March Madness Day 5, Part 1

Syracuse 64 - Wisconsin 63
That was the game Wisconsin needed to play. They kept the game (relatively) low scoring, they hit 52% of their three pointers (important since they were 7-for-22 on two point shots), and they had the ball down 1 with 15 seconds to play. And that possession will haunt everyone on that Wisconsin team for a looooong time. The ball never got past the free throw line in that possession, and was outside the three point line for most of it. Bo Ryan will have nightmares about not calling his last timeout with 6-7 seconds left when it was clear his team didn't have a plan they could execute on their own.

In my 3rd year of coaching the Brown Women's Frisbee A-team, we were seeded 11th in the 16-team regional tournament. We found ourselves in an elimination game against 4th seeded Wesleyan (who had beaten us in the previous tournament). Well, Brown came out and played a tremendous game, going up 11-7 on Wesleyan. Then Wesleyan stromed back, getting it to 11-11. Because there was no air-horn letting us know the time constraints (frisbee is played to points, but the rounds can't go beyond a certain time limit), I didn't realize this 11-11 point was our last one. Brown worked the disc near the end zone and then we stalled. I had a time out to use and didn't use it, we turned the disc over, Wesleyan went down and scored, and won the game, ending our season. I coached the team for 4 more years, with plenty of terrific moments and some less than stellar ones. I still vividly remember the end of that game and my inaction.

Would the time out have made a difference in either case? Maybe, maybe not. But in the end, the coach could have done something to give the team a slightly better chance and didn't do it. Those are the situations that keep you up at night. And in my case I was effectively a volunteer coach at a game with practically no spectators. Ryan is a highly compensated coach in front of millions.

Louisville 57 - Michigan State 44
Aaaaaaaaand there goes my bracket. Louisville's pressure D flustered Michigan State, and Louisville's bigs were better. MSU relied too much on Draymond Green to provide their offense (you could see it against St. Louis in the previous round, offense was simply hard for MSU) and he wasn't able to carry them past a motivated Louisville team that believes in itself. Could the 2012 Louisville Caridnals be the 2011 Connecticut Huskies? Both rode a Big East tournament streak to the conference title and a better seed than their season deserved, and rode that streak to an impressive tournament run. Now all that stands in Louisville's path to the Final Four is either a lower seeded Florida team, or a Marquette team that Louisville swept during the season. Heck of a game by the Cardinals, they broke Michigan State's will in that second half.