NCAA Tourney: Predicting the Second Weekend

It looked like a Final Four contender. Davidson is a great story, but they had to win two heart-attack games to get here.

When George Mason made their run, they could legitimately pound the ball with Jai Lewis and Will Thomas. As good as Stephen Curry is, teams can not usually have one guy shoot their team into the Final Four.

So unless Curry goes Danny Manning, the Wildcats’ nice run will end at the hands of the physical Badgers.

South Region

Game: Memphis-Michigan St.

I thought it’d be: Memphis-Michigan St.

Original pick: Michigan St.

My pick now: Michigan St.

Game: Stanford/ Texas

I thought it’d be: Stanford-Texas

Original pick: Texas

My pick now: Texas

Thoughts on last weekend

I guess I don’t need to say much here, as I only missed two games in this region. These games made me feel like I actually knew what I was talking about.

OK, Oral Roberts didn’t come through for me. But in that game, I was not overly impressed with Pittsburgh. They had an 18-0 run in the first half, and broke even for the rest of the game.

After that game, I was very glad that I had picked the Spartans in the second round. In this case, I was correct to have not jumped on the Panthers’ bandwagon.

Miami beat St. Mary’s, and this is the kind of game that everyone misses a few of each year. And fortunately, they don’t usually matter. Had the Hurricanes closed out Texas, they would have done a lot more damage to my bracket.

Thoughts on this weekend

Michigan St. is another team that I am happy to have picked initially, as I thought it had a more impressive weekend than the Memphis Tigers did. Memphis survived a real test against Mississippi St., and the Spartans handled Pittsburgh, who was the trendy pick to knock off the Tigers.

I don’t see many experts who have the confidence in Memphis to win it all, and the Spartans have as good a chance as anyone to beat them. If anything, I thought about changing my Final Four pick to MSU; it seems to be good enough to make it.

Stanford showed a lot of character to come back and win, despite their coach Trent Johnson getting himself ejected in the first half. His actions will be heavily debated by the mainstream media, and I side against Johnson.

I don’t care what he thought about the call, there is no reason to keep pushing the issue after the first technical is called. At that point, a head coach has to have the composure to turn around, go back to the bench, and keep coaching.

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