Weekend of Madness

March Madness has lived up to its billing. After four days of play, the NCAA Tournament has been as exciting and unpredictable as any in recent memory. With that in mind, here are some observations after the first two rounds:MOST SURPRISING UPSETNo. 14 seeded Bucknell over no. 3-seeded Kansas. Sure, Kansas guard Keith Langford had been ailing the last couple of weeks of the season, but this was a shocker of major proportions. How could a team from the Patriot League, which didn’t even award scholarships five years ago, topple mighty Kansas? The same way Bucknell won at Pitt earlier this year: the 3-pointer.Over the last decade or so, the 3-point field goal has force-fed parity into the college game. College hoops has become a guard-oriented game, and every team in the country can recruit guards that can shoot because they’re so plentiful. Meanwhile, great big men – which upper-level schools used to sign all the time – are becoming scarce because they jump to the NBA right out of high school.Consider Bucknell’s performance from the 3-point line against Kansas. The Bison made eight 3-pointers.Their percentage wasn’t that great (25.8), but guard Kevin Bettencourt was 5-for-15 from behind the arc. Kansas, by contrast, was 1-for-11. In a close game, that’s all the difference the Bison needed to pull the upset.MOST EMOTIONAL UPSETOkay, I’m not going to brag here, but I penciled in no. 13 Vermont’s upset over no. 4 Syracuse into my bracket last Monday. Why? It was just illogical enough to happen. If you’ve entered enough office pools and filled out enough brackets, you know that you start to discard all rational basketball theory and get a little crazy on certain picks. Vermont over Syracuse was my crazy pick.That said, some logic went into it, and may help explain why the Catamounts gave the Orange the heave-ho from the tournament. If you’ve watched ESPN’s “The Season” at all, you know a lot about Vermont. ESPN cameras have followed the Catamounts all season and given us some private moments from pre- and postgame locker room talks.Coach Tom Brennan is a master of the art, and he is retiring when this season ends. Watching all season on ESPN how much Brennan’s players love him, it was easy to predict that the Catamounts would bring considerable emotion to the Syracuse game.Vermont was playing on emotion, but somebody had to score points, too. Germain Mopa Njila provided 20,Taylor Coppenrath 16, and T.J. Sorrentine, who launched 16 3-pointers against the Syracuse zone, scored 17. The Catamounts also delivered one of their best defensive performances to beat a Big East school and ranked opponent for the first time in school history, limiting the Orange to 41% shooting.BEST DEFENSIVE EFFORTVillanova put in two good days work in Nashville. The Wildcats held New Mexico to 29.8% shooting in a first-round victory, then came back to shackle high-scoring Florida in a second-round win yesterday. Villanova held Florida to 38.5% shooting and kept the Gators’ high scoring guard tandem of Matt Walsh and Anthony Roberson in check. The pair combined for 5-for-21 shooting.“That’s who we are,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said. “We’re not pretty. We’re a team that prides itself on its defense.”WORST DEFENSIVE EFFORTThis one’s easy. In its second-round loss to West Virginia, Wake Forest surrendered 34 points in two overtime periods. That’s 34 points in 10 minutes. Project that to an entire game and it’s 136 points.BEST RUN BY A MID-MAJOR TEAMWisconsin-Milwaukee’s upset of Alabama in the first round and Boston College in the second makes it the surprise team and media darling of the tournament. You can bet Illinois coach Bruce Weber, whose team plays the Panthers in the Sweet 16 this week, isn’t sleeping well thinking about what his team will be up against.While the win over B.C. was one of the tournament’s most stunning upsets, the first-round ouster of the fifth-seeded Crimson Tide wasn’t all that surprising for a couple of reasons.First, Alabama played the last third of the season with a seven-player rotation, and only one of those reserves is a guard. Wisconsin-Milwaukee coach Bruce Pearl likes to play an aggressive pressing defense, which was hard for Alabama to handle. Second, Wisconsin-Milwaukee is an excellent 3-point shooting team and Alabama does a poor job defending the three. Sure enough, the Panthers shot 57% from behind the arc against Alabama, an incredible 62% (10-for-16) in the first half.The great thing about the NCAA Tournament is that it makes stars of players that most of the country doesn’t know a thing about. In the Panthers’ case, the stars of the show so far have been forward Joah Tucker, who scored 23 against B.C. and 21 against Alabama, and guard Ed McCants who scored 39 points and made nine-of-17 three pointers in two games.BEST UPCOMING MATCHUPSWe’ve got some good ones to look forward to this week. They might run out of space on the scoreboard for Louisville vs. Washington. Arizona and Oklahoma State will be a clash of two veteran, well-coached teams. And watch out for Villanova against North Carolina. The Wildcats are a team on a mission. Can more upsets be in store?Mr. Dortch is the editor of the Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook.

Weekend of Madness

Weekend of Madness

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