Seven Big Ten teams were invited to the NCAA Tournament this year, but Michigan outlasted them all. After demolishing Florida this afternoon, Michigan will be the one Big Ten team to represent in the Final Four.

Wisconsin bowed out early to Ole Miss in the first round, and Illinois and Minnesota couldn’t make it past round two. Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State and Indiana all kept the Big Ten hopes alive by advancing to the sweet 16.

SWEET 16

Here’s where things started to fall apart. Indiana got knocked off by Syracuse 61-50, failing to make it past the Sweet 16 yet again (last year they were bounced out of the Tourney by eventual Champs Kentucky). Michigan State also fell to Duke by a similar margin, 71-61. That left Michigan and Ohio State as the two teams that could continue on to the road to the Elite 8, and perhaps history.

Ohio State battled with Arizona, and managed to scrape by with more late-game antics to grab a spot in the Elite 8. Aaron Craft didn’t make the last shot, but he did dish the ball to LaQuinton Ross for a last-second 3. The teams were tied 70-70, but Ohio State wanted to go ahead and get this game over with. Ross swooshed the ball into the basket as time ran out, and OSU would head to the next round. See The Poisonous Nuthouse for more.

Michigan also wanted to keep fans at the edges of their seat, and rolled out perhaps one of the best comebacks in the Tournament this year (oh quiet Marquette fans, this win was for a ticket to the Elite 8!). The Wolverines trailed Kansas by 14 points with more than 7 minutes left, and that’s when Trey Burke turned it ON. Burke was the reason the game went into overtime, and he scored all of his 23 points in the second half and in overtime.

The Wolverines were still down 8 points with 1:16 to go, and thanks to Burke, they were able to crawl back into the game. Glen Robinson III also made a layup in that last minute to help out, but it was Burke’s 3-pointer with 5 seconds to go that tied the game up, 76-76. Burke scored another 5 points in overtime, and the Wolverines outlasted the Jaywhawks to move on to the Elite 8.

ELITE 8

Two Big Ten teams made it to the Elite 8, but only one came out alive.

Ohio State made a habit of overcoming a large deficit in Tourney games, but this time things didn’t work out quite as well. Ninth-seeded Wichita State shocked everyone by beating Ohio State and moving on to the Final Four.

The Buckeyes scored just 22 points in the first half, while the Shockers had 35. Though things worked out better for OSU in the second, they were just too far behind to really come back. Last-second heroics failed to materialize, and Wichita State celebrated a 70-66 win. Wichita State will play the winner of the Duke/Louisville game going on right now.

Aside from that close call against Kansas, Michigan has had an easy time skating through the Tournament. Today was no exception. Up 47-30 at halftime, it was going to take a major meltdown this game to the Florida Gators.

Michigan finished off with an easy 79-59 win, and will be the last team to represent the Big Ten this year. They will move on to the final four and will face Syracuse next week.

I’ll be coming to you live from the Ted Constant Center in Norfolk, Virginia for the regional semifinals today. The first game pits the number one seed in the region, Notre Dame, versus the Cinderellas of the tournament, 12 seed Kansas. I’ll have a live blog up on Dancing Blue Devils, when Duke faces Nebraska following this game (at around 2:30pm ET).

Notre Dame has All-American Skylar Diggins, but plenty of complementary pieces. They won both the Big East regular season and tournament titles by beating up on UConn. Kansas is in their second straight Sweet 16. They have Angel Goodrich, who is averaging eight assists and just two turnovers so far in the tourney.

Can the 12 seed knock off the final game favorite? Stay tuned.

I’ll try to keep you as up-to-date on the game as possible,  but you can tune into ESPN for the live action beginning at noon ET. I am sitting quite close to the Kansas band and cheerleaders and they are LOUD and energetic for the early start time. I am also in front of the Jayhawks fans and there are a good a amount of them. The Irish have bright green warm up tees and a few have the same color sneakers. It looks like they have the animal print shorts too.

Starting lineups:

KANSAS: Angel Goodrich, Monica Engelman, Chelsea Gardner, Carolyn Davis, and Markisha Hawkins.

NOTRE DAME: Skylar Diggins, Natalie Achonwa, Kayla McBride, Jewell Loud, and Ariel Braker.

» Continue reading “Live at Norfolk Regional Semis: Notre Dame vs Kansas”

Say what you will about the man, but this is a great picture. (Via Wikipedia)

So UCLA finally found their new basketball coach and it was….well…Steve Alford

Alford was hired Saturday to be the new head coach of the Men’s Basketball team at the University of California-Los Angeles (or UCLA, if you’re too cool).

UCLA Athletic Director Dan Guerrero said some stuff about the hire. I guess Mr. Guerrero is happy about the, even though he couldn’t get Shaka Smart or Brad Stevens. He’s looking at the silver lining of things, which is nice.

UCLA even has comments from Alford and he sounds excited.

This will be Alford’s fourth Division I basketball coaching job. He’s also been a coach at Southwest Missouri State and Iowa. At New Mexico, Alford compiled a record of 155-54, but they never made it to the Sweet 16.

Alford takes over for Ben Howland, who was fired earlier in the week.

Of course, it sucks for New Mexico, since they kind of gave him a 10-year contract extension around the start of the tournament. Then the team lost to Harvard and everything went wrong. New Mexico fans are taking it well, I guess. Although this one guy feels betrayed. You can read more fun reactions here.

Meanwhile, the UCLA fans are…I guess chilling out on a Saturday? They have things to do, no time to react.

The USC fans, well, they’re probably out doing stuff too. I’m sure nobody will notice when Tim Floyd rejoins the Trojans (okay he won’t), but that’s a story for another time.

The tournament run for the Big 12 men’s teams is now over as the Kansas Jayhawks blew an incredible lead on Friday night against the Michigan Wolverines.

The Jayhawks were on fire most of the game, playing a great first half of the game, despite the random junk punch that occurred right when the game started by a KU player to a UM player.

The No. 1 seeded Kansas led the game 72-62 with about three minutes left until they started to implode. You have to give credit where credit is due – Michigan played some of the best two minutes of basketball I’ve seen in a long time.

A game-tying three pointer by Michigan’s Trey Burke sent the game into overtime, with the momentum obviously in the Wolverines favor.

The last few seconds of the game – or the last nine seconds I should say – was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen. Kansas had 9.2 seconds left on the clock. Kansas must have thought they were down by three… kid takes a the ball, right in front of the basket where he had a clear open shot and passes it back out. Ooof.

From there, they attempted a three point shot which missed. If they would have shot the easy two point shot, tied game.

The game ended with a 87-85 Wolverine victory. And so goes the last of the Big 12 teams from the tournament. NOW IT”S TIME FOR SPRING FOOTBALL, KANSAS FANS!!!!

Oh. Yeah. Right. My bad.

The third-seeded Gators put an end to the 15th-seeded Eagles’ unlikely run in the NCAA Tournament with a come-from-behind win Friday night. UF is the only remaining SEC school in the tourney.

Florida 62, Florida Gulf Coast 50

The Eagles got off to a hot start against the Gators, and were leading by eight points at the 14:36 mark in the first half and up by double digits halfway through the period. UF flipped a switch, though, and suddenly got right back in the game.

Mike Rosario and the Gators were too much for the Eagles to handle.

The Gators went on a 24-9 run in the second 10 minutes of the half, and the Eagles scored just two points in the final five minutes (and they came with 43 seconds left in the half). Florida took the lead with 1:43 left on the clock and they were up 30-26 heading into the locker room.

The Gators opened up the second half by going on a 7-0 run and were quickly up by double digits. Florida Gulf Coast never had a lead in the second half, and they couldn’t pull within fewer than seven points of Florida.

The Eagles didn’t do themselves any favors, either, as they missed too many free throws and rebounds. The Gators led by as many as 13 points, and it became clear as time ticked by that FGCU was simply overmatched.

Chase Fieler led the Eagles with 12 points, six rebounds, an assist, two steals, and a block. Mike Rosario had 15 points, five rebounds, an assist, and a steal to lead the Gators. UF was outshot 45.5 percent to 38.6 percent, but they outrebounded FGCU 30-27.

Florida is now 29-7 overall and they went 14-4 in conference play. Florida Gulf Coast finishes at 26-11 overall and 13-5 in the Atlantic Sun Conference. The Gators will play fourth-seeded Michigan (who pulled off an upset over top-seeded Kansas) on Sunday at 2:20 ET. The game will be shown on CBS.

Donald just wants to have a real good time at this point. *Cue Pitbull music* (Via YouTube)

And just like that, we have no more Pac 12 teams in the NCAA Tournament. The last one standing, the Oregon Ducks, lost Friday night in the Midwest regional semifinals to the top seed in the tournament, the Louisville Cardinals 77-69.

It started out quite bad for Oregon, as they trailed by quite a bit in the first half. They recovered, but the Louisville offense was just too much as the Cardinals led 45-31 at halftime.

Oregon gained ground in the second half, but it was pretty much a game of catch-up, or is it ketchup, or catsup…Either way, Oregon couldn’t catch Louisville.

Four Oregon starters had double-digit points, led by E.J. Singler, who scored 15. Dominic Artis and Damyean Dotson both scored 12 points, while Arsalan Kazemi finished with 11. Carlos Emory scored 10 points off the bench for the Ducks.

In other news, Worldwide Wes was in attendance, but didn’t have a special access pass or something.

Oregon finishes the season with a 28-9 record. Had the Ducks reached the Final Four, it would have been their first 30 win season since 1944-45. The team that year, coached by John Warren, lost in the regional semifinals.

The Ducks claimed ultimate Pac 12 survivor status when Arizona lost in the West semifinals to Ohio State Thursday night. What the prize is that comes with conference basketball immortality, I’m not really sure. Maybe they get a cool trophy, maybe not. They should receive some kind of award for their efforts though and not Lutefisk. We can do better than this, Pac 12 and NCAA.

For more information on this immortality thing, please consult your local library. In the mean time, enjoy the rest of this tournament. Apparently there was a nut punch, plus other crazy things during the Kansas-Michigan game. And yes, I said nut punch.

No. 3 Marquette Defeats No. 2 Miami

You can read a recap on my site here.

No. 4 Syracuse Defeats No. 1 Indiana

Syracuse defeated Indiana 61-50 last night to move onto the Elite 8.

Indiana did not look like a number 1 team. They missed layups, threw passes out of bounds and dribbled into defenders. They shot 33.3% from the field and had 19 turnovers.

Syracuse’s sophomore guard led the team with 24 points and five rebounds while Brandon Triche added 14 points.

The Orange move on to play Marquette, their Big East rival on Saturday,

The magical season for 13 seed LaSalle came to an abrupt end, as they lost to nine seed Wichita State, 72-58.

The Explorers were one of the last four teams into the NCAA Tournament, which meant they had to play in the “First Four” games. They beat Boise State and then beat Kansas State. LaSalle then beat Ole Miss last Sunday night on a last second shot. They were the final A-10 team standing, but their four-guard rotation came back to bite them.

Wichita State is one of the top ten rebounding teams in the country and they showed that on Thursday night. They out-rebounded the Explorers, 44-23 and 15-5 on the offensive glass.

The Shockers jumped out to a 17-3 lead and shot over 53% from the field in the first half. They cooled off a bit in the second half, but still ended up shooting 44.8%. Meanwhile, LaSalle made just eight first half field goals and were killed 25-8 on the glass.

Carl Hall was huge inside for the Shockers in the first half, as he scored 14 of his 16 points in the opening half. Overall, he hauled in eight rebounds and blocked four shots.

LaSalle cut the deficit in the second half to eleven, but that was as close as it got. Every time they cut into the deficit, they got beat on the offensive glass time after time.

It was a rough night for Ramon Galloway, who made just 4-of-15 shots for 11 points. He did haul in eight rebounds, but committed four of the team’s nine turnovers. Jerrell Wright, the lone LaSalle big man, was 6-for-9 from the field for 16 points. Tyrone Garland, he of the game-winning shot last Sunday, came off the bench to score 16 points, but on just 5-of-15 shooting.

In the win for Wichita State, Malcolm Armstead scored 18 points on 7-of-15 shooting. He hauled in six rebounds and dished out four assists. Ron Baker made 4-of-6 shots for 13 points.

The Shockers move on to the Elite 8 to face the two seed, Ohio State, who won on another game-winning three pointer in the closing seconds. The two teams matchup very well, so Saturday’s game should be entertaining.

And now we have one less Pac 12 team in the tournament. Arizona lost to Ohio State in the battle of the former Xavier Coaches Bowl or whatever tournament title here, 73-70.

The difference in the game was a LaQuinton Ross three-pointer with two seconds left. Ross had 17 points off the bench for Ohio State.

Believe it or not, Arizona led and gave Ohio State a run for its money. They get the good job, good effort, or however it is called, award.

The Poisonous Nuthouse will likely have more on the Ohio State side of things.

It’s clear that Ohio State used wizardry and magic to win this game. How else is it possible for them to score a game winning basket with seconds remaining in two straight games? Riddle me that, caped crusader!?

So now, it is all on Oregon to carry the Pac 12 flag. They’ll face a tough challenge Friday night when they take on Louisville. So do your thing, Oregon. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll leave as winners.

The Sweet 16 gets under way tomorrow. Here is the your schedule for the remaining Big East Teams.

No. 3 Marquette vs No. 2 Miami, March 28, 6:15 pm CST

No. 4 Syracuse vs No. 1 Indiana, March 28, 8:45 pm CST

No. 1 Louisville vs No. 12 Oregon, March 29, 6:15 pm CST

Let’s hope they all fair well tomorrow and Friday.