by Lenn Robbins, The New York Extra/TheNYExtra.com
What a weekend!
One No.1 – Baylor, the defending champion no less, is done.
Two No.2’s, one of which is coached by the fraud who all but guaranteed a second-round win over Miami – is done.
One No. 15 has reporters all over the country Googling “St. Peter’s College.”
And that was just an appetizer of the first weekend! Here’s a look at the good, bad, and foolish of the first two rounds and a tease of what’s to come.
GOOD
The Friars won the school’s first-ever Big East Conference regular-season championship only to be questioned more than Ketanji Brown Jackson is about to be. The noise got louder after Providence was drilled by Creighton in the Big East Conference Tournament.
The fourth-seeded Friars passed their first test, outlasting South Dakota State, which one non-expert whose names appears on this column picked in an upset, and then absolutely dismantled Richmond.
Providence heads to Chicago to face No.1-seed Kansas, in a perfect Ed Cooley Underdog Game. The Friars are 7.5 dogs and Kansas probably has a couple of players who will make it to the NBA. Providence has a scary-looking mascot.
The Friars are playing with house money.
GOOD
The same non-expert who picked against the Friars wrote that Michigan coach Juwan Howard should have been suspended for the rest of the season for swiping Wisconsin assistant Joe Krabbenhoft on the now-treacherous handshake line.
We will stand by that, however, Howard’s presence in the tournament provided the most poignant of moments. After the Wolverines edged Tennessee, Howard consoled the Vols distraught freshman point guard, Kennedy Chandler. If Howard sticks to compassion over combative, everyone wins.
BAD
Brian O’Connell is a good guy and a very good official who made a very bad call when he whistled a technical foul on Illinois guard RJ Melendez for hanging on the rim after a dunk. The dunk had cut the Illini’s deficit to 46-42 with 8:38 to play.
FOOLISH
Illinois coach Brad Underwood’s post-game comments.
Underwood said of the technical, “And then to kill momentum like that? Horrible.”
No. Horrible is how his fourth-seeded team responded to adversity. Eight minutes and 38 seconds in a four-point game (five after the Houston free throw) is an eternity.
Illinois crumbled. It was outscored 22-11 the rest of the way.
“He (O’Connell) told me he shouldn’t ever have called it, but in the moment, he calls it. Maybe it’s personal, I don’t know.”
Maybe.
GOOD
It was a good weekend on Tobacco Road. The obvious story is Duke rallying to beat Michigan State, which sends coach Mike Krzyzewski to his 26th Sweet 16. There could be a lot worse ways than Coach K winning a sixth NCAA championship.
But the story that is just as good is what Hubert Davis did at North Carolina in his first season replacing Roy Williams. Lord knows the pressure on a rookie coach replacing a legend in a basketball insane asylum known as Chapel Hill.
The Tar Heels blew a 25-point second-half lead against defending champ and No.1 seed Baylor but won 93-86 in OT without star Brady Manek, who has been ejected for a flagrant elbow. If Davis’s loses that game, he spends the better part of his career hearing how he’s no Williams, not to mention Dean Smith.
“As I’ve said before, I look at this job as missionary work,” Davis said before the game. The missionary has a much better chance of being heard after a win like that.
GOOD
The first weekend was a good one for leadership.
Shaheen Holloway’s St. Peter’s team has a personality that is 100-percent his. Holloway, a 5-10 (really?) guard from Elizabeth, would cut out an opponent’s heart with a spoon when he played for Seton Hall. The Peacocks have defined fearlessness in their run to the Sweet 16.
If Purdue doesn’t think the Peacocks are capable of pulling another upset, the Boilermakers should call Kentucky. Make no mistake, Holloway is the heart, mind and engine that drives this Jersey City Strong team.
Gonzaga’s Drew Timme is a two-time, second-team All-America but he’s a first-team leader. With the Zags trailing Memphis, 41-31 at halftime, Timme gathered the Zags in the hallway and went street talk on them – and we’re not talking Billy in the Street.
“I said, “I don’t give a flying F what happens at the end of the game, whether we lose or win, we’re not going out as no, uh, soft guys,” said the guy who did not use the words soft guys. Timme scored 21 of his 25 points in the second half to lead Gonzaga to an 82-78 win.
FUTURE
There are three Sweet 16 games that pit tenacity against talent:
No.3 Texas Tech faces No.2 Duke in the West Region. Mark Adams might look like an actuary but he has kept the Red Raiders playing the –in-your-shorts defense that former coach Chris Beard instilled. This is not to say Tech doesn’t have talent and Duke doesn’t have toughness. But Tech can’t go basket for basket with Duke and the Blue Devils better not try going mano y mano on the Red Raiders.
No. 11 Iowa State faces No. 10 Miami in the Midwest Region. What first-year coach T.J. Otzelberger has done at Iowa State is nothing shy of remarkable. The Cyclones went 2-22 last season. They’re in the Sweet 16 and will face an uber athletic Miami team, backed by the talent-rich Sunsations. Again, we are not suggesting the Cyclones don’t have talent. Otzelberger loves to push the pace when he has the horses. This Iowa State team averages 65.9 points and holds opponent’s to 62.3. As for Miami, our old friend Jimmy Larranaga could have been an extra in A Bronx Tale. He knows about tough.
No. 5 Houston over No. 1 Arizona in the South Region. Watching the Wildcats is a thing of beauty. Former Gonzaga assistant Tommy Lloyd runs a lot of the same bullet-fast transitions that Mark Few has perfected in Spokane. And man, does he have some uber athletes in Benedict Mathurin and Dalen Terry. No program has toughness in its DNA like Kelvin Sampson’s Houston Cougars, who lost leading scorer Marcus Sasser and guard Tramon Mark to season-ending injuries. Only a Teflon team can lose that amount of talent and still be sweet. Memo to Coach: Shirt on.
FOOLISH
It would be foolish if Indiana cheerleaders Nathan Paris and Cassidy Cerny didn’t get NIL deals after they teamed up to dislodge a ball that got stuck behind the backboard in the Hoosiers game against St. Mary’s. Paris put Cerny on his shoulders and she easily flicked the ball loose.
“It was too high to get for the grounds crew and they didn’t want anybody on the steps, so I grabbed Cass and we’re like, ‘Alright push up and we’ll see if it works. It was just another stunt.”
If these two do backboards, imagine what they could do cleaning or decorating windows in Manhattan apartment’s with 16-foot ceilings? Andersen Windows, whose corporate offices are in the Midwest, should be calling.
REALLY GOOD
No Sweet 16 matchup is more intriguing than No.2 Villanova against No. 11 Michigan. Each team’s strength is the other team’s foil. The Wildcats are experienced and make less mistakes than worker bees building a hive. But the team is undersized. Michigan boasts 7-1 sophomore Hunter Dickinson and 6-11 freshman Moussa Diabate, who looks like he spent the season in the Jay Wright School of Player Development.