We’re four days and two rounds into the tournament. It’s largely been controlled by the top seeds – all 1-seeds have survived to advance and all potential 2-3 match-ups in the Sweet Sixteen have been preserved. Only Purdue (5-seed) and Arizona (12-seed) are crashing the party, and it’s easy to argue neither team is actually crashing anything. In fact, the sum of the remaining seeds is 49, the lowest it’s ever been.

Despite the lack of what many would designate a true “Cinderella,” there have been several upsets including 9 Siena > 8 Ohio State, 12 Arizona > 5 Utah, 13 Cleveland State > 4 Wake Forest, 11 Dayton > 6 West Virginia, 9 Texas A&M > 8 BYU, 10 Maryland > 7 California, 12 Wisconsin > 5 Florida State, 12 Western Kentucky > 5 Illionois, 10 Michigan > 7 Clemson, and 5 Purdue > 4 Washington.

We’ve collectively seen 48 games and, sadly, only have 15 left.

Here’s where we stand in the tournament (click on the graphic to enlarge):

On to the conference experts and their performances:

Big East: Patphish -The Big East is having the greatest season by a conference in history. They carry an 11-2 record into the sweet sixteen, advancing 5 teams there. While it may be to much to ask, the conference could actually advance 4 teams to the Final 4.

The Future National Champion UConn Huskies looked unbeatable as they hammered Chattanooga and Texas A&M. AJ Price is playing out of his mind, he is the undoubted leader of Calhoun’s bunch. Jeff Adrien has the look of a senior desperate to win a title, note to Purdue: let him take 12 foot jumpers from the top of the key and you will lose. Ask the Aggies abbout that. I think Purdue has the best shot of ANY remaining team in the tourney to beat the Huskies. They can match the physical play and have good deep guard play. The Huskies will win a close one, maybe a very close one, and advance.

Memphis and Mizzou is the other match up in this bracket, Tyreke Evans better play more like he did on Sunday than he did on Friday if the Tigers from Tennessee are to advance. I will pick Memphis just because it sets up the match up most people wanted to see when the tourney started, myself included. My reason for wanting this match up is different than most however. I could care less about UConn getting the 1 seed and Memphis the 2, my answer to that is play someone. The reason I want to beat Memphis is about thier douchebag coach, John Calipari. Back in the early 90’s he was at umASS and used to love to talk crap about UConn. He liked to say that Calhoun was “afraid” to play the Minute Men, and he basically paid Marcus Camby to go there. Camby was the best high school player to ever come out of Hartford and Calhoun wanted him, however his grades weren’t close to being what they needed to be. Calipari jumped in and got Camby to enroll at umASS where he miraculously qualified to play. Not one player off his 1996 final four team graduated and of course, the final four trip has been vacated by the NCAA because they cheated.

Pitt survived a couple of tough battles and advanced. Sam Young was great on Sunday, and they needed him, as Blair took the first half off. They will pound Xavier.

The other side of the East bracket features Villanova taking on Puke. Nova advanced after winning a couple of home games, running UCLA off the court in the second round. Puke matches up well with the Cats, both shoot the trey and are weak inside. Nova does have Dante Cunningham on the inside and he played well last weekend. If he can continue to step it up, they can and will beat the Devils. Either way, the winner will lose to Pitt.

Syracuse was also impressive and showed no signs of the mental fatigue I thought would catch up to them after playing 5 games in 4 days in the Big East tourney. Johnny Flynn may be the best point guard in the country, I would love to see his toughness and guts matched up against overrated and oversoft Lawson for UNC. The Orange doesn’t appear to have the inside guys to beat Oklahoma, but I am not about to pick against this team.

Louisville has the easiest sweet 16 game, they will shut Arizona down and win by at least 10. After that, they will get either Kansas and Michigan State. Both of those teams are extremly well coached and mentally tough. Whoever wins that game will upset the Cards and reach Detroit.

Final 4: FNCUH, Michigan St, Pitt, UNC

ACC: GITC – We are going to reflect on what I wrote in last week’s TWTWCBB and see how that worked out, team by team. There’s no point in doing this for UNC since we all knew they’d be here. They are my pick to win the championship and will remain so.

I was right about Duke being here as well and continue to think that they will be beat by Villanova.

“At a #4 seed we find Wake Forest. They have a dangerous first round opponent in Cleveland State but they should dodge that upset although I’d take the points.” Well, they didn’t dodge it. I said it would be tough and apparently gave you some good betting advice so, let’s call that even.

“Next on the board is #5 seed Florida State. This is the type of team that makes random tourney runs because they have a great player (Toney Douglas). Every game they play is loseable because if Douglas is off they might go down in flames. Starting with Wisconsin in the first round, they should win easily, but if the Badgers take down Douglas in might be a short stay for the ‘Noles.” As it turned out, Douglas was fine but the rest of his team just flat out never got off the plane. Pretty unfortunate for Douglas as he is fairly unknown and could have become one of those tourney darlings the media love so much.

“(BC) should beat USC, but that’s a dangerous game against a hot team.” Well, it turns out that USC was even hotter than everybody thought. They weren’t going another round anyway.

“(Clemson) should handle Michigan in the first round pretty easily.” My only bad call. I really hated to see Clemson gone, and if Terrence Ogelsby hadn’t been tossed with 5 minutes left they might have won that game. We never got to see Booker vs. Griffin, and that is a shame.

“Maryland should handle Cal in the first round unless something really odd happens. That seems odd to say as they are the underdog, but the match-up just doesn’t favor Cal. Next up would be Memphis. The Terps could pull the upset (as they’ve proven they can do) if they can dig deep and really put it all out there.” Apparently, only General Greivis was the only one to really put up a fight against the mighty Tigers of Memphis.

Big 12: Miz/Trey – The conference had a strong showing during the first two rounds, performing at a perfect 6-o clip in the first round with a decent 3-3 showing in the second.  Only Kansas and Oklahoma State struggled against their opponenets, NDSU and Tennessee respectively.  Texas A&M, Mizzou, Texas, and Oklahoma all took care of first round business with the minimum margin of victory being 13 points (Texas > Minnesota). 

The second round knocked half of the Big 12′ers out of the tourney, but each loss came at the hands of a 1- or 2-seed: UConn >  A&M, Pitt > Okie State, Dook > Texas.  A&M didn’t have a chance against UConn while Okie State kept it interesting for a bit against Pitt.  Texas could have beaten Dook, but made too many mistakes down the stretch and allowed the Dookies to do just enough to take the win.

Thursday, Oklahoma will face a hot Syracuse team and will need to pound the paint and jump on Blake Griffin’s back to cool off the Orange.  Also on Thursday, Mizzou face Memphis.  Even though it’s a 2-3 matchup with Memphis holding the higher seed, I see this game finishing lopsided in Memphis’ favor. 

Friday brings us Kansas vs. Michigan State.  I’m pretty jacked about this matchup.  Coach Self will likely build up the revenge factor from Sparty’s win over the Jayhawks back in January but Kansas probably won’t have enough to hang with MSU.

Overall, the Big 12 has performed well, so far.  Don’t be surprised to see another hot performance by Syracuse knock Oklahoma out of the tourney and leave the Big 12 feeling very excluded from the rest of the Big Dance.

Big 10: Sparty – The Big Ten was a bag of mixed nuts in the opening 2 rounds of play. The low point for the league definitely was when Ohio State lost in double OT to the Siena Saints. Several times in the 1st OT and regulation, the Buckeyes had opportunities to put the game away but Thad Matta’s insistence of staying in the zone defense backfired, leading to the Saints hitting late threes to force the extra sessions. Ultimately Siena would win the 2nd extra frame.

Wisconsin pulled off a 1st round upset of Free Shoe U, and luckily for the viewers they pulled it off in OT and not on a last second shot in regulation. Thanks CBS! The Badgers met up with a team that slows the game down even more than them in Xavier, and were unable to overcome their suffocating defense.

Illinois would even up the 12-5 upset by dropping their opening round match-up to Western Kentucky. Should have listened to commenter jpmanahan.

Minnesota surprised most this year by qualifying for the Big 10 tournament, playing with such a young team. Their stay would be short, as they were unable to hang with the more athletic Texas team.

Clemson proved to be fraudastically fraudulent against Michigan. However, Oklahoma’s Blake Griffin and foul trouble proved too much for Michigan in the second round.

Now we get to the survivors of the Big 10, and it happens to be the two most expected to be playing the second weekend of the tournament. Purdue knocked off Northern Iowa in their first round game, then staved off a late rally from Washington to advance into the Sweet 16. UConn awaits the Boilermakers, and even though I picked Purdue to go to the Final Four, this is a different UConn team than the one that did not move on the Big East Tournament. I am starting to think the UConn may not be beatable.

Then of course we have Michigan State. They handled their business against Robert Morris (who’s namesake happened to be the first recipient of a gov’t financial bailout). Then the red-hot Trojans gave them a slugfest, but Travis Walton led the Spartans to victory. Sparty will see a familiar foe on Friday, as they defeated Kansas earlier in the year at the Breslin Center. Kansas is definitely a better team than they were back in January, but Izzo will make sure that his Spartans are ready. Can’t wait for Sunday and having the chance to knock of Pitino.

PAC 10: Thecassino – The Pac-10 came out guns ablazin in the first round of the tourney. Washington and Arizona State both easily handled their lower seeded opponents Mississippi State and Temple respectively. UCLA held off a very good VCU team to advance to the second round. USC and Arizona both, as lower seeds, won convincingly against Boston College and Utah. Cal was the only Pac-10 team to fall in the first round, which wasn’t entirely surprising; they’re a 3 point shooting team, and aren’t going to win many games when they shoot 7/24 from deep.

The second round was a different story. The only team from the Pac-10 with a higher seed entering the round of 32 was Washington, and they were a 4 playing a very good 5 team in Purdue. The Huskies came out slow and put themselves into a hole for the first half, and though they closed it they couldn’t score the tying basket late in the game to push overtime. Jon Brockman played like Jon Brockman plays, and it has been a lot of fun to watch for these past four years. No Husky will ever again get to don the number 40 jersey. That one’s going to the rafters.

UCLA played, to be blunt, like garbage. In a true road game against Villanova they came out flat, stayed flat in the middle, and ended flat. Not the way you expect a Ben Howland coached team to play, but maybe not having to leave the west coast during the 3 consecutive Final Four streak was every bit as important as the players on those teams. Fortunately for the Bruins, Jrue Holiday probably hasn’t done enough on the court to be where he wants to in the draft, so he should be coming back.

USC played Michigan State tough, but ultimately they didn’t get enough from Taj Gibson (3 points, 0 rebounds, fouled out) to pull the upset. A disappointing showing in what will almost certainly be Gibson’s last game. Though he’s a junior he’ll be 24 before the start of next NBA season and there’s not really any more upside than he’s already shown. DeMar DeRozan continued his torrid play of late on the offensive end, but on defense he looked disinterested at times allowing a few easy scores.

When James Harden goes 2/10 from the field and scores just 10 points against any decent opponent, Arizona State is going to lose. No mystery here: Syracuse did a great job of making him into an outside shooter and when he’s off ASU simply doesn’t have the supporting cast to gut out a victory.

Arizona is the lone Pac-10 team still playing. They have been the beneficiaries of a pretty soft road in Utah and 13 seed Cleveland State in the second round. Nic Wise and Chase Budinger have been playing good basketball and when those two do that this team is a tough out because Jordan Hill rarely has off games. Louisville will be a true test for this team. It is imperative for Nic Wise to stay in the game to deal with Louisville’s pressure as he’s the only capable point guard on the roster.

SEC: Miz/Trey – Ahhhh…the SEC. Well, that was fun, huh? We at the SEC just wanted to drop by for a minute. We’re really sorry we had to split so quick but we couldn’t stay long due to other prior commitments like the NIT, CBI, and CIT. The invitations to your party were much appreciated and we can’t thank you enough for the beer you bought us while we were there. Thank you for thinking of us and we hope to see you again next year.

Last weekend was kinda pitiful with the 1-3 showing. Only LSU won a game in the first round by scoring 4 more points than Butler. Ultimately though, the Tigeauxrs couldn’t handle their Carolina Blue second round opponent. They kept it interesting in the first half against UNC, but came out of the halftime break flat strong, but faded down the stretch.* UNC took advantage and ran away with the game fairly quickly late in the second.

Missisiippi State led 12-10 with around 11 minutes to play in the first half. Then Washington tied it up and then took the lead for good using the rest of the half to steadily build onto their lead. Missy State got it down to a 6-point deficit at one point in the second half, but that was as close as they would get the entire rest of the game.

Tennessee may have capped off the most disappointing season of these three in their first round boot from the tournament. The matchup with Oklahoma State was a great matchup with both teams being virtually even in most of the offensive and defensive stats. In the end though, Okie State hit one more shot than Tennessee and won and advanced by a grand total of two points. Tennessee looked like they were coming into their potential late in the regular season and in the SEC tournament. The preseason expectations were fairly high for the Vols who were ranked as high as 8th early in the season. The young guys never shed their inconsistency and hesitantcy and the team result was a consistently inconsistent team throughout the season.

For the SEC, they can only hope next year is markedly better. Two coaches were fired mid-season this year – Mark Gottfried (Bammer) and Dennis Felton (Joe’juh) – and one more coach is on the hot seat. That would be Billy Gillespie, a.k.a. Drunk Billy, of the Kentucky Wildcats. So, regardless of the lack of on-court news from the SEC, the SEC may be making the headlines this offseason if KY kicks off a new coaching search.

*Ed Note: I (Miz) mixed up my games.  As commenter rs27 correctly pointed out, LSU was tied up with UNC as late as 1o minutes left in the ballgame.  However, LSU decided the last 10 minutes of the game was a perfect time to throw in a 5-minute scoring drought allowing the Heels to pull away comfortably.

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