The Losers of the First Weekend

A few quick thoughts on Big East bashing. For starters, they deserved 11 seeds because the conference had 11 teams that deserved to be included. There wasn't one team in the field from those 11 who hadn't earned their spot. 37 best at-large teams. 10 of them were Big East teams. But, they had teams that were definitely losers of the first weekend.

EAST - The East was largely chalk with only Marquette surprising some. If we looked at KenPom and other stat sites, Marquette was actually a favorite in that game if not in Vegas against Xavier. They had already beaten Syracuse and pretty much did it the same way this time. That said, Xavier was never in that game and that was pretty disappointing. Marquette was never ahead less than 9 in the 2nd half.

WEST - Again, largely chalk. Arizona - Texas was a toss-up IMO. Missouri's season was a disappointment as was their opening round loss to Cincinnati, even as an 11 seed. Tennessee's performance was an embarrassment.

SOUTHWEST - Where to begin? Louisville probably outperformed expectations but an opening round loss is tough to swallow. Does the game turn out different with Preston Knowles on the court at full strength? Maybe, but the best player on the court that day was Kenneth Faried.

Vanderbilt and Kevin Stallings lost for the 2nd straight year as a higher seed. Ouch. Murray State and now Richmond but Richmond is a lot better than Murray State. Chris Mooney will be taking a BCS job this off-season. Still, Stallings might want to get a win. He's done it before and he'll do it again.

As for Purdue, can someone explain to me what happened to this team? Inexplicably, they lost 3 of their last 4 and didn't look competetive at all in any of them. And the win over St. Peter's was no work of art. At about the 10:00 mark last night, VCU hit another dagger and no one stayed back to inbound the ball for Purdue and the look on Lewis Johnson's face said it all as he looked back on his teammates with a mix of disbelief and anguish.

Finally, Notre Dame may have been a victim of a tough regular season if that does exist. Never much more than 7 deep, they looked gassed and lethargic against Akron. Florida State simply dominated them and ND looked shell-shocked the entire night.

SOUTHEAST - Michigan State should just erase this season from the record books. There's been a lot of conjecture about Jamie Dixon and his run at Pitt not ending in any Final Fours. A fair criticism but it took Jim Calhoun longer at UConn. He'll get there but he had a team more than capable of getting it done this year and they spit the bit. I'll be curious to see what Butler does against Lucky. They've won two games at the buzzer. Let's see if the clock don't strike midnight this Thursday.