2. Doug Anderson, Detroit
3. James McAdoo, North Carolina
4. C.J. Leslie, NC State
5. Deshawn Stephens, San Diego State
source: SBNation.com
OMAHA – One game into its first NCAA tournament, Norfolk State is part of its lore.
Kyle O’Quinn, the best player in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, was the best player on the floor against second-seeded Missouri on Thursday, scoring 26 points and pulling down 14 rebounds as the Spartans stunned second-seeded Missouri 86-84 – becoming only the fifth No. 15 seed to win a game in the tournament.
In its 15th season in the NCAA’s Division I, Norfolk was playing in its first tournament, finishing second in the MEAC during the regular season but sweeping four games in the league tournament to take a place on college baskestball’s biggest stage.
MORE: Friday’s scores
INTERACTIVE: Men’s tournament bracket
MORE: Complete coverage of the NCAA tournamentIt would be no pinch-us, look-where-we-are cameo.
The Spartans (26-9) were bigger than Missouri, starting with the 6-10, 240-pound Quinn. They played a step quicker. And they were tenacious, taking an early lead, weathering a Missouri threat in the second half and holding off the Tigers in the final moments.
O’Quinn, one of seven Norfolk players from New York, delivered the critical blow, tipping in an airball by teammate Rodney McCauley to break an 81-81 tie with 34.9 seconds left. Fouled on the play, he knocked down the free throw to make it a three-point game. Another O’Quinn foul shot made it four with 16.9 seconds remaining.
Missouri (30-5) couldn’t make up the deficit. Point guard Phil Pressey hit a three-pointer, and Norfolk – a subpar 65.3% foul-shooting team during the season – kept the Tigers in it by missing three of four shots from the line.
Missouri got a final shot, inbounding with a tick less than three seconds on the clock, but Pressey rushed a three-point attempt that clanged off the rim. He finished the game with 20 points, all but six of them in the second half, but was left to bury his head in torment.
O’Quinn made his way over to the sophomore, momentarily breaking away from the Norfolk celebration in the middle of the floor of Omaha’s CenturyLink Center, wrapping an arm around him and offering a word of consolation.
Pressey simply continued trudging toward the Tigers’ locker room. Just a week earlier, Missouri was rolling through three double-digit victories to win the Big 12 Conference tournament.
And Norfolk figured to be typical, 15th-seeded cannon fodder. Here today, gone tomorrow.
Note, though, that the MEAC had been responsible for two of the previous four 15-over-2 upsets in the tournament – Coppin State over South Carolina in 1997, Hampton over the Big 12′s Iowa State in 2001.
That Hampton team also was making its NCAA debut. Its campus in the Tidewater area of southeastern Virginia is just 16 miles from Norfok.
Source: USA Today
Four McGlynn came off the bench to score 18 points and America East-champion Vermont got its second-ever NCAA Tournament win Wednesday in Dayton, Ohio, beating Lamar 71-59 in a first-round game.
The Catamounts’ first NCAA win, memorably, was a 60-57 upset of fourth-seeded Syracuse in 2005. To make it three, Vermont (24-11) will have to beat top-seeded North Carolina on Friday.
“The Syracuse game was a huge win for Vermont and the community,” forward Brian Voelkel said. “Obviously, we’re going to come into North Carolina with a lot of confidence and hopefully we can pull off another upset and give the people of Burlington something to cheer about.”
The Southland-champion Cardinals finish 23-12.
NIT:Tyler Brown scored 26 points, Nic Moore added 24 and visiting Illinois State put on record-setting shooting display in a 96-93 overtime victory over Mississippi in the first round of the NIT. … Illinois State (21-13), which plays Stanford in the second round Sunday, set a Tad Smith Coliseum record for three-pointers, making 17 of 23 (73.9 percent) from beyond the arc. … Mike Muscala had 20 points and nine rebounds to lead visiting Bucknell to a 65-54 win over Arizona.
Briefly:Central Michigan fired coach Ernie Zeigler. … USC’s Garrett Jackson received permission to transfer.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/14/SPNV1NKN9J.DTL#ixzz1pBWsEJ1x
DAYTON, Ohio — Basketball fan-in-chief President Barack Obama gave British Prime Minister David Cameron a front-row seat to March Madness on Tuesday, taking his European partner to an election swing state for an NCAA tournament basketball game.
The two leaders sat near one end of the court at the University of Dayton Arena for a “First Four” matchup between Mississippi Valley State and Western Kentucky, a gesture of goodwill during Cameron’s official visit to the United States and a way for an incumbent president to reach sports fans in an election year.
The setting created the image of two buddies, dressed in casual clothes, eating hot dogs and enjoying the NCAA tournament, one of America’s premier sporting events.
Cameron, who enjoys tennis and cricket but had never been to a basketball game before, said during a halftime interview on truTV that Obama was “giving me some tips. He’s going to help me fill out my (NCAA tournament) bracket.” Obama replied, “And he’s going to teach me cricket.”
Cameron marveled at the speed of the game and, in the end, got to see a spirited encounter. Mississippi Valley State had pulled away but Western Kentucky made a valiant comeback, winning in the final seconds 59-58.
Obama’s quick trip to Ohio gives him a chance to connect with basketball fans and generate attention in Ohio, which he carried in the 2008 election and is considered one of the top toss-up states in 2012. The trip comes one week after Republican front-runner Mitt Romney captured Ohio’s GOP primary.
The high-profile appearance also gave Obama a chance to project his image on a night when Republicans were awaiting primary results in Alabama and Mississippi, continuing a practice of grabbing some of the spotlight on Republican contest days.
In a courtside interview with sportscaster Clark Kellogg, Obama said he wanted to take Cameron to “the great state of Ohio,” noting that many foreign leaders only get the opportunity to visit coastal cities like New York, Washington and Los Angeles. “The heartland is what it’s all about,” Obama said.
The White House said the trip to the NCAA tournament game was intended to showcase the special relationship between the two key allies during Cameron’s three-day visit. Obama and Cameron will discuss the upcoming NATO and G-8 summits on Wednesday, followed by a state dinner at the White House.
Obama gave Cameron the royal treatment, inviting him to fly on Air Force One and enjoy a quintessential American tradition. The lavishing of praise on Cameron came at a time of weighty foreign policy challenges in Afghanistan, Iran and Syria. Britain has been an important U.S. ally in Afghanistan and the bombing campaign in Libya that led to the removal of Moammar Gadhafi.
Adding to the heavy hoops flavor of the day, Obama announced his NCAA tournament bracket picks to ESPN, the sports network he watches on a daily basis. On Tuesday, the network teased Obama’s selections by revealing his Final Four picks: Kentucky, Ohio State, Missouri and North Carolina.
It was the fourth straight year that Obama filled out an NCAA tournament bracket for ESPN. On the women’s side, he selected Baylor, St. John’s, Connecticut and Notre Dame to advance. ESPN will reveal the president’s full men’s bracket Wednesday.
Obama seemed to relish courtside for a basketball game, his favorite sport. He frequently pointed to some of the activities on the floor, appearing to explain the game to his British counterpart. Early in the first half, two young women arrived with hot dogs for both leaders, along with a bottle of water for Obama and a Coke for Cameron, who spread ketchup on his hot dog.
With 12:30 remaining in the first half, Obama clapped after Mississippi Valley State’s Terrence Joyner put in a layup and the president later nodded approvingly when Joyner’s teammate, William Pugh, scored on a breakaway dunk.
After a low-scoring first half, Obama told Kellogg that “both teams are shooting terribly.
“It may be nerves,” the president said. “These are not teams that normally end up coming to the tournament.”
Obama was seated next to Cameron and Marvin Nicholson, a White House aide. Three young women sat next to Nicholson and got to chat with the president. Cameron was also seated next to Downing Street Chief of Staff Ed Llewellyn, who chatted with White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Students and staff members of the University of Dayton sat nearby.
Kasich, a former Ohio congressman, said he discussed shale gas development in Ohio with Obama. “He’s concerned about the environment. We can do it where it’s environmentally sound, and we can get the jobs,” Kasich said.
Some Republicans panned the trip, saying many Americans would prefer Obama to focus on more pressing issues.
“While showing off our amazing college basketball teams is great, many Americans struggling to find jobs, dealing with soaring gas prices, or concerned with our rising deficit and debt would probably like the president spend at least as much time dealing with those issues,” said Sean Spicer, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee
Basketball has been a big part of Obama’s life. At his Hawaii high school, Obama frequently carried a basketball along with his school books and bonded with his teammates on the court. His brother-in-law, Craig Robinson, played college basketball at Princeton and is now head coach at Oregon State.
The president regularly plays pickup basketball and keeps close tabs on his favorite NBA team, the Chicago Bulls. In a recent interview, the president said he gets League Pass on his iPad, letting him watch out-of-market NBA games on his tablet computer.
Obama kicked off the basketball season with a Veterans Day game between Michigan State and North Carolina on the flight deck of the USS Carl Vinson in November, enjoying a game on the aircraft carrier that took Osama bin Laden’s body to a burial at sea after the U.S. raid that killed the al-Qaida leader.
“Part of what makes this wonderful is not only that anybody, at least at the start of the tournament, has a dream about winning it,” Obama told Kellogg. “But the way it brings the country together, and families and communities, people rooting for their alma mater.”
Source: HuffingtonPost
Holy shit, this sucks guys. Check this out.
All season nothing mattered. There wasn’t a story or a scandal that could derail the Syracuse Orangemen.
Not longtime assistant Bernie Fine dealing with molestation accusations. Not coach Jim Boeheim being sued for defamation by two of Fine’s accusers. Not the revelation that the program is under NCAA investigation for not following its own drug-testing standards.
“News doesn’t matter,” Boeheim said last week at the Big East tournament, where his Orange would finish the season 31-2. In terms of pure coaching, this has been one of Boeheim’s greatest efforts.
On Tuesday, though, news broke that did matter – starting center Fab Melo is out of the NCAA tournament because of what the school termed an “eligibility issue.” A number of media outlets have reported that it’s academically related. CBSSports.com reported that the NCAA looked into his schoolwork and may have found a bigger issue.
“The NCAA went back and looked at his schoolwork,” a source told CBSSports.com. “They are looking into the fact that he didn’t do some of the work.”
No matter the reason, the ‘Cuse’s chaotic roller-coaster season finally may come off the rails. A team with a legitimate eye on a national title will have to readjust its lineup on the fly, at nearly the worst possible time. The Orange play 16th-seeded UNC Asheville on Thursday in Pittsburgh.
“Syracuse University sophomore men’s basketball center Fab Melo did not travel with the team to Pittsburgh, and will not take part in the NCAA Tournament due to an eligibility issue,” Syracuse said in a statement. “Given University policy and federal student privacy laws, no further details can be provided at this time.”
Melo is a sophomore who averaged 7.8 points, 5.8 rebounds and 2.9 blocks this season. His 7-foot frame is the anchor to the team’s patented zone defense.
A team outrebounded on the season doesn’t want to lose its biggest man. In Big East regular-season play, opponents averaged 3.4 more offensive rebounds a game than Syracuse. Melo missed the Orange’s lone regular-season loss, to Notre Dame, and the Irish won the battle of the boards 38-25.
No, Syracuse isn’t done. Not by any means. If this was going to happen to one of Boeheim’s teams, it might as well be this one – perhaps his deepest ever. Rakeem Christmas and Baye Moussa Keita are the likely fill-ins and both are capable, if lightly experienced.
There is no denying this will sting. The Orange aren’t just in this tournament, they are in it to win it. Boeheim is seeking his second national title in what may be his last strong run at the Final Four in his Hall of Fame career.
Looming in the East Region is a physical Kansas State team and Ohio State’s Jared Sullinger. Kentucky’s Anthony Davis and Kansas’ Thomas Robinson could be in the Final Four.
And then there is the state of mind of a team that has exhibited tunnel vision all season even as the circus spun around it. Until now, all the angst has been about someone else. Yes, Fine was first put on leave and then fired, but that’s an assistant coach.
Boeheim has been brilliant at pushing the issues to the side and concentrating on getting his team better. He always has been focused on basketball only, but this has set the standard for a coach dealing with a challenging season.
“This doesn’t bother our players or our team or me,” he said last week at the Big East tournament. “None of this. This is a media thing, period. If things were bothering us, we wouldn’t be 31 and 1 [now 2]. Nothing bothers us. We come ready to play.
“That’s what you should do in life. Everybody gets bothered. Everybody has problems. I’m much more concerned about my wife being mad at me than I am anything else, to tell you the truth.”
Expect the same public, and perhaps private, reaction going forward. Boeheim’s historic lack of panic and his faith in the team will be a positive. Getting a 1-16 tune-up will help.
That alone will cause conspiracy theories about when Syracuse discovered Melo’s eligibility issue. Had it been disclosed before Sunday’s setting of the brackets, the Orange might have been pushed down to a No. 2 or even 3 seed and not given as favorable a geographic draw – relatively nearby Pittsburgh and Boston.
At this point, there will only be questions and suspicions, and neither will affect the team’s chances. If anything, the players have taken all the headlines this season and tried to spin them into a positive.
“It brings us closer together so we can prove them wrong,” senior Scoop Jardine said. “We use a motto: ‘We all we got.’ We stick together. We make plays. The season we’ve had shows a lot of guys who love each other.”
It’s worked throughout this wild, and at times ugly, few months that have brought unthinkable stories and accusations and uncertainty to the program.
There is no positive to losing Feb Melo, though, only an opportunity for the ‘Cuse to prove even more resilient than it already has.
Source: yahoo sports
It’s been an agonizing month for Saint Mary’s sophomore guard Stephen Holt, the Jesuit High School graduate who has sat idle while recovering from a knee sprain.
Sitting and watching is not Holt’s way. While Holt was out, the Gaels had some struggles before winning the West Coast Conference regular season title, then went on to capture the conference’s tournament championship.
Holt is expected to return to action for Saint Mary’s when the Gaels open NCAA tournament play Friday against Purdue in Omaha, Neb.
From the day Holt stepped foot on Saint Mary’s practice floor a year ago, the Gaels observed someone who craved competition.
“He was a stone killer. You couldn’t rattle him,” Saint Mary’s assistant coach Rick Croy said of Holt’s freshman year.
Holt has been in the starting lineup since late last season, but often during practice scrimmages, the coaches put Holt on the “White” reserves team so he can get point guard work against Gaels’ standout Matthew Dellavedova.
“Many times, he’ll make the White team win,” Croy said.
The 6-foot-4 Holt is used to winning. He played on two Class 6A state championship teams at Jesuit, and had a significant role on Saint Mary’s WCC title team this season. Despite missing the final three games of the regular season, Holt landed on the WCC’s honorable mention team after averaging 10.4 points, 4.7 rebounds and 3.3 assists per game.
Holt is among one of the most unique rosters in the NCAA tournament, an international-flavored team that includes five Australians. Holt says he enjoys learning their culture, as well as engaging with the team’s other Americans as they argue with the Aussies over various subjects.
“For example, when we’re at dinner, if I need ketchup, I’ll ask for ketchup, and they’ll say, “you mean “sauce?’” Little subtleties like that,” Holt said. “It’s very cool. Coming in as a freshman, I didn’t know what to expect, but it’s been great.”
Then there’s Saint Mary’s coach Randy Bennett, who to outsiders appears to lack personality. Holt sees Bennett differently, saying the 11th-year Gaels coach “gets on us at the appropriate times. He cracks a lot of jokes in practice. He knows what it takes to win, and have a successful program.”
Bennett’s success at Saint Mary’s, including four NCAA tourney appearances, is largely what attracted Holt. Oregon’s Class 6A player of the year in 2010, Holt had scholarship offers from several West coast colleges, and said Stanford and Arizona were showing interest. In the end, Holt said Saint Mary’s was the only official recruiting visit he made.
“I loved it,” he said. “The great thing is, I’m very focused on basketball. I’m either in the gym or studying, and this campus is good for that.”
Playing in a winning, structured program at Jesuit prepared Holt for college basketball.
“I’m so thankful I got to play in that situation, knowing how to win, handle success, how to stay humble and hungry,” Holt said.
Holt’s game is well-rounded, but he is foremost known for defense. Croy likes that Holt is capable of guarding a quick point guard, or a 6-7 small forward. Croy says they usually assign Holt to defend the opponent’s best guard.
“He loves it. He has locked up so many great players this year,” Croy said.
Because Holt has played with prolific talents such as Kyle Wiltjer while at Jesuit, and the past two WCC players of the year in Dellavedova and Mickey McConnell, he’s often overshadowed as a scorer. But Holt insists, if needed, he can carry a team in scoring.
Croy said a year ago, Holt’s offensive game “was a hard drive to the rim, or a 3. This year, he can break a guy down off the dribble, score in transition or with a pull-up jumper. He’s growing in that area.”
Holt’s late-season knee injury caused him to sit out Saint Mary’s annual game in Portland. Holt was able to contribute in another way, as for a second consecutive year, the team had dinner at his parent’s home the night before the Pilots’ game.
“My mom makes everything, steak, chicken. The guys were talking about my mom’s cooking a week after the game,” Holt said.
As for the NCAAs, the tournament is nothing new to Saint Mary’s, which made a Sweet 16 appearance in 2010. The Gaels (27-5) have already posted one of the most successful seasons in school history, having broken up Gonzaga’s run of WCC titles by sweeping the regular season and tournament championships.
But nationally, a season is often measured by what happens in the NCAAs.
“Not everyone knows our story. We feel like we have something to prove every time out,” Holt said. “We want to make some noise.”
–Nick Daschel
Source: oregonlive.com
The greatest three weeks of the sporting calendar are upon us; let us rejoice and be glad in it. But before we come together in the quest for the perfect office-pool entry, we have to acknowledge a growing and intriguing dynamic within the game: class warfare.
After years of being outspent and outplayed, the 99 percenters of college hoops – the 271 Division I teams from outside the six power conferences – have made a plucky push to seize the tournament from the One Percenters. (In real math terms, it’s more like the 79 Percenters vs. the 21 Percenters. But in keeping with the Occupy Wall Street theme here, we’ll stick to their jargon.)
The 99 Percenters are showing up more regularly in the Final Four: There was George Mason in 2006, Butler in 2010 and the Butler-VCU combo rebellion of 2011. And they’re showing up more regularly in the Sweet 16: In the six tournaments from 2000-05, a total of 16 “Have Nots” advanced to the second weekend; in the six tournaments since, the total jumps to 25.
Ten of those 25 Have Nots reached the Sweet 16 in the past two tournaments alone. Perhaps most telling is that nine schools make up those 10 entries; only Butler crashed both Sweet 16s. The rest: Northern Iowa, Xavier, Cornell, Saint Mary’s, San Diego State, Richmond, BYU and VCU. They represent seven conferences: the Horizon, Missouri Valley, Mountain West, Atlantic-10, Ivy, West Coast, Mountain West and Colonial.
[ Related: NCAA tournament bracket | Print it | Play Pick’em ]
Bottom line: The 99 Percenters are coming from everywhere, and coming in greater numbers.
Why? Because elite players go pro sooner, which destabilizes the continuity of elite programs. And while there might be fewer great players in the college game, there are more good players than ever, and most of them played AAU ball with and against the hot shots and aren’t awed when they meet up again in college. Basically, it’s a case of both the upper and lower classes trending more toward the middle.
But here’s the catch: While the peasant revolt has broken down the gates of the castle, it hasn’t overtaken the throne. The teams that win it all still are members of the rich oppressor class.
Teams from the power six leagues have won every national title since 1990, when UNLV blew out Duke. Not only that, but the programs that win it all tend to be the programs that always win it all: none of the past five champions won their first title. Florida in 2006 was the last time a school captured something it never had before.
Clearly, the chances are strong for the power structure to remain intact. The top of the polls are littered with bluebloods. Of the top eight teams in both The Associated Press and USA Today top 25s, only Missouri has not won at least one national title. The other seven have combined to win 23 titles.
So the Occupy Bracketville movement has some work left to do. Is this the year they do it?
Source: yahoo.com
The five under the greatest burden to perform this NCAA tournament:
John Calipari (18). The Kentucky coach has had a star-crossed NCAA history – a lot of victories, some crushing defeats and two vacated Final Fours out of three attended. The one thing he doesn’t have is a national title. He’s never had a better chance than this year. Either Cal officially remakes the timeline for building a champion – reload every year and do it with freshman superstars – or he actually will hear Wildcats fans grumbling about whether this method is ever going to work.
Frank Haith (19). First-year Missouri coach inherited a good team and made it great. Now he’s trying to take the Tigers to the first Final Four in school history. Can a guy with one career NCAA tourney victory reel off four in a row and get to the Promised Land?
Perry Jones III (20). Baylor big man surprisingly turned down millions to return for his sophomore season, but that season hasn’t lived up to the hype. Jones has vanished more often than a card up a magician’s sleeve, often taking the Bears’ chances for big wins with him. He showed up prominently in the Big 12 tournament, averaging 22.3 points and 9.6 rebounds in three games, and he will need to replicate that in the Big Dance to restore his plummeting draft stock.
Big Ten (21). The best league in the land needs to back it up over the next three weeks. A conference that owns 10 national championships hasn’t won one since Michigan State in 2000 and has sent only one team not coached by Tom Izzo to the Final Four since 2005 (Ohio State in 2007). Bo Ryan, John Beilein, Matt Painter, Tom Crean – time to step up and show that the Midwest in March is more than just Butler and some overachieving Spartans.
Rick Pitino (22). The Louisville coach took a giant stride toward recasting this injury-plagued season as a success by winning the Big East tournament as a No. 7 seed. But there’s more work to be done. The Cardinals have lost in the first round in each of the past two NCAA tourneys, most recently a shocking upset loss to No. 13 seed Morehead State. Louisville fans enduring the trash talk of their Kentucky counterparts would love to have something to fire back with.
Source: yahoo.com
