Well, at least 3 Texas teams will make the Sweet 16. Man, the Cougars had me scared today before they came back and pulled off the win. Loved another upset with Oral Roberts beating Florida.
I'm wondering if the number of upsets we're seeing this tournament is due to how unusual the regular season was. With teams not practicing as regularly, having schedules upended and playing under unusual conditions if that had a factor. Also playing in a bubble with few fans if that's removed the normal advantage of higher seeded teams having more of their fans.
Loyola for sure, they are number 1 in ppg defense in the entire country. The Missouri Valley Conference isn't trash as far as mid-majors go, and they have had a dominant season. Oral Roberts really didn't have a very good season, then they had an upset run to win their conference championship, and boom: **** you Ohio State and **** you Florida. They probably deserved a 15 seed, maybe a 14, but Obanor and "Ace"-Mas have been terrific.
The final 4 has already been changing, we just haven't been paying attention. I mean Butler, Gonzaga, Loyola. Think about that in your time machines. but when the blue bloods are now showing up in the NIT, then you know it's for real. The one and done, and the g-league, both have sucked the air out of college basketball. College Basketball is still breathing, but it has to re-invent itself.
Again...they played a vicious ooc schedule on the road and were very competitive against 4 of 5 tourney teams: Arky/OU/Okie St/Wichita St/Mizzou (the 1 blowout, 1st game of the year). Their conference's schedule (still don't know how they lost 5 games) was rough, they played back-to-backs, either home or road, against every team. When you can have a decent argument that you have the 2 best players on the court (as they did in their 1st 2 games) against all but a handful of teams, you're not a 15 seed.
I saw that the tv commentary seemed very favorable for the Cougars. Seems even they were relived that the Cougars squeezed out the win.
Fair counterpoints. I can't remember a team in a conference of their caliber losing 5 games in conference and being anything higher than a 15 seed.
I said earlier, Garza is amazing on offense, he's just so ridiculously gravitationally challenged (read today that he was 6'7" as a HS freshman and couldn't dunk until he was a sophomore). Born decades too late, he's gonna have a long, lucrative career in Europe.
It's becoming very apparent that the Pac12 being pretty much an afterthought in the media and fandom this season was just a little erroneous.
Love watching Gonzaga, hate OU, but want the Big12 to represent. OU needs to lose by 1 in tragic last second fashion.
Gonzaga is just a machine. This makes me even more sad that we got Covid'd out of the game vs Baylor. My totally wildass based on nothing prediction that they would not make the Final Four is looking really brilliant.
