At the horn!

Looks like the basketball gods noticed my complaining from yesterday, because today we had:

* Western Kentucky "upsetting" Drake at the overtime buzzer, a shot good enough that it mitigates the fact that you could easily argue that WKU and Drake weren't as far apart as the seeds (5/12) might indicate. WKU was 27-6, Drake 28-4; WKU beat major conference teams Michigan and Nebraska and lost close games to Gonzaga and Tennessee (both on neutral courts), and their only conference losses were to South Alabama. Drake rolled through its conference at 15-3 and beat both Iowa and Iowa State (the latter in a serious whipping), but was it any more tested? I would argue that the Bulldogs were probably less tested, and though they showed a lot of fight in coming back from a sizable second-half deficit, it's probably not too surprising that they lost, compared to some 5-12 matchups. Also, how about Adam Emmenecker, the MVC player of the year, going 0-for-10 from the floor in this game? Possibly the worst postseason offensive performance by a conference player of the year since Coastal Carolina's Jack Leasure took a dump at midcourt in the 2006 Big South title game. At least Emmenecker had 14 assists and was 11-for-12 from the charity stripe, but just think - if he goes 1-for-10, they probably win in regulation.

* The best upset of the tournament so far, San Diego over UConn in the 4-13 game out West. As with WKU/Drake, this game was played in Tampa, and it was a good one from what I was able to see - San Diego held a slim lead pretty much all game, and they really took it to UConn. When the game went to overtime, I thought it was over, but San Diego never backed down a bit, and that last shot was stone-cold. Kind of funny that San Diego is suddenly the WCC's standard-bearer what with Gonzaga getting shot out of the tournament by Stephen Curry and St. Mary's going down in a heap.

* The most lopsided upset, in my opinion, in history. The only #13 (or lower) seed ever to win a first-round game by more points than Siena's 83-62 romp over Vanderbilt was Navy over LSU by 23 in 1985, the first year that 13 seeds existed. The next year Navy went to the Elite Eight, so it's not clear to me that they should have been a 13 at all that first year; they had a center in David Robinson who was incredibly dominant. Siena did beat Stanford earlier this year, but they also lost by 12 to James Madison (a bad CAA team) and were 0-3 against other teams in the field, including losses to St. Joe's and Cornell and a 102-58 throttling by Memphis. So maybe this was a little unexpected. Siena got 30 points from Kenny Hasbrouck - double his season average - and 19 points from Tay Fisher off the bench, as he went 6-for-6 from three-point range. If they shoot 57% every game - and 88% from the line! - the Saints are going to be a tough out, especially since Villanova isn't a very big team either. Could we see the first MAAC Sweet 16 participant ever?

* The Tampa subregional, possibly the wackiest since unbundling and almost certainly the most interesting since 2001 in Boise. All three of the games I just mentioned? They were played in Tampa. In all four time slots, Tampa had either the best game or the biggest upset, and aside from the Siena game I'd say all of them were probably both.

In fact, outside of the Tampa games, only Davidson's win over Gonzaga was a particularly close or interesting game. Butler/South Alabama, which on paper seemed like it could be a fun one, turned into a blowout, and most of the others looked fairly dull. I guess Mississippi State coming back on Oregon was okay, but then Oregon basically shot their way out of that game. Here's a stat for you - the Ducks were 9-for-38 from long-range. What? At some point don't you just have to stop firing from out there, especially when it's still a close game and you don't need threes? That second half must have been just painful (I only saw a few minutes, and they were, in fact, pretty painful). American gave Tennessee a little scare but ended up losing by 15, and the rest of the games were mostly either tedious, generally unappealing, or both (such as UNC whomping on the Mount).

The Tampa subregional was also the first ever subregional to have all four lower-seeded teams win, which the announcers were touting during the waning moments of Nova's win, although I don't consider that terribly meaningful since until unbundling started in 2002, every subregional would have to have either a 1-16 or 2-15 game. (And even on the four times a #15 did win, you'd also have to have the #14 pull the upset at the same time, which didn't happen for any of them.)

What is somewhat interesting is that this is the first time ever that two regions (in this case, the West and Midwest) have had their 4 and 5 seeds get unceremoniously dumped out of the first round in the same tournament. There have been a handful of 12-13 second round matchups before - most recently Gonzaga and Indiana State in 2001 - but never two in the same tournament. That's pretty cool. It also guarantees us two double-digit seeds in the Sweet 16, remembering of course that last year we had zero.

So as lame as yesterday was, yeah, I'd say today pretty much made up for it. Matchups to watch tomorrow: well, I don't think I'd bother with Kansas-UNLV or UCLA-Texas A&M, but aside from those I think they all have the potential to at least be decent.