NCAA Tournament Quick Hits: Round of 32 (Sunday)

The field for the Sweet Sixteen of this year’s NCAA Tournament has finally been completed after eight more teams booked their tickets during yesterday’s action. You should be familiar with the routine by now. There wasn’t too much madness on this particular day, but still quality basketball all around the country. By now you should know the drill when it comes to how we run down the action. I’m coming off a double screen with quick hits of insight and perspective.

• There is no better coach in the country than Tom Izzo when it comes to fostering in-season progression. There are better coaches out there and certainly better recruiters, but Izzo is the NCAA’s dean of player development. At the beginning of the season, this year’s edition of the Michigan State Spartans looked to be one of Izzo’s worst teams in recent memory. However, a season of steady improvement saw them move from the bubble, to the cusp of a Big Ten Tournament title, and now to the Sweet Sixteen. The Spartans have evolved so much so that the 7-seeded team is now being looked at by some as the Final Four favorite in a region that still includes Louisville and Oklahoma. The strides that have been taken by Travis Trice, Denzel Valentine, and Branden Dawson are impressive. However, it’s the progression of the role players that has suddenly made the team dangerous. Bryn Forbes was playing at Cleveland State two years ago, now he is Izzo’s slick shooting three-point specialist. Matt Costello came to East Lansing as Michigan’s Mr. Basketball and flopped during his freshman year. He was awful, but has now he has carved out a niche as the team’s most important big. Alongside him, Gavin Schilling has made an astonishing improvement from year one to year two. Considering his hulking frame, it’s almost scary to imagine what he will turn into with two more years left under Izzo’s watch. The team that dominated Virginia today, could beat the MSU team that lost to Duke earlier this season by 40 points. That’s how college basketball is supposed to work, and Coach Izzo does it better than anyone else.

• Duke just dismantled San Diego State. I can’t lie. I watched five minutes of the game and decided to take a nap. Duke does have plenty of holes, and next weekend the Blue Devils will start seeing competition that can really exploit their weaknesses. Utah, their Sweet Sixteen opponent, has plenty of size and offensive prowess. There will be no walking over the Utes. I didn’t have it in my bracket, but I’m calling for Duke to go down at the hands of Utah. There’s got to be a little more madness left in this tournament.

• The moment their pod was announced during the selection show, deep down inside, Bill Self had to know he was screwed. Big time programs frequently dodge their local mid-major neighbors, but Self has actually been pretty transparent about his snubbing of in-state counterpart Wichita State. The Jayhawks gain nothing from playing the Shockers. It will always be perceived that Kansas is better than Wichita, so Self would be foolish to give his immediate competition in the area an opportunity to alter said perception. However, Bill Self can’t control where the Shockers end up in the Big Dance. I’m certain that when the Shockers showed up as a potential first weekend opponent for his Jayhawks, Self became the biggest Indiana fan in the country. Once the match-up was set, there was little that could be done to fend off the inevitable realization that took place around the country. After the Shockers put the boots to KU in the second half on their way to a comfortable victory, everyone in the gym had their moment of enlightenment. The Shockers have been better than Kansas for the last three years. Sure, the Jayhawks have had the better players. They likely always will. Wichita State has had the better teams. Until today, the Final Four run was luck. The undefeated season was poor competition. This year, it was settled on the court. Wichita State has the best backcourt in the country in Ron Baker and Fred Van Vleet. They have one of the nation’s best on ball defenders in Tekele Cotton (ask Wayne Selden how much he enjoyed going scoreless yesterday). Their frontcourt is remarkably active and disciplined. They were a flat out better team, and if they played best of seven times, the Shockers would probably win the series in five. There’s a new era in college basketball. It’s time to stop judging teams based off jersey recognition, conference affiliation, and draft projections. Wichita State is a better TEAM than Kansas (and the rest of the Big 12 for that matter), and they will probably be better than them next year too.

• Oh, Buddy. Oklahoma was on the ropes against Dayton last night. The Flyers, with fond memories of last year’s Elite Eight appearance in tow, were up nine in the second half with another extremely friendly crowd environment in their back pocket. Of the many things Dayton had working in their favor, Buddy Hield was not one of them. He was on the opposing team and he was the difference making plays on both ends. Of the 16 teams remaining in the tournament, Hield is among the elite list of guards who can pull out a close tournament game single handed. Jerian Grant leads that group in the clubhouse. Hield is a charter member along with Duke’s Tyus Jones, Wichita’s Fred Van Vleet, and Utah’s Delon Wright. Travis Trice and Trevor Lacey have submitted applications and their decision is pending future results. In a game where Hield only scored 15 points, shot miserably from the field, and didn’t shoot the “ice the game” free throws down the stretch — he was still the man of the hour. He confirmed this with his spectacular block that stopped Dayton’s bid to cut the OU lead to a bucket at the one minute mark.

• Two rounds in and the Zags have yet to be challenged. Now instead of seeing them battle a highly regarded team from Iowa State, they will instead meet a double-digit seed in UCLA, a team that they have already defeated handily in their own building. Assuming that the Zags take care of business again, they won’t have the opportunity to really prove themselves until the regional final. It’s a spot where a loss shouldn’t prove a team as fraudulent, but it almost certainly will in this case due to their fortuitous path. If you’re a Gonzaga fan, you almost have to root for Duke to hold court against Utah. It would be disastrous to have to stamp the first Gonzaga Final Four team with the label of “easiest road to the Final Four ever” but that’s where we’re headed if Duke isn’t waiting in the regional final. The Bulldogs have played as well as anybody in the tournament, but have been an afterthought because they’ve lacked a truly quality win. Gonzaga’s best wins this year based on tournament seeding? SMU and St. John’s. That leaves a lot to be desired. Despite all the talent (particularly Domantas Sabonis, who is just a pleasure to watch in the post), we still have no idea if the Zags can win the big one.

• Wisconsin showed some chinks in their armor today, and my pre-tournament pick to win the national championship looked to be in legitimate peril late in the second half against Oregon. Joseph Young is definitely in that group of take over the game guards, and the Badgers really didn’t have an answer for him (Young finished with 30 points). That can be worked around when you have as good of an all-around team as Wisconsin. The Ducks surged throughout but Wisconsin never allowed their tempo to be compromised. Obviously, Oregon is not on the same level of Kentucky in terms of skill, but the Badgers proved today that they can weather an onslaught without losing their identity. That’s why they’re my pick to beat Kentucky and win it all.

• West Virginia is the roughest, toughest team in college basketball. They are blue collar with a little bit of blood on it. During their opening game against Buffalo, Danny Hurley allegedly yelled to a ref that the Mountaineers were one of the dirtiest teams his team had played all year. That might be true, but there’s still people out in the world that appreciate that type of stuff. The Mountaineers are ruthless, and they’ll do anything short of a WWE eye guage to force a turnover. This team is fun to watch, and their style is difficult to play for. They’re all hustle and grit, with a brilliant coach. Could this team make the Final Four? I wonder who they play next…

I forgot about that one little problem. After turning their game with Maryland into a bare knuckle brawl, and then proceeding to knock out the Terps, the Mounties get nothing more for their troubles than a week on death row before meeting Kentucky. It’s frustrating that all of the many storylines in this very interesting region already have a predetermined ending — losing to Kentucky. If a movie was being made about this year’s Mountaineer basketball team. It would have ended right before Bob Huggins’ post game interview when he fielded his first question about playing Kentucky. With neither of the Harrison twins being a pure point guard and Tyler Ulis being a diminutive freshman, maybe a frenzied pressure defensive approach could be Kentucky’s kryptonite. It’s more likely that the pressure will lead to fast breaks and ample opportunities for Willie Cauley-Stein to add to his reputation as a serial killer of opposing big men. West Virginia is nice story, but if a squad this bereft of legitimate basketball talent and so heavily reliant on intangible attributes were to beat the best college basketball team ever assembled — they probably would have to write a movie about it. In said movie, hopefully we can see Alec Baldwin playing Bob Huggins and wearing this suit.

• After coming within a single point of losing to a team called the Anteaters, the Louisville Cardinals are through to the second weekend after handling Northern Iowa with relative ease. The dismissal of Chris Jones has galvanized the Cards, forcing Rick Pitino to look down his bench and find a quality player. That revelation has been Quentin Snider, a freshman who has moved into the starting role opposite of Terry Rozier. Pitino doesn’t rest his guards often, which has given Snider an opportunity to play through errors. Terry Rozier, who may not come off the court for the rest of the tournament, played 39 minutes last night. As hot as he was, he didn’t look to need the rest. Rozier has answered the call of being the ball dominating scoring guard (the old Russ Smith role) and did not disappoint with 25 points on 8-13 shooting against the Panthers. Now Snider is becoming comfortable as Rozier’s sidekick at the right moment, as he continues to turn into be a formidable player in his own right, and a valued part of Louisville’s future. On a day when Louisville’s starting backcourt tallies 35 points, Montrezl Harrell becomes an even more menacing presence lurking on the inside. The big man only registered 14 points and 6 boards, but he was available to make key plays down the stretch. When Harrell can be a secondary option, Louisville becomes dangerous. Now the Cardinals find themselves in a wide open region with a favorable Sweet Sixteen matchup in North Carolina State. This could end up being one of Coach Pitino’s most unlikely Final Four runs to date.