The first round of the NCAA Tournament is complete. Here are some thoughts and notes from Friday:
- In Marquette‘s win, the player who shined the most was Lazar Hayward. All year long he’s been practically buried behind their big three, but he came up big when they needed him to. They’ll need him more if they’re to advance further.
- Line of the day comes from none other than Connecticut head coach Jim Calhoun, who returned after being hospitalized yesterday. Proving that he’s just fine, he offered up: “I probably feel good because, once again, I got a full physical examination. I will say one thing: the full exam, which got high marks, did not include a psychiatrist.”
- Oklahoma State got a big play from Byron Eaton in the final seconds of their win over Tennessee. Here’s a young man who’s been through a lot as a player. He at one time was ranked as the top freshman in his class in high school, before ultimately winding up as a top 40-50 player as a senior. He’s playing for his third head coach, battled weight issues and how that’s affected his game since it saps some of his quickness, and now here he is closing out his career in the NCAA Tournament and with a win in the first round.
- He may not be 100 percent, but you can’t doubt Levance Fields, especially down the stretch. He came up big for Pittsburgh in their win, looking like a winning point guard in the final minutes.
- James Harden gets just about all the pub, and Jeff Pendergraph gets some as well, but Arizona State isn’t where they are without Derek Glasser, a high school teammate of Harden’s. Lately, Glasser is looking like even more than just an unsung hero-type of player.
- It was a nice win for Dayton over West Virginia. A year ago, the Flyers fell apart in the Atlantic 10 after looking like they’d be a sure-fire NCAA Tournament team. This time, they closed the deal and now have a chance to reach the Sweet 16.
- With Tennessee losing, LSU is now carrying the flag for the SEC. My guess is that by Saturday night, no SEC teams will be left in the NCAA Tournament.
- By knocking off Utah, Arizona didn’t validate that they belonged in the NCAA Tournament. They simply won the game. If we extend that logic further, then Utah proved they didn’t belong, and that’s ludicrous.
- Boston College is done for the season, but no one imagined the Eagles would even be here.
- Xavier turned the ball over just seven times against Portland State, and that’s a big reason the Musketeers won.
- Wake Forest was one of two teams in the tournament (Syracuse is the other) that I saw as a “feast or famine” group coming in. They could have just as easily made a run to the Final Four as they could have done what they did – lost in the first round. Now the big question is how many of their players will bypass the NBA Draft and return next season; if everyone comes back and that team grows up the way they appeared to at times this season, they’re a threat to win a national championship.
- Siena out-played Ohio State for a lot of that game, but just didn’t get shots to go and blew some opportunities in the second half. I kept saying that if they lost that game, they would have only themselves to blame.
- Although he was on the losing team, you can clearly see that Ohio State wing Evan Turner is poised to contend for Big Ten Player of the Year the next two years.
