The West Virginia-Kentucky game went pretty differently than last year's Elite 8 clash. A year ago, West Virginia was 10-23 from behind the arc, and Kentucky was 4-32 (which made West Virginia's 1-3-1 matchup zone much better). This year WVU was 7-19 and Kentucky 6-18, so no decided edge from downtown for the Mountaineers. That allowed Kentucky to hang in long enough for their superior athleticism and length to take over. A part of the game I enjoyed: West Virginia has a blessed last minute-plus of the first half, with steals, easy buckets, and cheap foul calls go their way, and Bob Huggins still looked asleep for his brief interview with the sideline reporter at halftime.
Florida-UCLA was a really entertaining game, and UCLA had enough length to bother Florida, but not enough to take over. Florida ran some really nice offensive sets, and surprisingly (to me) did a lot of their damage in the paint against UCLA's brickhouse, Smith. This game also brought a new term to the masses: the man-jam. Apparently it means very manly slam dunk (thanks, Ian Eagle). I vote we never utter this word again.
I'll be honest, I didn't see much of Richmond-Morehead State. Not too surprised Richmond won a yawner, as Morehead State pretty clearly emptied their load in the Louisville game. Richmond seemed to have a little more substance to their upset, given their run through the A10 tournament and the overall strength of their conference versus Morehead State's.
Temple put up a heck of a fight against San Diego State, and San Diego State's big men need some practice on their outlet throws. In the second overtime, they threw away an inbounds pass out of a timeout from under the basket, and then after securing a rebound, another big man threw a lazy lob over a Temple defender that didn't actually clear said defender. That being said, eventually SD State's size was too much at both ends, as Temple just couldn't get enough easy shots to keep up by the second overtime.
No comments:
Post a Comment