Madness indeed

I apologize for the recent scarceness of my posts; I've been struggling with a nasty cold and just don't have much energy for anything. But it's the weekend, and I think I've got enough starch to sit in a chair and type for a little while.

Anyway, after a relatively staid first day of the NCAA Tournament (Duke's last-minute squeaker notwithstanding), things got absolutely insane on Friday. The best moment was Ty Rogers hitting a three as time expired in overtime to lift 12-seed Western Kentucky to a 101-99 win over 5-seed Drake. WKU's Tyrone Brazelton made it possible by drawing the defense to him, then kicking it out to Rogers. It was a brilliant moment. Bob Knight, who I must admit really knows his basketball, called it maybe the most impressive thing he's seen in college basketball all season.

But that was far from the only big upset on Friday. There was 13-seed Siena's surprisingly easy 83-62 win over 4-seed Vanderbilt, 12-seed Villanova's come-from-behind 75-69 victory against Clemson, and in another thriller, 13-seed San Diego's 70-69 overtime upset of 4-seed Connecticut.

If Duke had fallen to Belmont on Thursday, that would have been probably the biggest upset in tournament history, but San Diego's win was the biggest of this year's event. The UConn Huskies are one of the top eight or ten programs in the country, and have won two national championships in the last decade. The San Diego Toreros came in having never won an NCAA Tournament game, and only even making the tourney three times. As the Associated Press story on the game reports, the opening jump ball for the game featured 6'6" Rob Jones for USD vs. 7'3" Hasheem Thabeet for Connecticut. Jones didn't even bother to jump, because he knew he couldn't get it. It was the same match-up on the overtime tip, but this time, Jones was charged up and full of adrenaline after 40 minutes of basketball -- and Thabeet still won the tip, but barely. That's a neat microcosm of the game, and it would have been perfect if Jones had beaten Thabeet for the OT tipoff. De'Jon Jackson was the hero for the Toreros, hitting a long jumper with 1.2 seconds left in overtime, and then intercepting UConn's inbound pass.

Of course, as a Northeast Ohioan, I was disappointed at Kent State's performance Thursday against UNLV. They wound up making it respectable at the end, losing 71-58, but that was after scoring just TEN POINTS in the first half. The Golden Flashes turned the ball over 17 times in the first half, and missed a whole lot of shots. They played worse than I would have thought them capable of playing. Lifted from the AP's story:

"The first half of basketball was just so unlike how we played all year," Kent State coach Jim Christian said. "We just came out and played with no confidence and just made silly mistake after silly mistake."

Kent played a whole lot better in the second half, and actually outscored the Runnin' Rebels 48-40 after the intermission, but they just had too big a hole to climb out of.

One Ohio team remains after the first round, and it's the Xavier Musketeers, who rallied to overcome a second-half deficit and eliminate Georgia on Thursday. I suppose I'll root for them, even though Xavier's a Cincinnati school. I also generally root for Big Ten schools that aren't in Ann Arbor, and Wisconsin's got a chance to go deep. But whatever happens, I'm sure we've got a few fantastic finishes left to enjoy.