UConn Basketball

First Round Madness

What an exciting round of basketball, and personally, I am exhausted from it.  After waking up at nine a.m. and watching all day, I must say I feel stressed out.  But March Madness is amazing.  The passion, upsets, buzzer beaters, intensity, it was all experienced in the first round.  For some, the dream of cutting down the nets is still alive, but an unlucky 32 will have to wait until next year.  

•  Teams That Impressed
• Arkansas, UNC, UCLA, Siena, USD, Pitt, K-State.

Ever since the Big East tournament, Pitt looks like a team on a mission.  They are determined, playing great D, and with Fields back, they look like the team who defeated Duke earlier this season.  Arkansas has great athleticism, and really played well against Indiana, I think that they can give UNC a run for their money.  I can’t believe that I am saying this, but I think Arkansas can upset the Heels.   

• Sluggish-But Got the Job Done
• Duke, Xavier, Tennessee

Duke really struggled against Belmont, and I think they should have lost that game.  Coach K better have them ready for the red hot Mountaineers.  Xavier was down early to Georgia, but battled back against the resilient Bulldogs.  Xavier has the balance, but Purdue is a tough out, the Musketeers will have to play hard for a full forty minutes, unlike the twenty they came with against Georgia.  I hope coach Pearl wakes up Tennessee, if they play like they did against American, then there could be some problems.  

•  Team MVP
• Stephen Curry, Davidson

Curry willed the Davidson Wildcats to victory with 40 points and 8 three pointers.  He hit clutch shots, and scored almost half of Davidson’s points.  Curry poured in 30 points in the second half!  The kid is amazing, he is the go-to-guy, and is the reason why the Wildcats won this game.   

• Games of the Tournament
• (5) Drake vs (12) Western Kentucky , (7) Gonzaga vs (10)Davidson, (13) USD vs (4) Connecticut

 The upset of Drake takes the cake in this one, that DEEP three pointer at the end of overtime was amazing.  That shot will be one seen in the highlights for a very long time.  Gonzaga and Davidson was just a great battle, the Zags seemed to have the upper-hand most of the game, but Davidson and Stephen Curry kept battling back and pulled away in the final minute.  USD’s enormous win over Uconn in overtime is the biggest upset so far, with their two best players fouling out in overtime, they still found a way to win against the mighty Huskies. 

The Biggest Losers: Uconn and Clemson

I’m sure glad that I’m not a Connecticut or Clemson fan after tonight.  There are a couple different kinds of upsets, and these two games personified the extremes.  In one corner we have the Clemson, the Tigers were coming off an already heartbreaking loss to Duke in the ACC championship, but made a lot of people believers when they got the number five seed for the tourney.  Clemson came out and dominated the first half, going into the break they were up twelve and seemed like nothing could go wrong.  But just like we have seen before, here comes another typical Clemson collapse.  Missed free-throws, turnovers, questionable shots, and lapses on defense.  There was a five minute span where the Tigers did not score a field goal.  I really do like Clemson’s team, they play very hard, they are athletic, have great coaching, and have great players.  I just don’t get how they continually lose games that they are supposed to win year after year, after year.  They really blew a great chance at the Sweet 16, especially since Siena upset Vanderbilt.  If heartbreak city had a mayor, it would be Clemson.   Connecticut is an entirely different story than the Clemson Tigers.  Throughout the whole game it really seemed like Uconn was lackadaisical, sluggish, and I got the impression that they just did not care.  Obviously they had so much more talent than the SAN DIEGO TOREROS.  There really is no excuse for an upper tier Big East team to lose to a regular season third place WCC team.  Honestly there are no positives for Uconn fans in this one.  Yes, AJ Price went down with an injury, but still that is no excuse to lose to a WCC team.  But I’ll give San Diego credit, they were not intimidated one bit by the Huskies and it showed.  While Connecticut waited around for someone to make a play, San Diego WAS making plays.  Pomare and Johnson played like warriors and knocked off a giant.  

 ”The thing I put on the board: Don’t let them get a sniff that we’re two equal teams,” UConn coach Jim Calhoun said. “We allowed them to believe that it wasn’t going to be what everybody said it was going to be.” AP. 

Hopefully next time the Huskies will listen to their coach.  

Uconn Basketball its going to be a long season…

Ok so I finally was able to watch the season opener for my Uconn Huskies last night against Morgan State and I came to the conclusion it going to be a long season. I didn’t really see anything different from last years debacle of a season. The team still has no chemistry, can’t shoot out side worth a dime (the only thing I think they could shoot was their way out of a drug deal) and they are still running around like they don’t know what they are doing. They barely beat Morgan State which is really one step above a high school team. Their lack of outside shooting is really going to kill us. Calhoun seemed very upset at the end of last year but I didn’t see any of the changes he professed were going to be made. No new players no real changes at all. Well we will see as they continue in this tournament if you can call it that.