I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve. – Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
Quick Game Thoughts
Sorry folks, I have a wedding to perform, so there’s no time for awards. (I’m completely serious. I have a wedding to perform at 7:30 EDT.) I do have a few quick game thoughts to share from this afternoon, though.
- Help, we have a fashion emergency! I am convinced that both the Albany Great Danes and Cincinnati Bearcats were done in more by the hideous nature of their uniforms than the inferiority of their play. Albany’s bright purple unis coupled with bright yellow socks were surpassed (if that’s the right word) only by the bizarre combination of hot pink numbers and trim with strangely demure camouflage shorts of Cincinnati. This must be what happens when you put fashion designers rather than athletes in charge of gear selection.
- Tape a cheetah to their backs. Could anyone play slower than Wisconsin? Apparently so. Today the usually high-scoring, fast-paced Ole Miss Rebels actually out-Wisconsined Wisconsin and won a low-scoring, grinder of a game. As I watched that game, a couple of thoughts kept running through my head. One was, “This is the team that has beaten Indiana a dozen or more times in a row?” The second hearkened back to my childhood growing up in southern Indiana. Some folks refer to Wisconsin as “Wisky”, which makes me think of the old Seagrums plant in Lawrenceburg we used to drive by on our way to King’s Island when I was a kid. All I remember about Lawrenceburg is how badly that Whisky plant stunk. Same can be said for this game today.
- Ain’t nobody got time for that. At the end of a tight game between NC State and Temple, State’s C.J. Leslie was reluctant to foul with about 6 seconds left to play due to his four fouls. The thing is NC State was down and needed to foul to stop the clock. If the game were closer, this would be the Boneheaded Play of the Day.
- Epic comeback, epic defeat. Thirteen seed LaSalle had to beat Boise State on Wednesday just to get the opportunity to play Kansas State today. They came out in the first half and absolutely owned the Wildcats, leading by as many as 19 at one point. After halftime, KState’s giant of a center Henriquez came out and played like someone had insulted his mother. In fact, the entire KState team played that way. They completely steamrolled the shell-shocked Explorers and actually took a couple of one or two-point leads late in the game. Finally, in a I’m-not-sure-what-happened sequence, KState reverted to their first half selves and looked completely incapable of doing anything right. After sending LaSalle to the foul line for the go-ahead points, State couldn’t get a time out called nor anything resembling a descent shot off, and LaSalle fulfilled their destiny as this year’s only 13 seed to win.
- The Boneheaded Play of the Day award goes to Creighton’s Doug McDermott who foolishly committed an offensive flagrant foul with his team up four and about a minute to play. Fortunately for the Blue Jays, Cincinnati was unable to capitalize on the blunder, and Creighton survives to face Duke this weekend.
And now I’m off to pronounce some young friends man and wife. Look for the day two awards late tonight.
The Wizard of Whiteland