NCAA Weekend 1 Results
March 17, 2007 11:33 pm by Coach OWell the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament is almost over and the Big East results are in….some good and some not so good. Looking at the teams that did not advance here are some observations.
NOTRE DAME - A very disappointing loss in round one to Winthrop. I know everyone and their brothers were talking up Winthrop before the tourney began but the Irish didn’t lose because Winthrop is another George Mason. When a team shoots 4-13 from the free throw line you just assume they are a bad free throw shooting squad. Not the case here. The Irish shot about 75% for the year from the line. Shooting 31% in a tourney game is sure to get you a loss. ND shot 40% from the 3 point line this season but could manage 4 for 22 or 18% in the Winthrop game. They were also outrebounded 43-41. All this from a team that looked very good coming off the tough Georgetown loss in the BET. But let’s not forget that Winthrop was on an 18 game win streak with their most impressive wins over Mississippi State and High Point (twice). The Irish picked a bad time to have tourney jitters against a team that dominated squads like Radford, Coastal Carolina, and Liberty in conference. This loss was a huge blow to the reputation of the Big East.
Marquette - The Eagles just are not very good. I’m sure with McNeal they would have made a better showing but any team with a warm body up front could dominate Marquette at the end of the season. Shame because they were on a roll early on and just couldn’t get it going when it counted.
Villanova - The worst thing that could have happened to Scottie Reynolds was scoring 40 against UConn. The Cats went 2-3 from that point on. Reynolds began to play like he had no teammates and wanted to be the whole show. He pushed Sumpter into a supporting role and Nardi was too injured to take charge of the team. Was Jay Wright looking to sell a package to the Sixers with Reynolds as the star and Wright as coach? When Reynolds got the ball it was time for all teammates to go wait in the bench area until he either took a 35 foot jumper or tried to drive through all 5 opponents on the floor. Don’t get me wrong, Scottie is a tremendous talent. He should just try a little to be a team player. His one-man show probably cost Villanova a chance to move on to the 2nd round.
Louisville - Nice first round crushing of Stanford, an average team from a weak league (with way too much respect in the seedings). Sosa had 16 in that win, but the troubling fact from that game is that he only had 1 assist. Today against Texas A&M he took one of the worst shots at the end of a game that I have ever seen. Oh, yeah, he did have 31 points. AND 1 assist. Here is a point guard who is a Scottie Reynolds wannabe. 47 points in two games and 2 assists! I’m sure that’s not the shot Pitino called for, down one with 15 seconds left. Or would Rick wind the clock down to have his freshman point guard fire one up from 25 feet? Someone has to tell these Freshmen point guards that there are TEAMMATES who are on scholarship too.
Pitt - Still going! It took an overtime to extend the Panthers’ season after blowing a 19 point lead in the second half. But they do play like a team and deserve to be where they are. More on them later.
Georgetown - The Hoyas are the toast of the Big East for making toast out of Jared Dudley and his headband teammates. BC is home again…… knocked out again by a Big East team (Nova erased them last year). Still fun to watch the Hoyas run an offense like no other BE team and when they turn up the heat on D they can put the brakes on most teams. More on them later.
Maybe when the pundits claimed this a down year for the Big East they weren’t far off target. Sure looked like our crying about ND’s 6 seed was off target. Syracuse almost lost the 1st round of the NIT, UConn could only beat Division One bottom dwellers and three of our six went out on Day 1. But we still have two in the dance.
So…… at this point we have 2 teams in the Sweet Sixteen. The scoreboard shows the ACC has one, SEC has three, Big 12 has two, Big Ten has one, Pac 10 has three, Conference USA has one, Missouri Valley has one, Mountain West has one and the Horizon has one.
Categories: Coach O, Commentary, Georgetown, Louisville, Marquette, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Postseason, Villanova
5 Responses to “NCAA Weekend 1 Results”
Yeah, I saw the end of the Louisville game and Sosa just melted down. Though he had a terrific shooting day, he was instrumental in several turnovers in a row at the end of the game, and of course the misguided last-second trey attempt. (I’m fairly certain that Pitino called a different play, A&M played good D to shut down that option, and in desperation, not wanting to get caught at the buzzer with the ball in his hands, Sosa threw up that shot.) To me, those turnovers were a direct result of inexperience. Painful to watch, though.
Good recap.
The games today were pretty good, but definitely marred by bad free-throw shooting down the stretch. That can be so frustrating for a fan of one of these teams who went down to see.
That Sosa shot was comical. I think his nickname should be “Ego Sosa” after that one. Of course, it wasn’t so surprising given his play during the year. He often had a Keyshawn thing going on…
Right…. after Sosa missed both ends on a two shot foul I think he totally melted down. Here is the article from the Louisville paper this morning.
U of L coach Rick Pitino said the final play was diagrammed for Jerry Smith to come off a double screen and take the shot. The play also had options for finding Juan Palacios on the wing or for a Sosa drive to the basket.
But once the Aggies bottled up Smith on his cut, Sosa made what Pitino called “a bad mental mistake.”
“I thought it was less time than it was,” Sosa said. “I looked at the first option and they denied it, and I looked at the second option. I tried to go off the bounce, but they were all in the lane, so I shot it. I definitely could have done something else.”
Pitino pulled Sosa out of the locker room to show him a replay of the shot and how far out he was. But in his postgame news conference, the coach deflected blame from his young guard.
Let’s not forget that Sosa was the one who fouled Acie Law with :57 left to put A&M up by 1. Really, just a terrible ending for L’ville. It was truly a painful, comical, shake-your-head-in-disbelief-and-disgust kind of ending to the game.
Reynolds is completely responsible for Nova’s loss. I would love to see a statistic on how many dribbles he takes per possession. Nobody seems to dribble more and pass less than Scottie Reynolds over Villanova’s last 5 games.
“Marquette - The Eagles just are not very good. I’m sure with McNeal they would have made a better showing but any team with a warm body up front could dominate Marquette at the end of the season. Shame because they were on a roll early on and just couldn’t get it going when it counted. ”
You mean a warm body like Aaron Gray? MU dominated Pitt in their regular season finale without McNeal. While they struggled without him in the tourney, to say they are not very good is just laughable considering they beat Pitt at home and SJU on the road at the end of the season without arguably their best player. You’ve been hard on MU all season despite the fact that they won 10 league games with the second toughest schedule in the league.
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