Round 2 Preview

[Raji]

Mississippi State vs. Memphis (-9, 137 ½)
Tipoff: 4:45 p.m. ET

At halftime of the 8-9 pairing of Mississippi State and Oregon on Friday, it didn’t look good for the Bulldogs. Oregon was holding a comfortable lead on the strength of 7-of-17 shooting from beyond the arc and, as good a defensive team as Mississippi State is, there’s not much you can do about that kind of onslaught.

But Oregon’s hot hands fizzled in second half and Mississippi State was able to lock down on defense and slowly climb back into the game and eventually take the win and the cover. Still, it wasn’t an impressive win. Oregon was a questionable tournament team to begin with, considering the 13 losses on its schedule, and they still took the game to the Bulldogs in the first half.

Consider the competition the Bulldogs faced this year: they won the SEC West in a year when the conference was weaker than it’s been in decades, but when they faced stronger teams, they choked. They were just 3-6 SU and ATS against teams that made the tournament this year and two of those wins came against Kentucky and Georgia early in the season before those teams had reached their potential.

Memphis will be by far the toughest team the Bulldogs have faced and they haven’t seen anything like the dribble-drive motion offense John Calipari's Tigers have raised to an art form. The pointspread reflects the disparity between these two teams, but judging by the way Memphis came out of the gate in this tournament, it looks like they are looking to win big.

Pick: Memphis -9

Oklahoma vs. Louisville (-7 ½, 126)
Tipoff: 5 p.m. ET

If you haven’t been watching much of the Oklahoma Sooners this season, you’d be shocked with how good the team has gotten. This is a team that only went 9-7 in its Big 12 schedule and lost to every legitimate squad in the conference and even a couple of the bottom feeders (Colorado?) so it’s not surprising a lot of people scratched OU off their brackets in the first round.

Everybody already knew they could play defense and it wasn’t a huge surprise that they held St. Joe’s to 22 points in the first half, but watching this team move the ball on offense on Friday night was shocking. How could they have averaged only 68 points a game? Longar Longar, who looked indecisive and timid earlier in the season, played like a first-round NBA pick with incredible athleticism, powerful finishes and graceful moves. Blake Griffin is a much better passer than he gets credit for. He looked like a point guard in the closing minutes when he spun away from his defender and made a quick bounce pass to Longar for a dunk. David Godbold also played well and the Sooners did all this against a defensively strong St. Joe’s team.

Oklahoma might be one of the better six-seeds your likely to see. Having said that, they’re in tough against Louisville. Earlier in the year, this was one of the most frustrating teams in the country. Maybe it’s because Rick Pitino likes to challenge himself as a coach, but he always seems to recruit ultra-talented players with serious attitude problems – Derrick Caracter is Exhibit A.

But Pitino says his players have finally “bought in” and they’re playing within his system. That system includes a very tough zone defense, which managed to hold Boise State to 61 points even though center David Padgett went to the bench early with two fouls and played only 19 minutes.

With two strong defenses in this second-round game that allow 63 and 61 points per game respectively, this will be a slow-paced, grind-it-out game. That pace favors the more talented Louisville, but it will also make it hard to cover a spread of this size.

Pick: Oklahoma +7 ½

Arkansas vs. North Carolina (-11, 158)
Tipoff: 5:20 p.m. ET

It’s hard to take anything from Carolina’s opening-round game against Mount St. Mary’s because, in an amazingly counterintuitive example of game-planning, Mount St. Mary’s decided they’d try to run the floor with the Tar Heels. Maybe they didn’t get the memo that this is the top offense in the country. Not surprisingly, it resulted in a 39-point blowout and 113 points for UNC.

The one thing you could glean from that track meet was that Carolina will be fresh on Sunday. No starter played more than 25 minutes and Roy Williams got 15 players into the game. However, that raises the question: will the Tar Heels be fresh and focused or loose and out of synch against Arkansas? With Williams in charge, I'd wager on the former.

The Razorbacks had a much more demanding lead-in to this matchup. They slugged it out with the Indiana Hoosiers and eventually came away with the win and the cover. However, they had to pick their poison between Eric Gordon and D.J. White. They held Gordon to just eight points on three field goals, but White was able to operate more freely and harassed the Hogs for 22 points and nine rebounds. Armon Bassett also contributed 21 points. If White and Thomas were able to do that much damage, imagine what Ty Lawson and Tyler Hansbrough will do.

Pick: North Carolina

[Raji]

Siena vs. Villanova (-5, 145)
Tipoff: 12:10 p.m. ET

You don’t want to rain on a team’s parade, but while Siena played well in their upset of Vanderbilt, it was more a case of Vandy just not showing up. The MAAC has never won a second round game in the history of the confrence. This is not a Missouri Valley or Colonial Conference that regularly produces quality teams and makes noise in the tourney. This is the Siena.

The Saints' matchup zone gave Vanderbilt a lot of problems, particularly in the first half, but Vanderbilt depended heavily on the 3-ball all year and those shots just didn’t fall. As the Commodores went 4-of-20 from long-range, they got frustrated and a lethargic attitude set in, then voila: you’ve got yourself the biggest upset of the tournament.

Now imagine what a contrast Villanova will be to a Siena team that probably spent Friday night and all of Saturday patting each other on the back. Scottie Reynolds is the engine of the Wildcats team and quite possibly one of the best point guards in the country. Instead of a team that relies on perimeter shooting, Siena will see a patient, precise, dribble-drive offense and a stiff zone defense that slowly broke down a powerful Clemson scoring machine.

I hope Siena had fun yesterday, because the party is over.

Pick: Villanova -5

Miami vs. Texas (-6 ½, 140)
Tipoff: 2:12 p.m. ET

This is the biggest mismatch of the second round and judging by this pointspread, the oddsmakers are giving the Hurricanes too much credit. They surprised a lot of people with the way broke down a much-hyped St. Mary’s team, but let’s be realistic about that win: they beat the second (third?) best team from the WCC, which went 2-2 in the weeks leading up to the NCAA Tournament.

The Hurricanes lost 10 games this season. They got blown out by Virginia Tech in the ACC tournament and a one-point win over a questionable Duke team is their only noteworthy win this year.

Texas, on the other hand, is a certified national powerhouse. If you’ve been watching ESPN, you know that Bob Knight can’t stop singing the praises of Texas point guard D.J. Augustin. With Miami’s reliance on Jack McClinton, this will be a battle of backcourts, and with Augustin and his partner A.J. Abrams, the Longhorns will win that battle every time.

Pick: Texas -6 ½

Butler vs. Tennessee (-4, 140)
Tipoff: 2:30 p.m. ET

Butler’s first-round opponent, South Alabama, was supposed to be one of those dangerous small-conference teams based on a perfect ATS record against tournament teams (5-0). Well, either a lot has changed in South Alabama since then, or Butler is way better than they were getting credit for.

South Alabama never had a prayer in this game as Butler showed off one of the best backcourts in the tournament. Even though they faced good perimeter defense from the Jaguars, the Butler guards dribbled circles around their marks and bombed away with dead-eye accuracy from everywhere on the court. The Bulldogs were 50 percent from the field in the game and they were actually better than that (53 percent) from beyond the arc. Accuracy like that is almost impossible to defend and by the time the game was 10 minutes old, Butler was already well on the way to an easy victory.

But against Tennessee, the Bulldogs are going to have to be a bit more resourceful. You can’t count on being that accurate every time out, especially against the Volunteers which have one of the best perimeter defenses around, allowing only 30.9 percent three-point shooting. Butler got way with being outrebounded by the Jaguars, but the Volunteers will cause much more disturbance at the point and there will most likely be more missed shots. That’s when Butler’s terrible rebounding (ranked 304th in the nation) could come back to bite them.

Pick: Tennessee -4

San Diego vs. Western Kentucky (-5 ½, 131)
Tipoff: 2:40 p.m. ET

It seems that Las Vegas fell in love with the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers along with the rest of the country when Ty Rogers drained his overtime buzzer-beater to beat Drake as a 4-point underdog in the most thrilling game of the day. But 5 ½ points against the team that just beat UConn? Really?

Admittedly, that number seems a little out-of-whack at first glance, but when you consider that San Diego is a defensively-oriented team that scores only 65 points per game, the picture looks a little more clear.

Western Kentucky isn’t bad on defense either, but they also have a scary corps of scorers who will stretch the San Diego defense much more than UConn could without A.J. Price on Friday. Tyrone Brazleton was spectacular in the first round with 33 points against Drake, but he also got help from cold-blooded gunners like Courtney Lee, A.J. Slaughter, and Orlando Mendez-Valdez and some strong interior play from Jeremy Evans.

Eight Western Kentucky players played 18 minutes or more, so even though the game went to overtime, the Hilltoppers should be fresh as daisies in the second round. San Diego, however, had a physical overtime battle with UConn and four players put in more than 35 minutes, including Brandon Johnson who limped through the final minutes of the game with what appeared to be a pulled hamstring.

Pick: Western Kentucky -5 ½

Davidson vs. Georgetown (-5, 130)
Tipoff: 2:50 p.m. ET

Even though the lower-seeded Davidson went into their first-round game against Gonzaga as favorites (-2), they had to fight hard for a win over Gonzaga. What they showed was an impressive array of offensive weapons, Stephen Curry the best of them, and a scrappy mentality.

Gonzaga showed it didn’t get into the tournament based solely on brand recognition. They were tough inside, good in transition and accurate from the perimeter. They went into halftime with a lead mainly thanks to better than 50 percent shooting. Davidson went into halftime trailing by five, but coach Bob McKillop made the right adjustments and his team came out of the locker room and scored 19 points in the first eight minutes to pull back into the game.

That’s something that you can’t overlook about Davidson. Bob McKillop is the kind of coach that gets the most out of his players and can also manipulate the Xs and Os to put his team in a better position to win. He managed to overcome the size Gonzaga's advantage (the biggest player on the Davidson roster is 6-foot-8) mainly because they were able to pressure the Gonzaga guards and keep the ball out of the paint. Gonzaga got only nine field goals from their forwards in the game.

The challenge should be a little tougher against Georgetown and Roy Hibbert, but great outside shooting is the best equalizer and a player like Curry is irreplaceable. When was the last time you saw a college player put up 40 points in a game? Curry was insanely accurate, shooting 63 percent from the field and 4-of-6 from three-point range, which isn’t all that unusual for the sophomore, so the Hoyas better come prepared for more of the same.

But, while Gonzaga is athletic, they didn’t have the kind of guards that could stick to Curry. Georgetown does. If John Thomson III puts Jessie Sapp or Jonathan Wallace (or both) on Curry, they should be able to keep him in check. Other teams Davidson played this year who had strong guards were able to slow down Curry. He was held to 24 points against UNC on 8-of-22 shooting and 2-of-12 from downtown. UCLA was able to keep him to 15 points and 3-of-10 from beyond the arc. There’s also the possiblity that Curry will be a little worn out after putting in 39 minutes on Friday.

Pick: Georgetown -5


Raji

[Bobby O'Shea]

This is a complete chalk sheet for the most part, a few dogs have to bite again!! (I hope)

Bobby O

[bgoodzhawks]

The Pac-10 will win this tourny. Three od them in the final four - Georgetown, come play with us!

[bgoodzhawks]

Washington State and UCLA final. Lowest scoring game in finals history. WSU wins 58-55.

Look at the futures on WSU and San ZDiego and W Virginia.