2013 NCAA Tournament: Ranking the Sweet 16 Teams 1-16
13. Marquette
Maybe it really is better to be lucky than good. The tournament’s worst-remaining 3-point shooting team has an against-all-odds knack for bricking every shot from outside 20-feet until the final two minutes, when, with its back against the wall, it promptly buries a spate of contested 25-footers. Barring the flukiest tournament run in recent vintage, this is categorically unsustainable. Buyer beware.
Marquette has come up empty in its quest for respect this season, discredited and disregarded even upon sharing the Big East regular season title. In fairness, the Golden Eagles are better than their reputation alleges: that of a pesky, talent-deprived team that wins through grit and guile. This team has legitimate talent — Vander Blue, Jamil Wilson and the crafty, albeit unassuming Davante Gardner — paired with glue guys (Junior Cadougan and Chris Otule). What most call lucky, Marquette fans deem clutch. And who can blame them with the number of big shots Blue, Wilson and Cadougan have sunk this season, or the number of critical free throws Gardner has coolly swished?
Bottom line, we’re not talking about this team if Davidson (an 80-percent free throw shooting team on the season) doesn’t miss 8 of its 22 attempts while committing a ghastly, ill-timed turnover. For now, spare me the “Marquette still doesn’t get its due.” It will get a fair shake if it beats Miami on Thursday without the assistance of another miracle.
14. Wichita State
Oh, the irony of bowing out as a favored seed one year, then exceeding your seed projection the next without all five starters from the team before. Forgive the overused pun, but Wichita State’s tournament run really has been a Shocker to this point. The winningest team in program history couldn’t survive a 12-seed in its opening round game last year, but here the Shockers are one year later, with a bandit of youngsters racing through a No. 1 seed to the regional semis.
Defense has been the stabilizer for Gregg Marshall’s team — neither of Wichita State’s tournament opponents has shot better than 36-percent — as the Shockers couldn’t be less predictable offensively. Two days after missing 18 of the team’s 20 3-point shot attempts, the MVC runner-ups responded by canning 14 of 28 to down Gonzaga.
Carl Hall and Cleanthony Early are the headline-grabbers for a frontcourt-oriented team, but (redshirt) freshman guard Ron Baker has been cooking up under-the-radar magic all season long. Take note of No. 31 on both ends of the floor. He’s worth the attention.
15. La Salle
The Atlantic-10’s last team in the field is the last one still dancing. The league’s lone second-week survivor, La Salle has won each of its two tournament games — not counting the first round play-in game — by a deuce, owed largely to the three-prong backcourt of Ramon Galloway, Tyreek Duren and Tyrone Garland. While Galloway has carried the team from long-distance, Garland has swanked a street ball game he traces back to the projects of Philly. That’s no Brotherly Love for the opposing guards charged with Garland’s defensive assignment. Duren, meanwhile, began the tournament ice cold, but appeared to regain his groove in the third round. The junior point guard tagged Ole Miss for 19 points, helping fend off the resilient Rebels in a down-to-the-wire finish.
Lost in the glorification of La Salle’s backcourt is the tournament’s least heralded big man. Jerrell Wright has connected on 16 of his 18 shots in his first appearance at the Big Dance. Although a guard-dominant team, the Explorers will only find their way to Atlanta if the sophomore forward navigates the ride.
16. Florida Gulf Coast
It’s hard not to get caught up in the moment with perhaps the most endearing Cinderella the tournament has ever produced. The Eagles are a captivating story, unsurpassed as the only 15-seed to ever reach the Sweet 16. Don’t get carried away with the narrative by embellishing the legend any more.
Make no mistake, this is still the weakest of the 16 remaining teams, a second-place finisher in the rundown Atlantic-Sun and two-time loser to Lipscomb. Repeat, Lipscomb. FGCU had a pair of favorable match-ups in the first two rounds, lucking into grind-it-out, offensively-challenged system teams that lack oomph inside.
Next up on the docket for college basketball’s March poster child is in-state “rival” (I use that term lightly) Florida, a team with the muscle inside to exploit FGCU’s fatal weakness. The way to beat the Eagles is to bully them inside, as Duke’s Mason Plumlee displayed earlier this season. While athletic and skilled across the board, Andy Enfield’s team is frail along the front line — ripe for the picking against Florida’s beefy interior of Patric Young and Will Yeguete.
As tempting as it is, never judge a team by a two-game sample size, for better or worse. Being a prisoner of the moment will also hold you captive in irrational thought.