Evening Game Update: AKA You Didn't Really Think They Were Gonna Win Did You?

So, yours truly has the easiest draw of the night, as I will be giving you the recap on the following games. Kansas-Boston U, LIU-UNC, Purdue-St. Peter’s, Xavier-Marquette. Might as well have given me the Duke game. No Cinderella stories here people.We are talking about some over matched teams here folks, on every game. They can claim however they did not lay down in the second half like Tennessee did today though. So here is the bulk of the highlights:

Kansas 72 – Boston U 53 : Boston is a really scrappy team, and they did not give up without a fight in this case either. But when you put the nation’s #2 team up against one that probably couldn’t get into the Top 25 without someone doing it for them, you should expect that. Boston plays solid defense and does not have a bad offense, but when matched up against Bill Self’s group, they never really stood a chance. Kansas toyed with them for a little while, but this game was never in doubt, even before the tip went off. Kansas is going to have one of the easiest walks to the Final Four in recent history. They had better appreciate it. So condolences to the BU fans, and congrats for making it into the tournament. Unfortunately, the door is exit stage left.

UNC 102 – LIU 87 : UNC could not put the LIU squad away early like they hoped, so that they could rest their starters and make sure they had fresh legs for Sunday, but alas it still did not matter for UNC, as they finally knuckled down and stopped the pesky bunch from LIU. Not a lackluster performance by UNC, but nothing to write home to momma about either. UNC does not defend the 3 very well, and LIU made them pay the price for poor perimeter defense. If I were Roy Williams I would start working hard to get them to understand how to play tight man to man in a hurry. Because the next couple rounds will not be so easy to slack off on.

Kudos to Long Island U for hanging tough late. Long Island kept themselves in this game and got the margin down to 10 at the 1:55 mark, however, no Blackbirds singing in the dead of night here. I still say that UNC and Florida are the two worst #2 seeds in the history of the tournament.

Marquette 66 – Xavier 55 : As you can see from the photo above folks, Marquette really did play basketball before Dwayne Wade came along. Al McGuire was one of my favorite coaches, and I loved his color commentary for NBC all those years. But that was long ago, and now Marquette, even though they were the underdog in seeding, is making a new legacy after McGuire, and after Dwayne Wade and Bruce Pearl are gone, along with the old Warriors emblem which was totally cool. The Golden Eagles were all business tonight and they worked to advance. Not a lot of flash, not a lot of glitz, just pack your lunch and take it to the opponent basketball. Xavier looked somewhat out of sorts in this game, and Marquette took them out of their game plan and forced them to play the Golden Eagles’ game. It was never a blowout, but was not as close as the score either. In the end, Xavier just looked tired.

Purdue 65 – St. Peter’s 43 :

Again, not a game where anyone expected much and they were not disappointed. All of these lower seed teams are tough opponents when they are in their element, but when put up against Top 25 opponents on neutral courts, there is not much doubt as to the outcome. St. Peter’s was out gunned, out run, and out manned, and really had no business in this game at all, but Purdue did not turn on the afterburners until about the 10:00 mark of the second half. The score was bad, but the game itself was not much better. No fault to St. Peter’s who were set up to fail by the process of David vs. Goliath that the NCAA uses for their seeding. They play some tough defense, but they lacked the size and skill to hang with Purdue who was looking to take out some frustration on someone after their loss to Iowa a few days ago. Nick Leon and Co. can be proud of their efforts. So can Coach John Dunn. The turnaround they had this year is really a great story in college basketball.

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