NCAA Men's Basketball Recap 3/4/2022: The kids are hungry
As we saw last weekend, things are really starting to get crazy in the NCAA. The tournament is right around the corner and some teams are so close they can see it and taste it. They are doing everyting they can to pad their resumes going into the conference touranments. Teams that have dominated all season are starting to show some cracks and teams that have kind of languished are rising to the top. It is an exciting time of year!
Sadly, for my Michigan State Spartans they seem to be proving that this might have been a rebuild year. They started out so well at the beginning of the season, but the wheels have kind of fallen off at this point. I don't know if it is lack of focus or what, but they need to pick things up if they are even hoping to make it to the tournament this year.
The thing that probably annoys me the most is the game they dropped to Michigan this week didn't even need to be played. It was a make-up game that MSU could have absolutely declined to play. Instead, they traveled over to Ann Arbor and got their butts handed to them. Pretty sad. It's annoying hearing all the trash talk from the U of M fans too. I really hope they don't make it to the tournament this year.
Monday brought us four top 25 games. None of them were upsets, so let's move along to Tuesday.
The first day of March brought us nine top 25 games. There were a hanful of notable upsets that I should point out. #11 Villanova took down #9 Providence. Once again the Big East is looking interesting and I will definitely be remembering some of these games come tournament time. Either the whole conference is just really well matched or there are going to be some breakouts in the big dance.
Unranked Nebraska scored a big win against #23 Ohio State, and unranked TCU took down #6 Kansas in what was probably the biggest upset of the night. #8 Purdue was coming off their loss to Michigan State and allowed #10 Wisconsin to hit a last second buzzer beater to hand them their second loss in one week.
Wednesday brought us four top 25 games and half of those games ended in upsets. Unranked Creighton beat #18 UConn and unranked Texas A&M beat #25 Alabama. I think I should also point out that unranked LSU almost beat #14 Arkansas only falling short by one point.
Finally, Thursday brought us six top 25 games. As I mentioned earlier, Michigan State fell to both U of M and Ohio State this week. Talk about disappointing. The good news is, U of M also lost to Iowa on Thursday night while MSU was losing to Ohio State. The Big 10 Tournament is going to be very important for both of the teams from Michigan. Their performance in that tournament will likely determine whether or not they make it to the NCAA tournament.
Speaking of conference tournaments, those start tonight with two teams playing in the Ohio Valley Conference.
As for me, I will be eithe watching or getting updates concerning my nieces. They faced adversity on Tuesday night and turned the tables on the one team that had beat them in the regular season. They pretty easily came away with the win to advance to the regional finals tonight.
The matchup tonight is one that has been a long time coming. They are playing a team that they beat in the tournament last year. Sadly, this team from Reynoldsburg, OH, has pretty poor sportsmanship. At least some of the players and their family do. There is a player on the team who has been heckling and trolling my nieces team on Twitter basically all year.
Thankfully, my nieces coach took a "do not engage" stance, so basically it has just been a one sided afair. It's still pretty classless and tasteless if you ask me. These are high school kids and the father of this girl is just being obnoxious and childish.
The sad thing is, his attitude is rubbing off to his daughter. In a recent article she stated that "(my nieces team) didn't deserve to win last year, we beat ourselves". Sorry, but if you beat yourselves as you say, then it was your team that didn't deserve to win. You just got out played. Own up to it and do better. Stop making excuses.
My hope is that my nieces are able to come out victorious tonight. If not, I know they will handle the loss with a grace and dignity that will likely not be afforded to them if the tables turn the other way.
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