled about heading to Orlando–they lost a first-rounder to 11th-seeded Boston College there in 1996–they might have caught a break with George Washington in the opening round.
Like Indiana, George Washington is long on guards and short on size. The Colonials don’t have a starter taller than 6 feet 8 inches, and they play spotty defense, allowing opponents to shoot 44.5 percent.
Still, Hoosiers coach Bob Knight isn’t about to let his players indulge in overconfidence. “There aren’t going to be any easy games for us,” guard Michael Lewis said.
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– Here’s hoping for clear skies Thursday and Saturday in Indianapolis, when the East’s first and second rounds are staged at the RCA Dome. Play was stopped during the recent Big Ten’s women’s championships in the building when the roof leaked and water accumulated on the floor. . . . No. 16 seed Winthrop is making its first trip to the tournament. The Eagles knocked off Radford in the Big South tournament final Feb. 27. That made a nice 36th birthday present for coach Gregg Marshall. “When I climbed up the ladder (to snip the net), I had no idea what I was doing,” Marshall said. “I ended up hitting my head on the rim.” Eagles backup center Evo Effiong might have the best nickname in the tournament: Bubbles. . . . Beware Louisville as a seventh seed. In his last two NCAA appearances, Cardinals coach Denny Crum has led sixth seeds to the Sweet 16 and the Elite Eight. . . . Louisville’s opening-round opponent is Creighton, one of three Missouri Valley Conference representatives in the field. Coach Dana Altman said the league wants to prove the selection committee correct for giving it as many berths as the Atlantic Coast Conference. “From my five years in the league, this is by far the best,” Altman said. “We don’t have any bad teams now. When I came to Creighton, we were the bad team.”
West Regional
The Geographically Confused Bracket:
Only four teams in this regional are located in the Mountain or Pacific time zones: top-seeded Stanford, ninth-seeded New Mexico, 10th-seeded Gonzaga and 14th-seeded Weber State.
Florida, which faces Pennsylvania in Seattle, might have the longest journey in the tourney.
And Connecticut has the most inconvenient trip for a No. 1 seed. While Duke, the only team with a better overall seed than the Huskies, can take a bus from Durham, N.C., to Charlotte for its tournament opener, Connecticut had to fly nearly across the country to meet Texas-San Antonio in Denver.
Penn will meet the Gators on the 20th anniversary of one of the monumental upsets in tourney history–ninth-seeded Penn’s 72-71 victory over top-seeded North Carolina in the East. Penn wound up in the Final Four that year.
– Don’t think Minnesota coach Clem Haskins is happy just to be in the field of 64. He wants to make a run beginning with Thursday afternoon’s game against 10th-seeded Gonzaga.
“I’m driven to win a national championship,” said Haskins, whose Gophers went to the Final Four two years ago. “Just going and playing a game doesn’t get me excited anymore.”
Minnesota will face a hostile environment in Seattle’s Key Arena. Gonzaga, a Jesuit school with about 4,800 students, is 280 miles east of Seattle. Bulldogs fans snapped up the school’s allotment of 350 tickets within five hours Monday. Gonzaga also bought another 700 tickets from the site host, the University of Washington.
– Iowa has won its last eight first-round games, and coach Tom Davis is 10-0 in the NCAA’s opening round.
That means there’s a strong chance Davis’ career as the Hawkeyes’ head coach won’t end Thursday against Alabama-Birmingham in Denver.
The trouble likely will come in the second round, against Arkansas if the Hogs beat Siena. Iowa hasn’t advanced past the first weekend since 1988.
But Davis wouldn’t look beyond UAB (20-11), which was a surprising addition to the field as the fourth Conference USA team. UAB did not beat a ranked team this year. But the Hawkeyes aren’t exactly flying into the tourney, having dropped five of their last eight games.
“I told our team, `Don’t expect an easy game,’ ” Davis said. “When you get the draw, you see there are no easy games all the way up and down.”
– Davis isn’t the only West Regional coach making an involuntary exit after this year. Weber State’s Ron Abegglen is also retiring after the tournament. He has not had a losing record in 36 years at the high school, junior college and college levels. . . . Florida point guard Eddie Shannon was named the nation’s most courageous player by the U.S. Basketball Writers Association. Shannon, a four-year starter for the Gators, has only one eye. He lost his right eye when he was hit with a rock on a playground. Shannon goes into Thursday’s game needing only two steals to become Florida’s career leader. He’s also only 28 assists away from becoming the school’s all-time leader in that department. . . . Alcorn State coach Dave Whitney has a lot in common with Lou Henson of New Mexico State. Like Henson, Whitney came out of retirement to help revive a program he’d built. Three years later, the 69-year-old Whitney has the Braves back in the NCAAs for the first time since 1989.
East Regional
The Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Bracket:
With Duke as the top seed, the other 15 teams seem to have little hope of advancing to the Final Four.
But no team’s plight is as hopeless as 16th-seeded Florida A&M (12-18), the only tournament team with a losing record.
Sixteenth seeds are a combined 0-56 since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985. A few have scared the daylights out of No. 1 seeds, including Princeton against Georgetown in 1989 and Murray State against Purdue in 1990. But more typical is last year’s Duke 99, Radford 63 result.
For the record, the largest winning margin in NCAA tournament history is 69 points–Loyola beat Tennessee Tech 111-42 in the first round on its way to the 1963 national title. The most points scored in a game? Loyola Marymount dropped 149 on defending champ Michigan in the 1990 second round.
But Florida A&M is trying to keep up its spirits as it prepares to face this year’s Division I dream team. “We just have to continue to play together,” said Jamal Rhodes, a sophomore who likely will be asked to cover Duke’s Elton Brand. “We’ve been branded the Cinderella through the conference tournament and we’ll keep that moniker in this game as well. But we aren’t afraid of them.”
– Purdue’s 10th seed is its lowest ever. As an East ninth seed in 1993, the Boilermakers lost to Rhode Island 74-68.
But Boilermakers coach Gene Keady wasn’t about to grouse after his team blew five of its last six games. NCAA selection committee chairman C.M. Newton indicated that only the Boilermakers’ efforts against top teams early in the year, as well as their road performance, gained them a ticket to face Texas on Friday night in Boston.
“Believe me, it has not been much fun lately,” Keady said. “But we are delighted about this and hope this erases everything that has happened in the last five or six games. We hope to come up with something positive late in the year here.
“We are very appreciative and hope to do something that is good. We need it. We just wanted to play. This is like a new season.”
At 13-15 in NCAA tourney play, Keady needs to sweep the first two rounds to reach .500.
– After years of neglect, Miami’s program saw a rebirth in 1995. The Hurricanes made NIT appearances in 1995 and 1997 before drawing their second NCAA tourney bid last spring. This year they’re a No. 2 seed in the East, favored to beat Lafayette to grab their first victory in the NCAAs. . . . If Wisconsin and Tennessee advance in Charlotte, they’ll meet in a showdown of talented backcourts. Badgers guards Ty Calderwood, Sean Mason and Mike Kelley will have their hands full with Volunteers point guard Tony Harris and Brandon Wharton, who each average 13 points a game. After Tennessee swept Kentucky in the regular season, Wildcats coach Tubby Smith said, “That might be the quickest backcourt we’ve played all year.”
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Midwest Regional
The Bracket of Champions:
This regional is long on tradition and NCAA tournament success.
It has the two winningest programs in history, Kentucky and Kansas, as well as former NCAA champions Arizona, Michigan State, Villanova and Utah.
No program has more tradition than Kentucky, which is making its 40th tourney appearance. The Wildcats also are gunning to make the Final Four for the fourth consecutive year, a feat last accomplished by Duke from 1989-92.
At 25-8, the Wildcats absorbed their most regular-season losses since 1989-90. Understand that Kentucky lost a total of 11 games in the last three seasons.
But constant personnel losses, to the NBA and graduation, finally caught up with the Wildcats this season. They struggled most of the year, their offense grounded by abysmal 30 percent shooting from three-point range. The Wildcats finally put together a dash through the Southeastern Conference tournament.
“We lost a lot of guys from last year and had a lot of new faces,” forward Scott Padgett said. “We all wish we could have jelled quicker, but we’re starting to jell now.”
If Kentucky and Kansas advance, it would set up a rematch of Kentucky’s 63-45 rout of the Jayhawks in the Great Eight on Dec. 1 at the United Center.
– Seeding and siting is hardly a precise science. Michigan State wanted to be the top seed in the South so it could play in Indianapolis, which is convenient for car caravans from East Lansing. Mich.
The Spartans wound up in Milwaukee as the top seed in the Midwest. But look who got to go to Indy: Detroit, a 12th seed.
“The selection committee isn’t going to move somebody out of their natural region unless it’s absolutely necessary,” Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said.
– Keep an eye on the second round in Milwaukee. If Arizona and Rhode Island would meet, it would pit Wildcats coach Lute Olson against the Rams’ Jim Harrick, who had a nice rivalry going with Olson when Harrick coached at UCLA. . . . Utah figures to annihilate Arkansas State in the opener, but there could be an interesting duel between the point guards. Utah star Andre Miller goes head-to-head with the nation’s assists leader, Chico Fletcher, who averaged 8.5 assists a game. . . . When Oklahoma, a 13th seed in the Midwest, made the tournament and DePaul didn’t, it should have ended all talk about CBS’ purported pull with the selection committee. The Blue Demons would produce a much heavier television audience than the Sooners.