As we head into the Sweet Sixteen round, let’s take a look back at some of the key questions and moments of the first two, er, three rounds…

RTC Take:  It was more interesting than it was the last nine years when it only involved two #16 seeds, but the only way to make it truly compelling is to pick teams with a little more national oomph than USC, VCU, UAB and Clemson. 

RTC Take: The fouls at the end of Butler/Pitt offset each other and the two no-calls appeared to be play-on situations in those games.  The Kalin Lucas travel probably wouldn’t have impacted the outcome anyway.  But the Texas five-second call seemed to be a fast whistle, and it essentially gave Arizona the daylight it needed to win the game. 

RTC Take:  We really liked the ability to surf between games without too much trouble, and the free online platforms worked great.  We did not like having entire afternoons on Saturday & Sunday limited to one game per window, though.  That could end up poorly in future years with blowouts. 

RTC Take:  It’s true that Barkley/Jet don’t do their homework, but the scene where Barkley razzed Pitino about Louisville losing in their first game and clowning the Big East was priceless, well worth putting up with the rest of it.  We’ve never seen someone so openly disdainful and dismissive of Pitino in his presence.  Awesome.

RTC Take:  Was Jimmer, still Jimmer.  His performance against Gonzaga was phenomenal, and although Kemba was equally awesome, we still think BYU would essentially be Air Force without Fredette in the lineup.

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As you’re no doubt aware, we’ve had our cadre of correspondents traveling around the country to each of the eight NCAA sites over the weekend.  We’ve asked the guys to produce a weekend diary of the games they witnessed including analysis, commentary and opinion concerning the sights and sounds at their venues.  Our hope is that the diaries will give you insights into the games that you may not have otherwise had from watching them on television or catching the highlights package afterward.  Let us know how we do…

Note: for all of the opening weekend diaries, click here.

Location: Tucson, AZ
Round: Third
Teams: San Diego State, Temple, Connecticut, Cincinnati
Date: 19 March 2011
Correspondent: Drew Murawa

SDSU's First-Ever Trip to the Sweets (SDUT/K. Alfred)

• San Diego State had a serious home-court advantage in the McKale Center on Saturday afternoon, but the Aztec fans grew frustrated with the officiating in the second half, and coupled with the tight play of their team, the atmosphere in the arena as the game wound down into 15 minutes worth of crunch time was one of more tension and irritation than excitement, and I think some of that tension did more to harm the Aztecs than it did good.  It was, however, hilarious to watch the front row of Aztec fans across the court from me, mostly made up of retirement age people, jump up and down throughout the game, chanting “I Believe That We Will Win” like a bunch of frat kids.
• Lavoy Allen wrapped up his career at Temple by playing all 50 minutes (as did frontcourt mate Rahlir Jefferson) and posting a double-double of 12 points and 11 rebounds. Allen, who has struggled with not being aggressive enough throughout his career, was certainly aggressive on Saturday, taking 14 field goal attempts and bothering the athletic Aztec frontcourt all game.
• Down the stretch it was a tight and exciting game, but this was in no way a crisply-executed game. There were turnovers, missed layups, lack of focus, even lack of hustle at times. The plays called by Steve Fisher at the end of regulation and at the end of the first overtime were odd, at best. And at the end of the 1^st overtime, Temple controlled the ball with a new shot clock with just over one minute left, and instead of trading two possessions for one, they ran the clock all the way down and gave SDSU the ball in a tie-game with the shot clock off.
• But Coach Fisher did sum up both sides of a March game like this pretty succinctly. “When you play a game like this and lose, it’s so disastrous for awhile mentally that you can’t comprehend it unless you are there. So we know what Fran is going through, along with his team,” he said. “We’re obviously thrilled that we’re here and advancing, but Fran and his squad have had a great season. These games are hard, they’re hard for both sides. We ran off the floor all smiles and they ran off the floor with tears in their eyes. That’s the nature of what we do.”
• Jacob Pullen was just absurd on Saturday night in his final college game. He scored 38 points, including six threes, and held Jordan Taylor, a pretty good point guard himself, to two-of-16 shooting. Frank Martin sent him off with these comments: “When everyone in this room questioned me getting hired, he stayed true to his commitment and said, ‘No man, I’m coming to play for you.’ Four years later, we’re in the NCAA three times, made an Elite Eight run. He’s the scoring leader in the history of K-State. Been to the postseason all four years. It’s all because of him. You know, you can coach a long time and never come across another one like him. I’m lucky. I’ve always been around good players. And good players that are better people. And he’s first-class.”

• Read the rest of this entry »

As you’re no doubt aware, we’ve had our cadre of correspondents traveling around the country to each of the eight NCAA sites over the weekend.  We’ve asked the guys to produce a weekend diary of the games they witnessed including analysis, commentary and opinion concerning the sights and sounds at their venues.  Our hope is that the diaries will give you insights into the games that you may not have otherwise had from watching them on television or catching the highlights package afterward.  Let us know how we do…

Note: for all of the opening weekend diaries, click here.

Location: Washington, DC
Round: Third
Teams: Butler, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Connecticut
Date: 19 March 2011
Correspondent: Kevin Doyle

Butler Continues Escaping Doom (AP/N. Wass)

• No matter what I write or how I write it, quite simply nothing can convey what transpired in the final seconds of the Pittsburgh-Butler game at the Verizon Center on Saturday evening. It doesn’t matter how proficient with words one is—you could be Billy Shakespeare—the feeling of every single person in the arena whether they were pulling for Butler, Pittsburgh or were indifferent to the outcome cannot possibly be duplicated. Suffice to say, I will merely provide you with my experience and reaction to how everything went down.
• It all began following a timeout called by Brad Stevens with just a shade over seven seconds remaining. After Jamie Dixon saw what Butler came out in, he elected to use a timeout. Both teams had none left. What transpired next was actually a very similar play that the Bulldogs ran against Old Dominion just two days prior. Shawn Vanzant—going toward the same basket as he had against ODU—drove down the right side of the lane and threw the ball across his body to a wide open Andrew Smith who calmly laid the ball home. Against the Monarchs, Vanzant flung the ball in the direction of the basket and was fortunate enough to have Matt Howard clean up the garbage; this time the play worked a bit better. After Smith’s bucket, the game looked to be well in hand—far from the case. We had only just begun.
• After sophomore Andrew Smith hit what looked to be at the time the game-winning basket for Butler, the Bulldogs’ bench and section of fans, students, and alums alike erupted in jubilation—they had just knocked off the Pittsburgh Panthers in one of the most dramatic of fashions. The emotional high they were on sunk to the lowest of lows in a matter of seconds as Shelvin Mack bumped Gilbert Brown right in front of the scorer’s table—the play happened so close to me that if I had Yao Ming’s wing span I could have made contact with Brown—sending the 78% free throw shooter to the line for two. The joyous jumps, hugs, and high fives that could be seen in the Butler section of the arena abruptly turned to a crowd of people stunned. They stood motionless with hands grasping their heads and mouths wide open. I distinctly remember turning to the gentleman next to me and we just stared at one another in disbelief. The roles had suddenly reversed as the Pittsburgh fans began to celebrate. Gilbert Brown was arguably their best free throw shooter—he had not missed a freebie since February.

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Everybody who’s been doing this as long as we have knows that the best games of the NCAA Tournament are found on the opening weekend, meaning the Saturday and Sunday of what used to be called the Second Round.  In that round, you’ve gotten rid of most of the overrated pretenders, and you’re left with 32 teams that for the most part are really playing well at the end of the season.  RTC Live will be back at the four regional sites today — Charlotte, Cleveland, Chicago and Tulsa — with our correspondents reporting on the sights and sounds of each of the eight games around the nation.  Join us for some conversation, questions, answers and what’s sure to be some great basketball all afternoon and late into the evening today.

Everybody who’s been doing this as long as we have knows that the best games of the NCAA Tournament are found on the opening weekend, meaning the Saturday and Sunday of what used to be called the Second Round.  In that round, you’ve gotten rid of most of the overrated pretenders, and you’re left with 32 teams that for the most part are really playing well at the end of the season.  RTC Live will be back at the four regional sites today — Tampa, Washington, Denver and Tucson — with our correspondents reporting on the sights and sounds of each of the eight games around the nation.  Join us for some conversation, questions, answers and what’s sure to be some great basketball all afternoon and late into the evening today.

From over 300 teams just over two weeks ago to only 32 now.  The Circle of March is slowly becoming a vast swath of white space…

RTC is lucky to have partnered with Buffalo Wild Wings and the Reese’s Company to offer some great prizes this weekend during the Third Round of the NCAA Tournament.  Get your picks in prior to the first tip on Saturday at 12:15 PM ET.  You can email your responses to rushthecourt@yahoo.com or tweet at us @rushthecourt — either works, but please don’t do both.  Description of the games and prizes are below.

RTC is Offering Some Great Prizes This Weekend

Contest #1) There will be sixteen teams remaining after this weekend is finished.  Add up the total aggregate value of the sixteen seeds that will remain. (ex: #1 + #4 +#3 +#10 seeds = 18, etc.).  The closest two replies to the actual number will win this contest.

Prize:  Buffalo Wild Wings is offering prize packs that they will mail directly to your home.

Contest #2) Pick the highest scoring player in the Third Round, and give his total points scored to act as a tiebreaker.  (ex: Nolan Smith, 31 points).

Prize:  Reese’s is offering a case of Reese’s Cups for the winner of this contest.  Yes, it’s a lot of candy.  Also note that you can go to Reese’s Perfect Play for a shot at a million bucks.

RTC Live is proud to have the entire NCAA Tournament covered from First Four to Final Four this season. Our correspondents have scattered throughout the nation in order to report from the most consistently entertaining and fulfilling American sporting event. The format of our NCAA version of RTC Live is a little different than what we do during the regular season — rather than focusing separately on individual games, we will instead utilize our multiple correspondents who are courtside at each site to report from all of the games in a given session. For example, this afternoon we will be reporting on the ins and outs from the eight Second Round games in Chicago, Charlotte, Cleveland and Tulsa; later this evening we’ll be back with another RTC Live session to cover the evening games. To make this as interactive as possible, we welcome questions and commentary from those of you out there watching on television or tracking from your computers — let us act as your eyes and ears from the court level. Join us all day as we drown ourselves in a hoops bacchanalia!

Evening Schedule

• 6:50 pm – BU vs. Kansas
• 7:15 pm – LIU vs. UNC
• 7:20 pm – St Peters vs. Purdue
• 7:27 pm – Marquette vs. Xavier
• 9:20 pm – Illinois vs. UNLV
• 9:45 pm – Georgia vs. Washington
• 9:50 pm – VCU vs. Georgetown
• 9:57 pm – Indiana St vs. Syracuse
  

What a Thursday — there’s no possible way that Friday could ever match it, right?  We won’t know until we start playing the games.

#4 Texas vs. #13 Oakland – West Region Second Round (at Tulsa, OK) – 12:15 pm ET on CBS

On one end of the court, this figures to be a terrific matchup, as Texas is Ken Pomeroy’s most efficient defensive team in the nation, and Oakland is his 13^th most efficient offensive team. The Longhorns limit their opponents to effective field goals of 42% while the Grizzlies shoot it at over 56%. And Oakland wants to get up and down the floor, while Texas plays at a more middling pace. In short, a battle between a great defensive team and a great offensive team. Keith Benson is the big man in the middle for Oakland, and his battles with Texas freshman Tristan Thompson inside could be illuminating, but the Grizzlies also get plenty of offensive production from junior point Reggie Hamilton (17.4 PPG, 5.4 APG), senior power forward Will Hudson (12.5 PPG, 7.1 RPG) and freshman guard Travis Bader (10.5 PPG, 2.7 3PG, 45.8 3P%). Unfortunately for the Grizzlies, they’ll also have to defend in order to win this game, and they’ve not been a good defensive team. They don’t force a lot of missed shots, they don’t do a great job rebounding what shots are missed and they don’t even force turnovers to make up for those deficiencies. They’ll need to rely on some combination of an out-of-their-minds defensive performance and an extra-special-bad shooting effort from the Longhorns in order to stick around. Despite the fact that Texas has played at a slower pace than Oakland this year, the Longhorns ability to play at a faster pace could be a key for them to put away this Grizzlies. Dogus Balbay and Cory Joseph are more than capable of getting Texas up and down the court, and Thompson and front-court mate Gary Johnson are comfortable getting out and running too, as are wings Jordan Hamilton and J’Covan Brown. While Oakland is use to picking up the pace, getting the more athletic Longhorns into a running game could spell their demise.

The RTC Certified Pick: Texas.

#8 Michigan vs. #9 Tennessee – West Region Second Round (at Charlotte, NC) – 12:40 pm ET on truTV.

The Volunteers started the season strong, with their wins over Villanova and Pitt, two of the better wins in the nation in the first month of the season. And since then there has long been the perception that they were a lock for the Tournament, regardless of the ups and downs they had the rest of the season. For the Wolverines, they were mostly counted out after a six-game losing streak left them at 1-6 in their conference and just barely over .500 on the season. As a result, when this matchup was announced on Selection Sunday, there were those who thought Michigan got a gift, while the Vols may have been a bit under-seeded. Closer examination reveals a Michigan team that should be favored here, based on their resume. However, Tennessee may have the two best players in the game on Friday, and if Michigan has trouble matching up defensively with freshman forward Tobias Harris and junior wing Scotty Hopson, they could have trouble. The Wolverines rely on sophomore point guard Darius Morris to run the team, make good decisions and find shooters like Tim Hardaway Jr., Zack Novak, Stu Douglass and Evan Smotrycz to knock down their threes, while freshman big man Jordan Morgan mans the paint. Given that the Vols specialize in hitting the offensive glass, grabbing 37.9% of their misses, Morgan will be on the spot and he’ll need to get help from guards and wings in limiting UT to one shot. Michigan will limit possessions and take care of the ball, but when all is said and done, their inexperience (they’re in the bottom 3% in Ken Pomeroy’s weighted experience rating) and lack of size may doom them in a close game.

The RTC Certified Pick: Tennessee.

#2 Notre Dame vs. #15 Akron – Southwest Region Second Round (at Chicago, IL) – 1:40 pm ET on TBS.

Mike Brey’s Fighting Irish have had a dream season in a year where not all that much was expected.  A run to a 14-4 record and a second place finish in the regular season of the nation’s toughest conference resulted in a #2 seed in the NCAAs and a first round matchup against another midwestern team with aspirations of playing Cinderella.  The Irish offense, the third most efficient in the nation, starts with Ben Hansbrough’s all-american numbers of 18/4/4 APG and continues on through Tim Abromaitis’ 15/6 and Carleton Scott’s 12/7.  These three players are bloody murder on a defense, combining for 199 threes over the course of the season and hitting them at a 41.8% clip, causing defense to extend well beyond their comfort zones in trying to guard these shooters.   The three-point attack, of course, sets up a drive-and-dish game with the clever Hansbrough sometimes opting to drive to the rim in the hopes that the defense collapses so that he can find one of his teammates for the easy look from outside the arc.  Akron, with 7’0 sophomore Zeke Marshall in the middle, will be better situated than most to crowd the Irish shooters, knowing that Marshall (and his 2.5 blocks per game) is waiting inside to erase any mistakes; with a deep group of experienced players at the disposal of Zip head coach Keith Dambrot, we don’t expect that his team will get rattled.  The key to this game will be whether Notre Dame is hitting their usual shots — and if they are, the Irish will advance.  If not, Akron has just enough talent and motivation to make things quite interesting.  We think Hansbrough will make the difference, though. 

The RTC Certified Pick: Notre Dame

#8 George Mason vs. #9 Villanova – East Region Second Round (at Cleveland, OH) – 2:10 pm ET on TNT.

Here are two teams entering the NCAA Tournament going in opposite directions. Before George Mason’s winning streak was snapped in the CAA Tournament against VCU, the Patriots hadn’t lost since January 8. On that same date, Villanova was riding high at 13-1 and ranked in the top ten before going a meager 8-10 to close out the campaign, giving Wildcat fans painful flashbacks to last year’s late-season collapse. Jay Wright’s team is struggling all over the floor; senior guard Corey Fisher is mired in a month-long shooting slump and Maalik Wayns has just started to make shots with any consistency in the last two games. Villanova only shoots 35% from three on the season and Mason is one of the best teams in the nation at defending the three. Quite simply, Nova needs their senior Fisher to shake off the cobwebs and spring for 20-25 points for the Wildcats to have a fighting chance, not only with his outside shooting but also his penetration ability and proficiency at the charity stripe. The Patriots have a multitude of weapons in their offensive arsenal from floor leader Cam Long to versatile big man Ryan Pearson and shooting threat Andre Cornelius. Villanova will need a strong defensive effort to limit a Mason attack that’s supremely efficient, rarely turns the ball over and shoots the three at a 40% clip. Unless the game is decided at the free throw line late, Mason is stronger across the board than their Big East counterparts. They’re confident, playing at a high level and have executed on both ends of the floor all season. Sounds like the opposite of a Villanova team that’s once again sliding in March.

The RTC Certified Pick: George Mason.

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RTC Live is proud to have the entire NCAA Tournament covered from First Four to Final Four this season.  Our correspondents have scattered throughout the nation in order to report from the most consistently entertaining and fulfilling American sporting event.  The format of our NCAA version of RTC Live is a little different than what we do during the regular season — rather than focusing separately on individual games, we will instead utilize our multiple correspondents who are courtside at each site to report from all of the games in a given session.  For example, this afternoon we will be reporting on the ins and outs from the eight Second Round games in Chicago, Charlotte, Cleveland and Tulsa; later this evening we’ll be back with another RTC Live session to cover the evening games.  To make this as interactive as possible, we welcome questions and commentary from those of you out there watching on television or tracking from your computers — let us act as your eyes and ears from the court level.  Join us all day as we drown ourselves in a hoops bacchanalia!

Afternoon Schedule

• 12:15 pm – Oakland vs. Texas
• 12:40 pm – Tennessee vs. Michigan
• 1:40 pm – Akron vs. Notre Dame
• 2:10 pm – Villanova vs. George Mason
• 2:45 pm – Memphis vs. Arizona
• 3:10 pm – Hampton vs. Duke
• 4:10 pm – Florida St vs. Texas A&M
• 4:40 pm – UTSA vs. Ohio St