What I learned from the first weekend of the tournament.

Good morning. As those of you who follow college basketball obviously know by now, we have reached the Sweet 16, and although there are some usual suspects in said Sweet 16, there are a few glaring omissions, most notably Duke and defending champion Villanova.

North Carolina made it, and in doing so became the only team from the ACC left. Wake Forest got dumped in the First Four, and Miami and Virginia Tech were bounced Thursday/Friday. But this weekend was one big Crying Jordan for ACC faithful. Notre Dame? Bounced by West Virginia. Virginia? Throttled by Florida. Louisville? Bamboozled by Meeechigan. Finally there's Duke, who got henpecked by...South Carolina???

A few words about the Gamecocks: no, I am not a fan. If I had to choose between them and Clemson, 101 times out of 100 it would be Clemson. And don't get me started on their coach; Frank Martin.

(chicagonow.com)

Dude is the modern day version of Bobby Knight. Screaming, ranting, raving, and overall just being an a*****e to his players. When he left K-State (presumably because him and AD John Currie did not see eye to eye), I thought to myself, "great, now Kansas State can be rootable once again." (I'm no fan of Kansas, either). Until I realized that he was at South Carolina. Poop. I was hoping they would miss the tournament altogether. Now they're in the Sweet 16, where they haven't been since 1973. Their tournament legacy can be summed up in two seasons; 1997 and 1998 where as #2 and #3 seeds, they lost to Coppin State and Richmond. El-Oh-Bleeping-El.

Their reward for beating the Dookies? Baylor. Uggggggh. The athletic program NOBODY likes. Let's take a look at their recent stellar basketball history, shall we? Hoo boy. And that's just hoops. Football? Holy cow. I'd need two weeks to go over every single thing wrong with that outfit, so here's some articles from Deadspin about how mismanaged their Athletic Department is.

And yes, their chancellor is the same Ken Starr who was independent counsel during the Clinton Impeachment hearings.

But enough about USC South Carolina and Baylor, here's what else we learned from the first weekend of play:

There were no real Cinderellas. Only one twelve seed (a 30-win Middle Tennessee squad) won their first round game. Only one double-digit seed (Xavier) made the Sweet 16. Speaking of Xavier, uh, Florida State, what happened? Three of the four #1 seeds made it past this weekend; the aforementioned Villanova being the lone casualty; to Wisconsin.

Oh, and you filled out a bracket, it probably looks like this:

Oops...

Be that is it may, the Madness starts up again this Thursday night. Suffice to say if you're a fan of Arizona, Kansas, and North Carolina right now, you have to like your chances of getting to Glendale. As for the East region, now that Duke and Nova are out, could it be possible that FLORIDA makes the Final Four???

I have my fingers crossed.



CT