I'm still amazed to hear that Tubby Smith is coming to Minnesota. Feel free to camp out on http://www.startribune.com/ and read more stories which I hope to comment on soon. Sid Hartman's column title expresses my feelings perfectly. "Maturi hits jackpot."
As for Thursday's games:
1) What strategy did Kansas employ that I would label brilliant? With 25 seconds left and 14 seconds on the shot-clock and a 1 point lead, Kansas ran its offense and got a good shot for Rush. Most teams would have waited until 11 seconds left in the game and taken a bad shot and given the other team a chance to win at the end. Instead Kansas gave themselves a more comfortable lead and only had to prevent the tying three pointer. Most teams wait much too long to initiate their offense in these late game situations, and I salute Kansas for playing smart.
2) Has there ever been a more clutch set of offensive rebounds? Memphis grabbed 4 offensive rebounds in the final 33 seconds and finally got the foul and the win. Given their CUSA schedule, we never had a real chance to evaluate Memphis, but THIS-JUST-IN, this team is good. Playing in a hostile environment, the limited number of Memphis fans made a lot of noise, and the team was unfazed by a Texas A&M team that played tough until the final seconds.
For the record, I think the reason 1.1 seconds ran off is because the ball bounced inbounds one time before hitting a chair out of bounds, but it still bums me out. I would have liked to have seen Acie Law get one more shot whether he made it or not.
3) What happened in the UCLA game? No honestly, what happened? The box score tells me Pittsburgh had a 7 minute second half drought where they scored 1 point. That's just not going to cut it in the Sweet Sixteen. But, I didn't see the end of the game because I was watching OSU vs Tennesee.
4) Is Ohio St. a team of destiny? Or is Ohio St. vastly overrated? I don't really care what the answer is, I'm just happy we get to ask the question one more time. I didn't believe for a second when Tennessee was up 20 that the game was over. (See Notre Dame vs Winthrop). But, after Tennessee squandered the lead I thought they'd be disheartened and fold. I was shocked to see Tennessee hit a few more big threes and take the lead again. And when Conley missed a pair of free throws, I began to wonder if the annoucers were right and OSU used too much energy coming back. But then there was Ron Lewis hitting a big corner three again. How many wild swings can a game have? Despite the fact that OSU couldn't get Oden the ball on the final possessions, he did get the big block and OSU moves on.