It's safe to say there was no shortage of sports to keep me entertained this past weekend. Between the NCAA regular season coming to a close for the men, the World Baseball Classic happening around the globe, my niece playing softball down in Virginia, and the women's basketball conference tournaments happening, I was busy. I even found some time to watch a bit of darts one of the days. I could start the week covering any number of those topics, but I think I am going to stick with men's basketball as we now need to get ready for the conference tournaments that are happening across the nation this week.
Actually, the conference tournaments started last week for many of the smaller schools and conferences in the nation. In fact, there are already a handful of schools that have punched their ticket to the big dance next week.
Meanwhile, the power conferences finished up their regular season games this weekend and now we get to watch them face off in a battle royal to see who will work their way into the national tournament.
There were two games in the top 25 on Friday night as far as I can tell. Probably the biggest game of the two and maybe even the biggest game of the year was the match up between number 19 Miami of Ohio and Ohio University. Despite the mismatch in records with Miami of Ohio sitting at 30-0 and Ohio at 15-15, they made a game of it taking it into overtime before Miami took them down 110 to 108 to secure their perfect season. They now sit at 31-0 on the season and we will see if they can keep their streak alive in the conference tournament.
If my math is right, it looks like there were 14 games in the top 25 on Saturday. It's a bit hard for me to count and scroll through all the other lower conference tournament games that were happening in division I over the weekend. Number 20 Arkansas had a close call against Missouri, but they were able to pull out the win 88 to 84 in overtime. In probably the biggest upset of the day, Marquette took down number 4 Connecticut 68 to 62.
Number 24 Vanderbilt upset number 23 Tennessee 86 to 82, and Louisville had a nice win over number 22 Miami 92 to 89. George Mason upset number 25 Saint Louis 86 to 57, and Wisconsin added to the pain that number 15 Purdue has been experiencing lately beating them 97 to 93. This is a good win for Wisconsin heading into the tournament. They have some big wins over some ranked opponents. I wouldn't be shocked to see them as a three or four seed at the national level. Meanwhile, Purdue has struggled after starting the season ranked in the top five.
Finally, BYU had a big upset over number 10 Texas Tech 82 to 76 on Saturday. I guess they were looking for a little payback after Texas Tech ruined their football teams perfect season late last year.
There were about three games played in the top 25 on Sunday, but for me the biggest one was the Michigan/Michigan State game with the number 3 team facing the number 8 team. I didn't have a lot of hope for my Spartans, but I think they kept the game close and I am quite proud of them. The ten point loss for MSU isn't a very good indication of how the game went. They fought hard and even had U of M on their heels for a bit, so I think this bodes well for MSU heading into the national tournament. I think the biggest issue I have is the undue attention paid to Fears Jr. It's like they are just trying to find stuff to ding him for now. Let the kids play. I get that Fears might have done something questionable earlier in the season, but that doesn't mean every time he loses his balance he should be T'd up.
AS coach Izzo pointed out, he is under a microscope now, and it is ridiculous.
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