Monday, March 20, 2006

It came & went! March Madness opening weekend

It came & went! March Madness opening weekend! March Madness was here and gone before you could think of all the great ups and downs! Let us help refresh your memory with a came and went run down of the March Madness this past weekend!


C for Cinderella: Take your pick: 13-seed Bradley from the trendy MVC? Or 11-seed George Mason, which slayed Michigan St. and UNC? They make perennial Cinderella bandwagon team Gonzaga look like "The Man."

A for All Sweet 16 Team

"All-Sweet 16" Team
Craig Smith
22 and 16 in W over Grizzlies

Joakim Noah
Tourney's top stat-stuffer

Brandon Roy
49 pts in 2 Washington Ws

Marcus Williams
UConn PG staves off upsets

Roy Hibbert
Joins G'town big-men legacy


M for Missouri Valley Conference: Two teams in the Sweet 16, the same as the ACC, SEC and Pac-10. And two more than the pathetic Big Ten.


E for Embarrassment: The RPI's top-ranked league, the Big Ten, got 6 NCAA bids. Not one survived the weekend, an epic humiliation.


W for Washington, D.C.: Host of the most intriguing regional semi: 7-seed Wichita St. vs. 11-seed George Mason. Can fans root for both?

A for ahead look to the next round
Atlanta -1 Duke/4 LSU..it's all Duke this one!
2 Texas/6 West Virginia - WVA is looking for revenge from Dec.


Oakland - 1 Memphis/13 Bradley...Bradley's run stops here
2 UCLA/3 Gonzaga - Morrison is going to keep doing it!


D.C. - 1 UConn/5 Washington - UConn to the top
7 Wichita St./11 George Mason - Whoever wins, who are these teams, whoever wins will lose

Minneapolis - 1 Villanova/4 Boston College should be the best sweet 16 game.
3 Florida/7 Georgetown - G'town I think could take this one

N for Naysayers: No one looks like a bigger fool than the "experts" who griped at the last few at-large bids, including Bradley and GMU.

T for Top Seed: Oh the irony, if we paid all this attention to the Cinderellas, only to end up with an unprecedented all-No.1-seed Final Four?




Oakland - 1 Memphis/13 Bradley...Bradley's run stops here
2 UCLA/3 Gonzaga - Morrison is going to keep doing it!


D.C. - 1 UConn/5 Washington - UConn to the top
7 Wichita St./11 George Mason - Whoever wins, who are these teams, whoever wins will lose

Minneapolis - 1 Villanova/4 Boston College should be the best sweet 16 game.
3 Florida/7 Georgetown - G'town I think could take this one

big ten were they even in the tournament

This is really going to hurt, and I am even a big ten fan. But let's just face the facts this one is really going to hurt the Big Ten. I mean really every Big Ten team lost and did not make it into the Sweet Sixteen! Wow!!

Ohio State (No. 2 seed), Iowa (No. 3), Illinois (No. 4) and Michigan State (No. 6) all lost to lower seeds. Wisconsin (No. 9) was buried in round one. At least Indiana (No. 6) gave Gonzaga a tussle before succumbing in the second round.

Bottom line: When hard-working but fairly pedestrian Terence Dials of Ohio State is the Big Ten player of the year, the league lacks star power. Plenty of good players, no great ones. Nobody who could put a team on his back and rise above the round of 32.

And for a league of the Big Ten's stature, that's pretty sad.

This is a very very sad weekend for the Big Ten across the board! Wow, I really think this could hurt for while too.

Candace Parker: First woman to dunk in NCAA (twice!) candace parker dunking



Candace Parker: First woman to dunk in NCAA (twice!)

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Did you hear Candace Parker is dunking and the first one dunk to take her to the record books. Candace Parker's one-handed dunk on a breakaway just six minutes into Tennessee's rout of Army on Sunday, Pat Summitt wasn't nearly as impressed.


Yes, the Tennessee coach was happy for Parker, the redshirt freshman who had missed her only other attempt 24 days ago in an SEC game against Auburn. But Summitt was more worried about Parker's health.

"I've seen her do that [dunk] a million times in practice," Summitt said during a phone interview Sunday. "I was just relieved she didn't get hurt."

But when Parker dunked again in the second half -- this time on a give-and-go with Nicky Anosike along the baseline -- Summitt finally succumbed to the excitement, though the coach admits it took awhile to sink in.

"You know, I was focused and I was coaching, and maybe for me, I just didn't understand it for a minute," Summitt said. "When somebody told me they broke into an NBA game [on ABC] to show highlights of Candace dunking, I understood the significance of it.


"Candace's game is a history changer," Summitt added. "There have been people in sports, in our game, who actually change the game. Cheryl Miller changed the game. Diana Taurasi changed the game. Candace is changing the game."

Wow, Candace Parker dunking her way into the history books! What a day this was!!

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