Conference Tournament Thursday Recap

Since I spent the better part of my day watching college basketball, I'll give a brief look of each conference and what I saw, all in the form of scrambled thoughts.

ACC
Amazingly enough, the lower seed won every single game on Thursday. The two most surprising cases were Maryland and Georgia Tech, who were both playing great basketball coming in. Maryland looked bored against Miami, and Wake Forest finally outlasted Georgia Tech in double OT. Now, if the same thing happens on Friday, well, that would be cool.

For the record, that was an awful, awful call at the end of the FSU/Clemson game.

Big East
Well, here was a reminder that Scottie Reynolds is indeed still a freshman. He looks great at times, but there were a lot of rough spots today. He was only 4/14 from the field, and unlike on Wednesday did not get to the line enough to offset that. He also took a lot of errant jumpshots. Georgetown will take on Notre Dame... I took some flack for predicting Notre Dame to beat Georgetown, but based on what I saw today, I'm sticking with it. I really like the way the Irish are playing right now.

Elsewhere, one of the best games of the day was in the Big East, and that was the double OT battle between Louisville and West Virginia. The Mountaineers were down as much as 17 in the 2nd half before making a run. I'll say this... I'm not sure if West Virginia will make the Tourney, but they can do some damage if they do get there, because they are never out of the game thanks to their 3-point shooting and the 1-3-1 defense.

Big 10
Wow, what an incredibly dull day. The quality of the Big 10 play could be summed up by watching the end of Northwestern/Michigan St. After a rebound for Northwestern down 3 near the end of the game, they threw an outlet pass. Only the other guy wasn't looking, so the ball just went right out of bounds, and Northwestern didn't even get a shot to tie. That's about all you need to know about the day that was in the Big 10.

Big 12
Great performance by Baylor in the nightcap. Don't be shocked if they make a run at Texas. Elsewhere, Texas Tech probably locked up a bid by getting by Colorado, which was about all that they had to do. Now it's Kansas St.'s turn... if they lose on Friday, I'm not optomistic about their chances of making the Tourney.

Pac-10
Bah, the Bruins fall. I still think they're in line for a 1 seed, but this will certainly make things interesting. Elsewhere, great showing from Oregon, as they rampaged through Arizona. USC escaped with a win, and Washington St. did just enough to beat Washington. Some very interesting semifinal matchups... Cal is better than you think (as they showed), but I like Oregon in that matchup. I'll take USC in the other one. But both should be good ballgames.

SEC
LSU is still clinging to life after their OT win over The Vols... now comes a winnable game against Ole Miss, and then a probable date with Florida, who they beat not long ago. Hey, it's not likely, but LSU is talented enough to do it. Not much too exciting happened in the other games... though for the record, the East has won 2 games, and the West has won 2. Let's see if that ratio stands up. I doubt it.

See you Friday!

dan

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