NCAA Tournament 2016: Winners and Losers of Day 1
Day 1 of the 2016 NCAA tournament is officially in the books after a pair of First Four games in Dayton, Ohio.
In Tuesday's first contest, Florida Gulf Coast hammered Fairleigh Dickinson, 96-65, while Wichita State pulled away from Vanderbilt in the second half of the nightcap for a 70-50 victory.
The reward for No. 16 seed Florida Gulf Coast is a first-round matchup in Raleigh, North Carolina, against the the No. 1 seed in the East Region—the UNC Tar Heels. Tournament-tested Wichita State, a No. 11 seed, is headed to the South Region for a date with No. 6 seed Arizona.
Overall, it was a great way to kick off the NCAA tournament. While the final scores of the first two games weren't especially close, both featured moments worthy of this time of year.
Here are the winners and losers from the first day of the Big Dance.
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Loser: Fairleigh Dickinson's Zone Defense
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Fairleigh Dickinson's 2-3 zone defense was instrumental in helping the Knights win the Northeast Conference tournament, which earned them a trip to Dayton.
In the opening game of the First Four, however, Florida Gulf Coast shredded that zone.
By running the baseline and passing the ball side to side and then to the high post in the middle, the patient Eagles kept finding holes in Fairleigh Dickinson's defense. Frequently, it was behind the zone for layups and dunks.
In sprinting out to a 23-6 lead, the Eagles repeatedly got the ball into the high post and then made the extra pass to get easy shots. At that juncture, they held a 20-2 advantage with regard to points in the paint.
Perhaps Fairleigh Dickinson head coach Greg Herenda suspected all along that his team was overmatched. He never switched out of the zone to try man-to-man.
Winner: FGCU's Marc-Eddy Norelia
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Marc-Eddy Norelia hit his first seven field-goal attempts against Fairleigh Dickinson en route to a monster night.
When it was over, Norelia's stuffed stat line overflowed with excellence: 20 points on 10-of-11 shooting, 10 rebounds and five assists. He even added one steal for good measure.
It was no huge surprise that Norelia led the Eagles in scoring and rebounding, as he came into the game with team-high averages of 17.2 points and 9.2 rebounds. Even so, the 6'8" junior forward started out even hotter than usual and never really cooled off, setting the tone for his team early and hitting just enough shots in the second half to make sure Fairleigh Dickinson never crept too close.
His presence and aggressiveness around the basket helped the taller Eagles forge a 52-33 rebounding advantage that was indicative of why and how they were able to dominate the game.
Loser: Coach Joe Dooley's Shirt
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When truTV reporter Jamie Erdahl stopped Florida Gulf Coast head coach Joe Dooley for a quick interview right before halftime of the first game, Dooley was noticeably soaked in his own sweat.
Did he not realize his team was already up 40-19?
No need to sweat it, Coach. This one was in the bag early for the Eagles, who dominated in the paint on offense and harassed Fairleigh Dickinson into 22 percent shooting on defense in the first half (6-of-28).
This isn't the same Florida Gulf Coast team that endeared itself to the March Madness crowd when it made a run to the Sweet 16 in its first-ever NCAA tournament appearance back in 2013. That team was freakishly athletic and threw down so many memorable slams that it earned the nickname "Dunk City."
This edition of Florida Gulf Coast turned Dayton into Rout City from the opening tip. Dooley just didn't get the memo before his halftime interview, during which he also said the Eagles needed "to clean some things up."
The only thing that needed cleaning up at that point was Dooley's forehead, as evidenced on Twitter.
Winner: Florida Gulf Coast in the NCAA Tournament (And By the Way...)
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While this was Fairleigh Dickinson's fifth trip to the NCAA tournament, it has yet to win a game.
Not so with Florida Gulf Coast, which improved to 3-1 in the Big Dance with Tuesday's dominant victory.
It was so impressive that some analysts, most notably Seth Davis of CBS, suggested at halftime and afterward that the Eagles' size and soundness in the fundamentals might actually give No. 1 seed North Carolina some problems when they meet in the first round of the East Region Thursday evening.
"It's going to be an interesting game," Davis said on television.
Although that's still not very likely—after all, the Eagles are a No. 16 seed, and no 16th-seeded team has ever knocked off a No. 1—an upset could make for an even more interesting second-round matchup. The winner of North Carolina-Florida Gulf Coast will take on the winner of eighth-seeded Southern California and ninth-seeded Providence.
Andy Enfield, who ran FGCU's program when the Eagles made their memorable run to the Sweet 16 in 2013, is the USC head coach.
Loser: The UD Arena Rims on Free-Throw Attempts
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What was up with the non-forgiving University of Daytona Arena rims, especially on free throws?
In the first game, while Florida Gulf Coast was making seemingly everything else, it missed nine of its first 10 free throws and ended up 20-of-34 (58.8 percent) for the game. Fairleigh Dickinson wasn't much better, missing seven of its 18 attempts for a 61.1 percent clip at the charity stripe.
The rim-clanging from the foul line continued in the second game, at least for Vanderbilt. Shooting just under 70 percent as a team for the season coming into the contest, the Commodores missed eight free throws in the first half alone and 11 for the game, ending up 15-of-26 (57.7 percent).
The worst offender was Vanderbilt's 7-foot center Damian Jones, who went 1-of-7 from the line. Worst yet, in the second half when the outcome had yet to be decided, he missed the front end of a pair of one-and-one chances. The first came with Vanderbilt down only 51-48, after which Wichita State went on a 19-2 run to close out the game.
Winner: Wichita State Defense
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Defense ruled for most of the Tuesday nightcap between Wichita State and Vanderbilt.
But in the second half, the Shockers really put the clamps down on the Commodores to turn a close game into a rout.
It was tied 30-30 at halftime, with the two teams combining to hit just two of 15 three-point attempts. Virtually no shot went uncontested.
But while Wichita State continued to ratchet up the defensive intensity in the second half, Vanderbilt's defense wilted some. The Shockers ended up holding Vandy—which came in shooting just over 46 percent from the field on the season—to 30.2 percent shooting (16-of-53), including 3-of-19 on three-pointers (just under 16 percent).
None of this should have come as a surprise to anyone who paid attention to Wichita State this season. The Shockers came in ranked No. 1 in the nation in scoring defense, giving up an average of just 59.3 points per game.
Loser: Vanderbilt's Damian Jones
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Vanderbilt's Damian Jones came into Tuesday night's game averaging 14.2 points and a team-high 6.9 rebounds.
However, he was mostly a no-show against Wichita State.
Jones made just two of six field-goal attempts, totaling five points and five rebounds. As previously mentioned, he finished a miserable 1-of-7 from the free-throw line.
At 7'0", 245 pounds, he should have been able to feast in the paint against the much-smaller Shockers. But partly because of Wichita State's smothering defense and partly because it seemed as though his mind was elsewhere at times, he was a complete non-factor on a night when his team desperately needed him to play big.
Winners: Wichita State's Ron Baker and Fred Vanvleet
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The stat lines of Wichita State veterans Ron Baker and Fred VanVleet weren't all that pretty.
Baker shot 3-of-11 from the field, including 1-of-5 on three-pointers. VanVleet, who had to leave the game briefly in the first half after taking an elbow just above his right eye and bleeding profusely, was 6-of-15 from the field.
The seniors still led their team to its 25th victory of the season with 14 points apiece, and both made some of the game's biggest plays. The 6'4" Baker also grabbed a team-high nine rebounds, while VanVleet added a game-high seven assists and two steals.
Afterward, Erdahl asked VanVleet how the Shockers were able to turn the game so thoroughly in their favor in the second half.
"We know how to act in these situations," he replied. "Experience is very underrated in these scenarios. We didn't play very well in the first half. ... We knew we didn't play our best, and we knew we had another gear."
There is something to be said about guys who stick around to play all four years at a program, as it's such a rarity these days. "These guys are basketball, college basketball icons, and they deserve the opportunity, one more time, to see if they can make another deep run in the tournament,” Wichita State head coach Gregg Marshall said of Baker and VanVleet on The Jim Rome Show on Monday.
He's right, and now they have a date with sixth-seeded Arizona in the round of 64 because of how they played Tuesday night in Dayton.
Joe Menzer is a Digital Content Producer for FoxSports.com and co-hosts a weekly radio show on ESPN 730 AM in Charlotte, N.C. Follow him on Twitter @OneMenz.
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