Thursday, March 18th: Night Game Recaps

Best Game: Can't go wrong with the Wake Forest-Texas game between two pretty evenly matched teams. For Texas, the final OT period seemed fitting for the way this season has gone. They jumped out to a 7 point lead in the first two minutes of the period, only to watch Wake chip away at it, until Ishamel Smith's jumper with a couple of seconds left seal the deal for the Demon Deacons. The Horns have a lot of growing to do this offseason. As for Wake, the dream remains alive, but they have an extremely tough test ahead of them in the 1 seed Kentucky, who drilled ETSU today to advance easily into the 2nd round.

Best Performance: Difficult to go against Armon Bassett's 32 points on 9-17 shooting, 5-10 from three, and 9-10 from the line. Ohio scored early and often against Georgetown, leading comfortably for the final 30 minutes of the game to beat the Hoyas by 14. Yes, I said led for three quarters of the game. The 14 seed. Over the 3 seed. I knew Georgetown was streaky, but not like this. Hats off to the Bobcats, though. The 9th seed in the MAC found their way into the tournament via the auto bid and have certainly made the most of it so far.

Upset that didn't happen: There were a couple tonight, as Montana gave New Mexico all it could handle before falling by 5 to the Lobos. But I'll go with San Diego State, who matched Tennessee bucket for bucket at the end but couldn't come up with that one last shot to knock out the Vols. Tennessee moves into the next round should thank their lucky stars that G-Town is gone (not that Ohio is going to be a cakewalk, but just saying).

Game that got lost in the mix: Those of you who stayed up to watch the late game almost got a thriller at the end. New Mexico seemed to have the game in hand about halfway through the 2nd half, but Montana wasn't having any of it. Montana was able to get it within one but was unable to overtake the Lobos, eventually losing 62-57. Brian Qvale had 26 for the Grizzlies. New Mexico advances to play Washington, who upsetted the 6 seed Marquette on Quincy Pondexter's leaner to give the Huskies an 80-78 victory.

Early Saturday picks:
St. Mary's over Villanova (same as before... nothing Nova did convinced me this game is gonna turn out any different than I expect)
Butler over Murray State (maybe it's time to stop hating on the Bulldogs and believe they're for real)
Tennessee over Ohio
Kansas over Northern Iowa (KU looked like they were sleepwalking through their game and still easily won... I know it was vs. the 16 seed, but UNI should still be scared)
Baylor over ODU (Although I'm thinking that if Tweety Carter has more games like this, Baylor isn't going anywhere in this tournament)
Washington over New Mexico (If I'm going to try and cash in on the hot hand, might as well do it here. If this is the Washington team we expected back in November, then they're sorely underseeded at 11. And that makes them VERY dangerous)
Kansas State over BYU (But I'm not ruling out a 45 point performance by Jimmer and a BYU win)
Kentucky over Wake Forest (I suspect this game isn't gonna even be close)

Games to watch tomorrow afternoon: Minnesota-Xavier, Cornell-Temple, Siena-Purdue, Missouri-Clemson, and Utah St.-Texas A&M all look to be good. And those are just the games we think will be close. It turned out the 2-15 and 3-14 matchups were some of the best games on Thursday. Who knows what March will bring?