Since I'm home watching basketball for the next two days, I thought I would try my hand at liveblogging the festivities. If I feel the format works for me and if y'all seem to enjoy it, then maybe I'll make a habit out of this. If not, then it will have been a fun experiment. Here goes nothing.
6:30 PM
I am loving Southern's offensive strategy today. They're up against a great offense, so they really have to have the mindset of keeping up with them to a degree. Since they're a good shooting team from long range (36.4%, good for 65th in the nation), I like that over half of their shots have been from three (20 out of 38 shots). Their only hope in such a lopsided matchup is to have a ridiculously hot day, and they're well on their way.
5:50 PM
And of course, Marquette goes 3 for 3 from three in the closing minutes to pull off the one point win. Something something about this being the reason they play the games.
The play that really set up the end game was Davidson's possession when they were up 3 with one minute left. De'Mon Brooks rolled to the rim and got a pass for an uncontested lay-up with roughly 20 seconds left on the shot clock. Some might question Davidson rushing their shot given the final outcome, but I still think it was the right call. Shooting quickly does give the opponent more time to realistically hit more buckets, but the basket did give Davidson the all-important two possession lead. If you can get a good look when the game is still on the line, you should almost always take the shot.
I haven't seen the Pitbull commercial yet today. Experiment dead. Boooo.
5:00 PM
St. Mary's valliant effort just came up short against Memphis. There's really only one stat that is needed to explain this one: Memphis - 12 blocks, St Mary's - none. St. Mary's was the better offensive squad over the course of the year, even when adjusted for level of opponent, but they just couldn't execute their game against one of the most physical teams in the nation. I think the argument that "March is about matchups" is overused, but there do seem to be occasions like this where it rings true. Of course, if Dellavadova would have made that last basket this would all be irrelevant, so this could just be another lazy post-hoc rationalization. In truth, reality is probably somewhere in between.
I was happy to see Wichita play to the best of their ability and do what they couldn't do in last year's tourney: Win a game. It helped that Pitt didn't really seem to show up. The one Panther that looked strong was freshman Steven Adams (especially on the glass), but as Doug Gottlieb was saying during the game Jamie Dixon didn't play him enough. I hope Dixon doesn't flee to USC as he fits the Pitt program quite well. It will be too bad if this is how his tenure with the Panthers end.
The announcers in the Davidson-Marquette game just shared a great stat: Of all the teams in the tournament, Marquette is the worst three point shooting team (30.1%, which is good for 317th in the nation). If they can't play lockdown defense in the coming minutes, they're probably not going to be able to pull off a last minute rally like St. Mary's almost did.
3:00 PM
As I love this Billiken team, I've been watching almost the whole first half of the STL-NMSU game. Some halftime observations:
- The Aggies did not hit a single jump shot or free throw. All 16 of their points came on lay-ups, tip-ins and dunks. They may need a little more variety in their offense if they're going to stay in this game.
- Dwayne Evans is winning the matchup down low by a wide margin. His 16 points are tying NMSU all by himself largely because he's not afraid to go directly after the Aggies giant Sim Bhullar. Normally, a foot difference between players means the bigger player is going to dominate (duh), but this matchup is showing that there's a lot more to basketball than height. Dwayne Evans has been the MVP of a top-ten team for the last two months, and he's showing why in San Jose.
- It's good to see Cody Ellis getting his shot back. After a dreadful February, he had a good week in Brooklyn and has two threes in the first half of this game. If the Billikens are going to make a deep run, they'll need his shooting touch.
1:30 PM
Brad Stevens mentions Bucknell's amazing field goal defense in his halftime interview (4th in the nation in eFG% with 42.6%). My entire Twitter feed swooned all at once. Here's a good article about Drew Cannon, the MBA that Brad Stevens hired to run the numbers, who I am assuming influenced that quote. Maybe I should have tried to make friends with Mike Brey last year.
12:50 PM
Valpo started off the first game of the day in MANTAMAN, but then switched to a panic-zone after the first media time-out. It didn't really help as Michigan State has gotten 7 offensive rebounds on 16 opportunities and has also found enough holes to hit some threes. Sparty is playing pretty well early.
Meanwhile, the Marquette pod has started with an early lead for Butler. It took almost four minutes for Bucknell to take something other than a 15 foot jumper on offense, but they are playing good enough defense to make up for that. Every team from this quartet has better than a 15% chance of advancing to the Sweet Sixteen. I'm betting this game comes down to the wire.
11:45 AM
The most fun scenario I've come upon in the tourney simulator so far is the Midwest bracket turning into an impromptu Metro Conference tournament. The (not that incredibly improbable) Sweet Sixteen matchups would see two-thirds of the charter members face off with Louisville facing Saint Louis and Memphis taking on Cincinnati. I hope this doesn't happen because it would mean that Creighton will have lost in the first round, but it would still be a fun consolation prize.
The wackiest Final Four team I've seen thus far is 12-seed Oregon making it out of the hardest bracket in the tourney. I'm betting that won't happen.
11:00 AM
The first slate of games is about to get underway. I am excited. I am so excited that I just spent the last half hour simulating the tournament dozens of times. Here are some thoughts on the afternoon games in no particular order:
- If I had to pick only one of the next two days to watch basketball, and didn't care about ND or the Jays, then I would most certainly choose today.* Today features two 1-seed pods and three each of 3-seed and 4-seed pods, which means that all of the 2-seeds play tomorrow. Pods featuring 2 seeds tend to be the most boring since there aren't a lot of 15 over 2 upsets (except for last year, of course), and the 2 vs. 7/10 matchup tends not to hold the gravity of the 1 vs. 8/9. Thus, we get to see a bunch of very even matchups and some legitimate chances for big upsets.
*Insert Sophie's Choice joke here.
- Most commentators seem to be taking it for granted that we'll get to see Pitt challenge Gonzaga in the second round.* While they are correct that Pitt is ridiculously underseeded as a 8, Wichita State is no scrub. For one, I don't think Pitt has as complete of a player on their team as Carl Hall. I also think Malcolm Armstead matches up quite well with Tray Woodall (I saw Armstead almost single handedly lead the Shockers to a Valley title in person, so I might be biased). Of course, quoting individual matchups against Pitt is a bit of a disservice since Pitt is one of the best "better than the sum of its parts" teams, but it's still something to consider. I would still favor Pitt in this matchup, but it should be interesting to see if Gregg Marshall has something up his sleeve.
*I'm still going with the first and second round nomenclature in my blog, because the alternative is just too confusing. And stupid.
- I was going to write something about the upset potential in the 3-14 games this afternoon, but then I realized that the bigger story was just how terrible of a job the committe did in seeding the automatic qualifiers. The 16-seeds are fine, since they seem to be the six worst teams, but here's the non-wildcard 13-15 seeds ordered by their Pomeroy ratings (they're also roughly in the same order in LRMC, althought that model is way more in love with NW State):
60: 14-seed Davidson
65: 14-seed Valpo
81: 13-seed New Mexico State
93: 15-seed Iona
101: 13-seed South Dakota State
106: 14-seed Harvard
122: 15-seed Florida Gulf Coast
127: 15-seed Pacific
128: 14-seed Northwestern State
133: 13-seed Montana
143: 15-seed Albany
When you combine some of these misfires along with problems with the higher seeds (Marquette being a 3), you get a situation where 14-seeds almost have a better probability of winning at least one game than the 13 seeds do. I used Pomeroy's log5 analysis of the tourney to find the odds of such things happening. There is a 61% chance of a 13-seed winning a game and a not much lower 58% chance of a 14-seed winning a game. If it wasn't for the 3-seed outlier Florida, then the 14 line would have a much better chance of winning a game. I hope the committee spends a little more time on this in the future.
- For the third straight year, my bracket might benefit from a play-in game winner that I didn't actually pick. Two years ago I thought USC would beat Georgetown in the first round only to see VCU do it and win points for me instead. Last year, I picked Cal to upset Temple, only for South Florida to advance to the round of 32. This year, I had picked MTSU as my sweet sixteen surprise, but that will obviously not be happening. Regardless, I still like St. Mary's as a likely upset pick over Memphis today and the Spartans on Saturday. The Tigers just don't have anyone as good as Matthew Dellavadova and the Spartans have some serious point guard issues that leads me not to trust them for a deep run.
- Finally, I will be conducting a rigorous study today on the effects of combining Bud Light and Pitbull. My hypothesis is that the volume of "Don't stop the Party" commercials will be positively correlated to my willingness to continue partying. I will measure my willingness to party by asking myself how much I would like to take a shot every time the ad plays and recording the results. I will control for my environment by changing the lock to the apartment so Ad can't get in when she returns from work. Sorry wife, it's science.
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