Posts Tagged ‘Big Dance’

March Madness All Season is one of my favorite college hoops blogs for the simple reason that Jeff seems to know his stuff and is not a power conference sycophant. All the more reason that I’m puzzled by his labeling teams like Butler, Siena, Creighton, Virginia Commonwealth, and Western Kentucky as “Mid-Major Sleepers.”
The only [...]

With top seed Pitt clinging to a 26-23 halftime lead, we can officially ask whether the ETSU Buccaneers can become the first 16th seed to win a first round game.
It’s clear that in slashing wing Kevin Tiggs, quick guards Mike Smith and Isiah Brown, the Buccs have the quickness and athleticism to hang with the [...]

A spirited effort by North Dakota State wasn’t enough, as Kansas held off the Bison 84-74. At several times in the second half, the Summit League champs had chances to make shots that would have gotten them on even terms with the Jayhawks, but they just couldn’t knock them down.

While NDSU’s senior [...]

VCU’s senior point guard’s collegiate career ended tonight.
With the rock in his hands and his team trailing UCLA 65-64, Maynor wasn’t able to knock down a highly-contested jumper that would’ve won the game for the Rams and allowed Maynor to extend his career. The Bruins ended up escaping with a 65-64 win.
Instead, the future [...]

With twelve games in the 2009 Big Dance having been played so far, I’ve got to say that we’ve yet to see any buzzer beaters nor the sort of upsets that put the madness in March.
Cal-State Northridge gave Memphis a game and American played Villanova tough, but we’ve yet to any see any [...]

Kind of the typical bracket that one has come to expect from this tiny plot of cyberspace. Lots o’upsets and a couple of Final Four darkhorses that will either make me look like a college hoops idiot savant or like a complete dumb ass. Usually, it’s the latter and not the former that [...]

(Aka: The pick SIena and Utah State edition)
Every year we do post on how you can try to apply a bit of “science” to what really is an art: divining which unknown squads from mid and low-majordom will bust brackets by knocking off some overhyped, overconfident power conference team on Thursday and Friday. [...]

Yahoo’s summary of the field of 65 is titledTournament a Big East feast and I think that summarizes it as much as anything.
I don’t have too much to say. I knew that the non-BCS leagues were gonna get screwed big-time this Big Dance, and, well, they did in what has become an [...]

Those lucky fucking bastards!!!!

Not only have they won the Summit League championship and it’s automatic invite to the Big Dance in their first year of being eligible for the DI hoops tournament, but they’re also going to shock the world and pull off a first round upset in their first trip to the Dance as [...]

Cleveland State, the Notes From A Basketball Junkie pick to win the Horizon.

The Vikings, a team I barely knew when the season began, but came to know and love the way a dog owner might come love to a mutt that looks downright ugly to everyone else, emerged bloodied, but unbowed, beating Butler on the [...]

I’ll be honest: I hate talking about who should and should not be in the field of 64 (+1), but I’m going to make an exception for Niagara.
Before I get into the Purple Eagles’ case for getting an invite to the Big Dance, I do want to explain why I loathe this [...]

Gonzaga’s doing a demo job on St. Mary’s, as they’re up 68-45 on the Gaels with a bit more than seven minutes left to play in Vegas. The Gaels have shot so poorly, I doubt that could throw the rock into a casino. It’s too bad since this was a game that lots [...]

alternated between wild and brilliant for the first 26 (or so) minutes, but I can guarantee one thing: no BCS league team wants any part of Siena or Niagara come next Thursday and Friday.
Siena’s up 46-43 right now and this game looks destined for a frenetic and memorable finish.

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Morehead State frosh forward Steve Peterson, who averages less than 2 PPG and had yet to score in the game, stepped off the bench with seconds left to play in the second overtime of the OVC title game. All he did was calmly take a pass from Eagles’ point guard Brandon Shingles on the [...]

In a wild and woolly Big South tourney finale, Radford outscored running-n-gunning Virginia Military Institute 58-48 in the second half to win going away 108-94. The difference in the game was the Highlanders’ interior dominance and VMI’s Austin Kenon going cold from behind the arc in the second half after making seven triples in [...]

Almost always, Kyle Whelliston at Mid-Majority comes up with a compelling daily post, but what caught my attention in
Tuesday morning’s take on things in Mid-Majordom was the bit about teams that have outrebounded their opponents winning about 65% of the time while teams that have fewer turnovers win about 55% of the time. [...]

St. Mary’s emphatic 75-64 win over 23rd-ranked Utah State could very well be the win that gets them off the bubble and securely into the field of 65. Mickey McConnell, subbing in for the injured Patty Mills, nailed 6-of-8 shots and the Gaels ‘Omar Samhan got the best of Aggies’ big Gary Wilkinson — [...]

The Big Picture: Bulls (17-8, 9-3) fall 78-70 to Vermont in Bracket Buster scrap played at Burlington. Buffalo got off to a hot start, taking a 13-point lead in the opening minutes before hitting a stretch so cold that Admiral Peary couldn’t have navigated it. While the late game comeback was nice, [...]

With the Utah State Aggies (12-0, 24-1), owners of the longest winning streak in the nation.
They took the best shot a resurgent Idaho Vandals — the Vandals were picked to finish at the bottom of the WAC and are in the middle of the pack at 4-6 (10-13) — squad and a frenetic, [...]

What else to say on a night when the two top teams in the league — Northeastern and Virginia Commonwealth — get ambushed by the two worst teams in the CAA — William and Mary and UNC-Wilmington, respectively?
To put the upset wins by the Tribe — now 2-10 in CAA play (7-15 overall), [...]

Saturday’s emphatic win over Miami has catapulted the Bulls into Joe Lunardi’s current Big Dance bracket.
Lunardi has Buffalo as 13-seed and headed west to Portland for an eminently winnable first round match-up with Arizona State. There’s a lot of hoop to be played before March Madness, but, to see a team picked [...]

Not really when it comes to the regular season.
At this point, with the possibility of an At-Large invite to the Big Dance all but impossible for the league — my Buffalo Bulls are probably the only team that could end up in a position to make the case for an At-Large bid, but they [...]

One thing that seems certain at this point in the 2008-09 NCAA basketball season, with November behind us, is that the MAC is going to be a one-bid league again. It’s not that MAC sides have been absolutely terrible during the first few weeks of the season, although Western Michigan (2-5) and Toledo (1-5) [...]

Start with Caleb Peiffer’s preview at Basketball Prospectus — this is the first time teams that finished one and two in the Pomeroy Ratings met in the final — before motoring on over to Beyond The Arc, where Mike Miller sees some ‘Melo in Memphis’s frosh point guard Derrick Rose and finish it up by [...]

There’s not a whole lot for members of the Mid-Major nation to get excited about it in tonight’s NCAA Championship game between Memphis and Kansas, the latter side being a true college hoops blueblood while the Tigers are an occasional Final Four interloper. Sure, the 38-1 Tigers may play in Conference USA, which is a Mid-Major league if I’ve ever seen one, but they are in no way, shape, or form a Mid-Major squad. Memphis is a power conference team that plays in a conference without any power. All that being said, any game is better when you can take sides and cheer for one team so we’re stuck with our yearly question of who to cheer for in the NCAA Championship game.