It was a great night of basketball.  If you weren’t near a TV…WHAT WERE YOU THINKING??!!!  Seriously, if you weren’t near a TV, here is what you missed.

The Thriller

Kansas State and Xavier (pronounced “zay-vee-er” not “ecks-zay-vee-er”) played a double-overtime, pulse-pounding late-night special that ended somewhere around 12:30 AM EDT.  Before I say anything about the key points of the game, now would be a good time for a brief rant.  There can be no doubt that this tournament is all about money when these young men are asked to tip off one of the most important games of their lives after 10:00 PM local time.  That’s just insane.  Bobby Knight often threatened to refuse to play a game scheduled for 10:00 PM.  Of course, Bobby Knight often threatened a lot of things, and then did much worse!  But I digress.

Anyway, about midway through the second overtime I wondered if this game would ever end.  If Xavier’s Terrell Holloway didn’t stop making three pointers from the snack stand, they might still be playing.  This game was characterized by one unbelievably big shot after another, but there were some other noteworthy superlatives.

• The Stat Sheet Stuffer award goes to referee Eddie Hightower, who set a personal record for number of fouls called on a single team in a single game.  At the end of the first half five Kansas State players had 3 fouls each.
• The Boneheaded Play Of The Day award goes to Kansas State for fouling Holloway on a three-point attempt with five seconds to play.  Kansas State was up three at the time.  Not after Holloway buried all three freebies.
• The Fear The Beard award goes to Kansas State’s Jacob Pullen who is sporting a mane Abe Lincoln would be proud of.
• The Etymology award goes to CBS Announcer Len Elmore for using the proper plural form of a two-word noun, “times out”.  No, folks, it is NOT “time outs” like everyone in the world says.  “Times out” is correct, like “mothers-in-law” and “Billy Goats Gruff”.

And speaking of proper vocabulary, let us take an, ahem, time out for this little gem I received via email this week.

Contestant Luke Gilbert emailed me early in the week to point out a “bug” in the re-pick screen.  It seemed that there were teams that had won second-round games showing up in red on his bracket.  After I politely asked him if he had read the re-pick instructions which explained why that would be the case, he sent me this reply.

“[quoting from Jeff’s email] -> Every year, guaranteed, I get an email from some confused contestant asking me why their picks page shows a winning team in red.

I didn’t want to break the tradition.
I hadn’t eaten yet today.
I was infected by the March Madness.
The sun was in my eyes.

As penance, I’ll happily accept the ‘Those Who Speak Before Thinking’ award to hopefully serve as a warning to others so that they may avoid my ignominious fate.”

To wit, I happily grant Luke the Those Who Speak Before Thinking award, and, as a special bonus, the Noah Webster award for using the word ignominious properly in a sentence.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled commentary.

The Chillers

Big Red Dead

After jumping out to a 10-2 lead and working the near-hometown crowd into a frenzy, the Cornell Big Red ran into a big blue brick wall.  John Wall and company won a relatively low-scoring affair by a comfortable margin, shattering this particular glass slipper.

Maybe They Weren’t Under Seeded After All

The Washington Huskies, who many (including yours truly) believed to be under seeded as an 11, laid a pretty husky egg versus the West Virginia Mountaineers tonight.  So long, Pac-10.  Can’t say that I will miss you.

The Giant Killer

In truth, it is inaccurate to call Butler a giant killer given their seeding and consistent tournament success.  Still, it was pretty amazing to watch them beat convincingly a Syracuse team that should have been too much for them. The victory puts the Bulldogs one victory away from the most improbable of feats, an appearance in the Final Four literally just a few city blocks from campus.  Wouldn’t that just be…madness?

So, four games yielded one upset and one almost.  I have only two awards to give out tonight, and then we will take an 18-hour break before the next round of regional semi-finals begin.

Awards

• The Lucky 13 award goes to thirteen contestants who picked all four of tonight’s games correctly with original picks.  Those contestants are: Aaron McNeal, Doris Goehringer, Rick Morgan, Aaron VanderMolen, Brian Pettitt, Gaylon Taylor, Shane Vaiskauskas, Janell Hoeppner, Tracy Sines, Greg Schweizer, Scott Bower, Bruce Richardson, and Steven McAtee.
• The I Am Extremely Tired Of Seeing Your Name At The Top Of The List award goes to contest leader Lewis Schafer, 8-year-old phenom who has spent the entire contest in either first or second place.  Bruce, please, lock him in his closet.  He must be stopped.

That’s it for tonight, hoopsters.  Tomorrow we see if Purdue can bounce the third #1 from the bracket, if Omar Samhan can give the last double-digit seed left in the field a trip to the Elite Eight, and if Ali the wily Iranian can shoot Northern Iowa into tournament lore.