Oh, What A Night II

What a great set of games last night, with only the UCLA/Pitt game (predictably) disappointing. Kansas shot 62% yet scored only 61 points in their close win over a game Southern Illinois. Memphis did their best Ohio State impersonation and took advantage of bad reffing and coaching to beat Texas A&M. And the aforementioned Buckeyes made a furious second half comeback and won a slugfest with Tennessee. This is the second straight year the Thursday Sweet 16 games have been thrillers. Thoughts on last night's action:

* As he was racing down the court with the clock running down, it was clear Tennessee guard Ramar Smith had no intention of giving the ball up. First off, his name is Ramar. Second, he just had that "I want to be the hero" look in his eyes. It's tough to argue with Smith, as he as 7-11 on the night, but Chris Lofton has to be involved in the final play in some way. The real problem was, Smith didn't look for anyone else the entire time. OSU was playing solid defense, but if Smith had looked around he could have seen a wide open Wayne Chism trailing on the wing. I don't mind Bruce Pearl letting his team go, but you'd think he could have come up with a better play after his mid-FT timeout.

*In between playing the role of Southern Illinois Booster #2, Jay Bilas actually made a halfway-decent point. I know, it startled me too. He said Kansas might be feeling more pressure against a mid-major like SIU because of the expectation that they should win the game. Put KU in a contest against Texas or Florida and they'll be fine, Bilas contends. If true, this would support the notion that Bill Self might be a great recruiter and basketball coach, but lacks in the motivation department.
As for the SIU Booster thing, Bilas was all over the Salukis' jock tonight. He repeatedly harped on two calls that when KU's way (two missed shot clock calls that both went Kansas' way), but then when an SIU player clearly charged in the lane said, "I don't want to hear about that call." And I don't want to hear about that time you went to the Final Four in 1986, Jay, but that doesn't stop you from telling it 40 times per season.

* I root for Kansas. Not in the same way I pull for Wake Forest or Maryland, mind you, but my Godfather instilled some Jayhawk-love in me at an early age and I've always cheered on his team as a result.
When Roy Williams bolted Lawrence for Chapel Hill I was disappointed, but was even more bummed out when KU hired Bill Self as his replacement. I wasn't a fan of Self during his time at Illinois, but gave him the benefit of the doubt upon his arrival at Kansas.
As KU went down to Southern Illinois early in the second half last night, I decided to write a lengthy rip of Self, in the hopes that the assumption of a Kansas loss would jinx Southern Illinois, leading to a Kansas win. The way I looked at it, if Kansas won, I'd be happy. And if Kansas lost, I'd have a ready-made rip of Bill Self up on the site before the teams even walked off the court. After getting some karma approval on this matter, I began my critique. And by critique I mean hatchet-job. Almost instantly, Kansas got out of their funk and took the lead. And I'm taking full credit. Full.

* Seth Davis must be doing pretty well for himself. In addition to collecting paychecks from CBS, Sports Illustrated and Mike Krzyzewski, Davis seems to be on the NCAA's payroll as well. How else to explain his repeated defense of referees this March? First, the ex-Dukie was praising the officials for not calling a flagrant foul on Greg Oden late in the Xavier game. Really, Seth? People have been charged with assault for less than what Oden did. I heard the AARP revoked his privileges after the foul.
Then, last night, after initially (and correctly) ripping the Memphis/A&M refs for inexplicably taking 1.1 seconds off the clock at the end of the game, Davis reversed course and took it back during halftime of Tenneseee/OSU. First of all, even if the ball didn't hit John Calipari (which it might have), there's no way 1.1 seconds elapsed from the time the Memphis player touched the ball to the time it hit the scorer's table. (The NCAA Rule Book is quite ambiguous about when the ball is officially considered OB. In one section, it claims the ball has to hit an object. In another, it seems to suggest that if nobody is pursuing it, the ref can blow the whistle. Oh, and there's a guy on the rules committee named Dick Hack.)

* On the other hand, Texas A&M missed an absolute gimmie of a layup with 45 seconds left and then let Memphis get four straight offensive rebounds after missed shots in the final seconds. If the Aggies could have pulled down one of those rebounds, they wouldn't have needed those 1.1 seconds back.

* One thing that has impressed me during this Tournament is the moxie of teams that have given up big leads. Normally, when a team gets ahead by double-digits and then gives up the lead late in the second half, they end up losing. It always seems that once a team makes a big run to get back in the game, it's tough to keep them from continuing that run until the game is out of reach.
During this Tournament a fair number of teams have seen their leads disappear, only to build them back up. Winthrop did it against Notre Dame, UNLV held off Georgia Tech and, tonight, Tennessee hung tough after OSU eradicated a 20-point margin in a matter of minutes.
After the Buckeyes made their furious second-half comeback, the Vols managed to hold on to a slim lead, but eventually saw Ohio State go ahead with 8:00 left. Instead of rolling over, they started hitting threes like they did at the beginning of the game and took the #1 seed down to the wire. Their resiliance was the most impressed I've been all Tournament.

* One of my favorite parts of the NCAA Tournament are the Masters promos CBS runs. (I once concocted a plan to carry a boombox around everywhere I went so I could walk into a room, pause at the doorway and play the last six notes of The Masters theme before I entered. It never happened, but it would have been pretty awesome.) Sadly, the Tiffany Network has stopped showing my all-time favorite, taken from the end of the 1998 Tournament.
On Mark O'Meara's final, Masters-winning putt, there's a ground level shot taken from behind O'Meara. As he strikes the ball, the greenside gallery stands in unision. One young gentleman apparently got bunched the wrong way as he stood up and proceeds to adjust himself as the putt is rolling. And when I say 'adjust', I mean this dude is going to town, right in the middle of the shot. It's not like it's tough to see either. He's standing right above the hole and is only one of three or four people you can see in the fairly tight camera shot. Nobody I've shown this to had ever seen it before, but once they do, they can see noting but.
I noticed this in 1999 and have mentioned it to everyone that has ever watched the NCAA Tournament with me since. I cannot describe how hilarious the juxtaposition of the piano playing the Masters theme is with a guy scratching his junk as one of the most famous putts in Masters history rolls in. Shame on you, for ruining my March, CBS. Shame on you.