We’re back with the 2nd round of the Mascot Challenge. Be sure to vote for your favorite mascot so he/she can advance toward the championship game.
For the 2d Round Sunday Matches, click here.
IT’S. FINALLY. HERE.
If there’s one thing in life you can count on, it’s that every spring the Taxman will ask for his pittance and the NCAA Tournament will have you screaming at the top of your lungs with excitement. There is no more compelling annual event in all of sports. Every year, schools you’ve never heard of take on the ones you’re sick of hearing about and, for just a moment, a mere sliver of time, they stand as equals, where how well you play the game is all that matters. No computers, no RPIs, no BCS, no BS… just an orange ball and five players a side battling for the same goal – to survive and advance. This is why we’re all here. Let’s tip it off…
If you’re just now managing to get caught up to the fact that the Tournament starts today, get a life make your way over to the RTC 2009 Tournament Portal, which has all the information you’d ever want on the games and to watch for. Game previews, team previews, columns, etc. It’s all there.
Mike Lemaire will start the madness with the first group of games at the Noon hour, beginning with two difficult-to-read 8/9 games. Nvr1983 will be back in his usual spot in the cockpit for the second block of games at 2pm. Schedule below (all times EDT):
Noon Block
12:20 pm – #8 LSU vs. #9 Butler
12:25 pm – #2 Memphis vs. #15 Cal St. Northridge
12:30 pm – #8 BYU vs. #9 Texas A&M – RTC Live is there!
2 pm Block
2:30 pm – #5 Purdue vs. #12 Northern Iowa
2:50 pm – #1 UNC vs. #16 Radford
2:55 pm – #7 California vs. #10 Maryland
3:00 pm – #1 Connecticut vs. #16 Chattanooga
Bridge Game
4:55 pm – #4 Washington vs. #13 Mississippi St.
7pm Block
7:10 pm – #7 Texas vs. #10 Minnesota
7:10 pm – #7 Clemson vs. #10 Michigan
7:20 pm – #3 Villanova vs. #14 American
7:25 pm – #4 Gonzaga vs. #13 Akron
9pm Block
9:40 pm – #2 Duke vs. #15 Binghamton
9:40 pm – #2 Oklahoma vs. #15 Morgan St.
9:50 pm – #6 UCLA vs. #11 VCU
9:55 pm – #5 Illinois vs. #12 W. Kentucky
Let’s get it started….
12:07 pm. Hey All, its your faithful RTC intern here, and this will be my first attempt at Boom Goes the Dynamite. I may have technical troubles so bear with me, but I am diligent, and I will be watching all the games starting with Butler and LSU.
12:10 pm. Questionable music selection, but if you aren’t excited by CBS’ tournament memory montage, then there is something wrong with you. Quick update on point guards Ty Lawson and Chester Frazier: Neither player is 100% healthy, but I seriously doubt those two guys will miss a game, they are just too competitive.
12:22 pm. The tip is up and we are under way. Quick start for LSU and Bo Spencer as the Tigers are up 9-0 zip already and Spencer hit a three, then stole the ball and made a layup. Good timeout by Butler coach Brad Stevens, the last thing he wants is for LSU to take off.
12:30 pm. Since the early flurry by LSU both teams have settled in 11-3. It looks like the Bulldogs will have a tough time on the glass. Matt Howard is going to need to play a huge game if they want to win. In other news, Cal. State Northridge has an early 7-2 lead on Memphis…..upset anyone?
12:35 pm. Quick tangent, I know this Tournament is an advertising bonanza, but do the commerical breaks seem longer than usual or is it just me? Its been 13 minutes since the start of the game and they have played less than four minutes of basketball.
12:38 pm. The Bulldogs don’t have anyone that can match-up with LSU’s Tasmin Mitchell, especially now that Matt Howard is out with two quick fouls. It just seems as if LSU is more physical right now. Score checks: 14-6 LSU, 11-11 CSU v. Memphis, and 11-5 TXAM.
12:43 pm. Important things to know from the first few minutes. Matt Howard has two fouls, so do Robert Dozier and Tyreke Evans of Memphis. Texas A&M has come out on fire and is up 18-7 early on BYU.
Rush the Court is pleased to have our East Region correspondent Dave Zeitlin onsite at the NCAA East Region in Philadelphia for Thursday and Saturday’s games. He will be live-blogging the first game of the afternoon, #8 BYU vs. #9 Texas A&M, to kick off what will be another phenomenal tournament weekend. Depending on the matchups, Dave will be back here on Saturday live-blogging one of the two second round games as well. Please stop by and leave your comments and follow along if you happen to be stuck at work on one of the two greatest sports days of the year!
Texas A&M (#9, South, Miami pod)
Vs. BYU (#8)
Thurs., 3/19 at 12:30 PM
Vegas Line: Texas A&M, +2
General Profile
Location: College Station, TX
Conference: Big 12, At-Large
Coach: Mark Turgeon, 48-20
08-09 Record: 23-9, 9-7
Last 12 Games: 8-4
Best Win: Defeated Missouri, 96-86 on March 7th
Worst Loss: Lost to Texas Tech, 88-83 in the Big 12 tournament on March 11th
Off. Efficiency Rating: 112.2, 36th
Def. Efficiency Rating:96.6, 79th
Nuts ‘n Bolts
Star Player(s): Josh Carter (14.1 PPG and 4.5 RPG) and Chinemelu Elonu (10.1 PPG on 66.7% FG and 7.4 RPG)
Unsung Hero: Donald Sloan (11.7 PPG and 3.0 APG)
Potential NBA Draft Pick(s): Elonu (54th in 2010). Carter is listed as late second round to undrafted in 2009 by ESPN.
Key Injuries: None
Depth: 31.2% (158th nationally); percentage of minutes played by reserves
Achilles Heel: Inconsistency. Their best win of the year was followed by their worst loss of the year (their most recent game)
Will Make a Deep Run if…: They play under control like they did last year when they beat BYU in the first round.
Will Make an Early Exit if…: They play impatiently and take bad shots.
NCAA History
Last Year Invited: 2008; lost to UCLA in the 2nd round (on a controversial play)
Streak: 4th consecutive year
Best NCAA Finish: Final 4 (1969)
Historical Performance vs. Seed (1985-present): Not enough data (Minimum 8 bids during this period)
Other
Six Degrees to Detroit: San Antonio Spurs GM R.C. Buford played basketball at Texas A&M. In 2005, his Spurs team defeated the Detroit Pistons in one of the ugliest NBA Finals series in recent years.
Distance to First Round Site: 1,593 miles
School’s Claim to Fame: Kyle Field (where the football team) is the home of the famed “12th Man” and has been consistently ranked as one of the top places to watch a football game even if the on-field product is not that great.
School Wishes It Could Forget: Its hideous court design.
Prediction: Repeat of last year. Beat BYU in the first round and then lose to a Final 4 team in the 2nd round although this time without the controversy.
Major RTC stories: Pics of the Night
Preview written by Rush the Court
West Region – by Ryan ZumMallen of LBPostSports
#1 UConn vs. #16 Chattanooga
We all know what UCONN is capable of, which is nothing short of a National Championship. So get to know the Mocs and their leading scorer Stephen McDowell, who paced Chattanooga with 18.6ppg, shot 43.4% from three, and scored 30 or more in three games this year. The Mocs have two other double-figure scorers besides the 5’11” guard, and pulled off quite the upset just to make it here after finishing fifth in the Southern Conference. UConn looks in supreme control, although that Georgetown loss still worries me. What was up with that anyway, Husky fans?
#8 BYU vs. #9 Texas A&M
The Cougars put together a fine 25-7 season and tied two other teams for a share of the Mountain West title, but lost to San Diego State in the tournament final. BYU certainly has the tools and talent to move on from the first round, but just didn’t have to play the rigorous schedule that A&M did this season. Finishing fourth in the Big XII means more to me than winning a three-way share of the Mountain West. This could turn out to be a hidden gem, as BYU can certainly put up the points with three players averaging over 16.0 per.
#5 Purdue vs. #12 Northern Iowa
The hot thing to do right now is pretend you know anything about Northern Iowa. What you should know is that the Panthers can run with the big guns, beating both Auburn and San Diego State before finishing behind only Creighton in the Missouri Valley. They were also crushed mightily by Marquette, so its somewhat of a stretch to think they can open strong against the Big Ten Tourney champion Boilermakers. A healthy Robbie Hummel and a streaking Purdue squad means trouble for the fashionable upset pick.
#4 Washington vs. #13 Mississippi State
This is my upset special, maybe because I think the SEC was underrated this year and maybe because I was extremely disappointed in the Pac-10 this year. Probably both. Regardless, Mississippi State is riding a six-game winning streak and the high of stealing the SEC Tourney championship. Now, Georgia shocked their way into the Tourney last season only to get blown out, and Arkansas did the same thing the year prior. But those teams didn’t have Jarvis Varnardo or freshman point Dee Bost. Washington was a very good team all year long but MSU has the defense to slow down their phenom Isaiah Thomas, and therefore, the Huskies.
#7 California vs. #10 Maryland
This game is being billed as a battle of the minds between Mike Montgomery and Gary Williams, but it’s really more a battle of two talented teams who weren’t able to put things together like they’re capable of doing. Yet. The Golden Bears do not rebound or defend particularly well, which is worrisome. But they’ve got very capable scorers in Jerome Randle and Patrick Christopher. Cal had a pretty cake non-conference schedule, excluding two games (which they lost) against Mizzou and Florida State. Look for the Bears to resume the form they showed in big wins over Arizona State and Washington. I know I said earlier that I was down on the Pac-10 this year, but I’m even more down on teams that lose big games by 41 points and post a losing conference record. I don’t care if it’s the ACC, good teams just don’t let that happen.
#2 Memphis vs. #15 Cal St. Northridge
Both teams won their respective conferences by running the floor, relying on their guards for a bulk of the scoring, and getting solid rebounding from their bigs. Memphis, however, does all of these things much, much better than Northridge does. The Matadors have dealt with a lot after the arrest of three players (including their top scorer) in January and a car accident that nearly killed their point guard. None of those players have played since their incidents, and Northridge got by on outbursts from bench players. But they’re playing a Memphis team that could not be hotter, and last year we learned that playing in CUSA doesn’t mean you can’t make the title game.
This edition of Behind the Lines is emanating from Las Vegas. The Obsessed With Sports crew will be enjoying the first weekend of the tournament from the sports betting capital of the world.
Thursday, March 19th
The 8 versus 9 games are very close, as they should be.
Behind The Line: Take a look at the over on this one–it’s at about 127. Butler has consistently been going over numbers in this area while LSU scores a lot more than other Horizon League teams.
Behind The Line: Both teams have been very good as far as covering as of late. They are a combined 14-6 in their last 20 games. In this case, the spread might play a more minimal role.
Gonzaga is no stranger to being a double digit favorite.
Behind The Line: Gonzaga is 7-6 this season when they have been favored by double digits.
Connecticut is also familiar with large spreads.
According to Bodog the longest shots to win the whole shebang are Binghamton, Morehead State, Morgan State, Radford, Robert Morris and Chattanooga at 1750:1, respectively.
More from Vegas as the week progresses!
BYU (#8, West, Philadelphia pod)
vs. Texas A&M (#9)
Thurs. 3/19 @ 12:30pm
Vegas Line: BYU -2
Thanks to Vegas Watch for providing these graphs that measure the moving average of a team’s spread (moving avg.) over time vs. the spread for each individual game (indiv). If a team’s moving average is higher than zero, then Vegas currently has a higher opinion of them than Pomeroy, and vice versa.
General Profile
Location: Provo, Utah
Conference: Mountain West, at-large
Coach: Dave Rose, 85-28
08-09 Record: 25-7, 13-5
Last 12 Games: 10-2
Best Win: vs. Utah, 63-50, 2/28
Worst Loss: vs. UNLV, 70-76, 1/21
Off. Efficiency Rating: 114.3, 22d
Def. Efficiency Rating: 90.8, 23d
Nuts n Bolts
Star Player(s): Lee Cummard, 17/6/3 assts on 52%/39%/87% shooting
Unsung Hero: Jackson Emery, 8/4/3 assts/2 stls in the backcourt
Potential NBA Draft Pick(s): Cummard, #51, 2009 draft
Key Injuries: None
NCAA History
Prediction: BYU tested itself with games against Arizona St. and Wake Forest early in the season. Both were losses, but both were close until the end. It says here that the toughness of Cummard, Jonathan Tavernari and Jimmer Fredette get a win over Texas A&M this year before falling to UConn.
Major RTC stories: None
Preview written by… RTC
When Ben Allaire isn’t drumming up meaningless college basketball statistics, he’s writing about the Virginia Cavaliers over at Dear Old UVa. RTC appreciates having Ben stop over this week to make some numerical sense of this year’s NCAA Tournament field.
A great man once said, “Our offense is like the Pythagorean theorem: There is no answer.”
Unfortunately, that man was Shaquille O’Neil and it’s funny because he couldn’t be wronger… er, more wrong.
The Pythagorean theorem does have an answer and it’s going to help us examine which teams are most consistent on offense and defense together. Last time, I gave you a scatterplot of all 65 teams’ consistency on offense and defense. Using the Pythagorean theorem (or you might say Euclid distance), I’m calculating the distance between each point on the plot and the origin (0,0). We’ll call this distance: Pythagorean Consistency (PC for short).
This will combine the two measures into one and tell us exactly how consistent a team is. Now, remember as I said last time, this isn’t necessarily a measure of who’s best. If you want that, kenpom.com has a myriad of ways of determining it. It’s a measure of who performs according to expectation.
Let’s glance at the top and bottom ten list:
Note: Conference in parentheses; seed in brackets. Data source: kenpom.com
I find this to be a fascinating list.
Ed. note – check back often as this post will be updated regularly…
How about those brackets? If you’re like us, you’ve already figured a way that just about every team will both win and lose its first round game. For example, Arizona has better talent than Utah, but which Wildcat team will show up – the one from mid-season or the one from the last three weeks? Decisions, decisions…
To help you think more clearly about your bracket as well as to institute some fun into the analysis that you’re no doubt already obsessing over, we have put together a nice breakdown of each region for you. We’ll give you the teams that are overseeded, underseeded, and are guaranteed to advance. The best games to watch in the first round and in the later rounds. The juiciest match-ups for purists and casual fans. Some sleeper teams for both the Sweets and the Four. Upsets. Thanks to the RTC Region correspondents, basically, you name it, we’ve got it.
We will be doing Boom Goes the Dynamite! all weekend starting with Thursday’s games, as appropriate. Since our manpower will be lower than usual, we’ll be relying on you guys to help us out in the comments as we move through the first 48 games.
We are also privileged to have RTC Live at the Philadelphia pod this weekend. The games we will be covering are:
Here are the links for each QnD Region Analysis (+ correspondent), which will take you to another page on the site called 2009 Tourney Previews (which can also be accessed through the handy-dandy tab above):
We also have Game-by-Game Analysis for the entirety of the First Round…
Here are some of our other features celebrating what we like to call, “Christmas in March“:
Mascot Death Match – First Round (vote for which mascot would win a battle to the death!)
The Top 3 Sweetest NCAA Moments
Behind the Lines – NCAA Tourney
Some Hooponomics
Columnists
John Stevens from Las Vegas – coming soon…
… and more.
2009 Team Tourney Previews: We enlisted the help of our legion of correspondents and readers to put together previews for all 65 teams in order to give you the most insightful analysis you will find anywhere. We’ll be uploading previews over the next 24 hours so check back frequently.
TBL, BIAH, CHJ and RTC have a little bet going where we both will choose the 34 at-large teams with the blog picking the most right getting access to the other’s vast collection of “cinema verite.” Faces will be obscured to protect the innocent enterprising. So here goes…
*we’re also sick of using the word “bubble,” so we’re starting a new one – the Globule. Until further notice, that’s our word.
At-Large Teams
The Globule aka Enjoy the NIT, Fellas: Providence, San Diego St., Dayton, Boston College
A10 (1)
Xavier
ACC (5)
UNC, Wake Forest, Florida St., Clemson, Maryland
Big 12 (5)
Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma St.
Big East (6)
Connecticut, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Villanova, Marquette, West Virginia
Big Ten (6)
Michigan St., Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Purdue/Ohio St.
Horizon (1)
Butler
Missouri Valley (1)
Creighton
Mountain West (1)
BYU
Pac-10 (5)
Washington, UCLA, Arizona St., California, Arizona
SEC (2)
LSU, Tennessee
WCC (1)
St. Mary’s
Overnight 5: February 16, 2023
2021-22 Rush The Court Preseason All-America TeamsRTC 16: 2021-2022 Pre-Season Rankings
Preseason Stock Report: Buy Now
Preseason Stock Report: Bear Market
2020-21 Rush the Court All-America Teams and Yearly AwardsEight Questions for the Final FourEight Key Questions for the Sweet Sixteen16 Questions For First Round Saturday of the NCAA Tournament16 Questions for First Round Friday of the NCAA Tournament
