First day of NCAA tourney.....

Opening Round Thoughts

You have many viewing options these days, in regards to your television. You can go with an LCD or a plasma screen; stick with cable or get a dish; watch in glorious HD or plain vanilla regular TV. If you’re willing to pay for it, you can have access to every hoops game in the nation. Despite a plethora of viewing options, I had the distinct luxury of “watching” the PITT – Oral Roberts game on an Internet browser that refreshed every 30 seconds.

So if you had to choose how to watch March Madness, having your eyes glued to a computer monitor, watching a graph with one blue line representing PITT and a slightly darker blue line representing Oral Roberts is not the way to go.

With that being said, a quick glance at the box score shows why PITT won: First, they dominated the boards again, outrebounding Oral Roberts 48-32. Secondly, they had five players with double-digit points and not one of those guys was DeJuan Blair, who had four fouls. If Blair stays out of foul trouble, PITT probably wins even more handily. Finally, they made more free throws than they missed, going a respectable 10 of 13 from the line from the line for 77%.

The Duke-Belmont game was clearly the most exciting, as well as frustrating, game of the day. Watching Belmont play, they have some of the quickest hands on the perimeter. They were constantly poking the ball out of Blue Devil’s hands as well as intercepting passes.  They also had some of the worst shot selection I’ve ever seen. I don’t know if this is how they usually play or if it was just nerves, realizing they were so close to knocking out Duke.

Whenever Belmont had a chance to take a lead, or build on one, they would hoist up a quick three that generally clanged off the side of the rim. Most of the time, these weren’t wide open threes either.

That poor Belmont coach will be replaying the botched lob play for the rest of his sporting career. With less than five seconds to go, Belmont inbounded the ball underneath the hoop. The ball was just passed in the air with the idea that another Belmont player would jump to catch and dunk it. It worked flawlessly, except for the fact that no Belmont player jumped to get the ball. Duke got the steal and Belmont was ultimately forced to hoist up a long distance three that was just off the mark.

You can’t help but wonder what happened to O.J. Mayo’s draft stock. He was supposed to be the hot shot freshman; the next big thing. Throughout the year, he was overshadowed by Tyler Hansbrough and Michael Beasley. After getting blown out in the first round of the tournament (and USC was favored too), it’ll be interesting to see if he decides to stay in school or at least one more year. Although I doubt it.

This was widely considered to be one of the more top-heavy brackets in some time. After just two upsets (and one of those was a simple #9 over #8), it’s safe to say that so far that theory is holding up. Part of the excitement of March Madness is the idea of rooting for a Cinderella team and watching the big upset occur. Hopefullly we see some of those today.