Let the games begin!
It's tournament time in the world of college basketball, and while I fully intended to cover the men's side of things yesterday I got carried away talking about the women's and didn't have any time left.
That's not too surprising. I get a bit carried away when it comes to the opposite sex I guess.
Anyway, this past weekend we saw the men finish up their regular season games and then turn their sights to the conference tournaments. The Big 10 starts their games today and I kind of wish I was taking a road trip to Minneapolis to watch them. I might even pop in and say hi to some of my Hive friends while I was there.
Unfortunately, it just isn't to be and instead I am heading to a much smaller city today.
That's a story for another post though.
Michigan State had their final game of the regular season on Sunday against Indiana at Indiana and it was a pretty sad affair. They started off quite slow, but eventually the picked things up and made it a competitive game. I was hoping they would eventually pull ahead, but they allowed Indiana to stay in it and eventually Indiana won by one point.
This is not good for the Spartans. I'm not really sure what this means for the post season. If they want to have any chance of getting a decent seed in the national tournament, they are going to need to go pretty deep in the conference tournament.
I know this is a bit sacrilegious to say but if they don't at least make it past the first round, I'm not sure they even deserve to go to the national tournament. Of course they probably will anyway because they have a hall of fame coach and they are the Spartans, but I'm not really sure they deserve it after this past season. I hope they prove me wrong.
Friday night there were two games in the top 25. Boise State took #21 San Diego State into overtime and beat them 79 to 77.
On Saturday we had a full slate of games with fifteen matchups in the top 25.
Arkansas took #16 Alabama into overtime, but fell short, Kansas State took down #6 Iowa State in grand fashion, and Mississippi State took #17 South Carolina into overtime but ended up losing.
That's just the first three games!
Tulsa upset #24 South Florida and #1 Houston smacked down #14 Kansas by 30 points.
#15 Kentucky upset #4 Tennessee 85 to 81, and Texas Tech upset #11 Baylor by ten points. Finally, USC took down #5 Arizona 78 to 65. I'd also like to point out that #7 North Carolina beat #9 Duke in that historic rivalry game.
It's pretty clear that teams are doing everything they can to get themselves on the radar for the national tournament as well as jockeying for those low seeds to have an easy first couple of rounds.
There were only two games on Sunday in the top 25 and neither of them were upsets, but they were both in the Big 10.
Monday we saw the West Coast Conference tournament start without a lot of fanfare, and Tuesday the tournament continued without any upsets.
It's going to be interesting to see how all this shakes out come Selection Sunday!
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