[The Poet]

For some damn reason the nice weather has brought out all the nutz and bozos, so I've been pressed for time. Two very strange games last night:


Western Kentucky 59 - Mississippi Valley State 58 = The Delta Devils had this in the bag, with a 16-point lead and under 5 to play. Well, I guess an ugly loss was appropriate, as this was an ugly game by both teams, with the possible exception of the late run by the Hilltoppers.

BYU 78 - Iona 72 = In contrast, this was 2 halves of very good hoops, albeit from opposing sides. The Gaels came out like a vintage Loyola-Marymount or UNLV team and ran the Cougars off the court, building a huge 25-point lead. Then they ran themselves out of gas, and BYU made the adjustments on both ends to erase the largest deficit in NCAA history to advance.


Tonight's games:


Lamar vs. Vermont = This has the potential to be another close one, and will decide who gets to challenge my Tar Heels on Friday. Pat Knight does not have the players his daddy used to get, and isn't the floor general Bobby was either, but he does seem to have inherited Papa's sparkling personality. Outside of league play, his Cardinals have "good" losses against quality competition like Louisville, Ohio State, Kentucky, and George Mason, but their best wins were with Charlotte and Tennessee Tech. The Catamounts lost to such guys as South Florida, Harvard, and Saint Louis, but toss into that a terrible loss to the Binghamton Bearcats, who had only 2 Ws all year. VT did get a nice win against ODU, so give them that. As I'm not about to pick who I want UNC to face, I'll leave that up to you.

South Florida vs. California = Now this could actually be a pretty decent game, like that BYU/Iona one. The Bulls had no good wins outside the Big East, and considering how Cincy and Louisville played at times this year I'm not sure how good those Ws actually were. Yet they did lose to some good teams, like ODU, VCU, Kansas, and Southern Miss, so they learned some things from that. As for the Golden Bears, I count myself amongst those who don't believe the Pac-12 is as abysmal as many others feel. True, I see no quality wins outside the league for Cal, but losing to Missouri, San Diego State, and UNLV counts for something in my book . . . especially when you consider that Mizzou had them as about the ONLY "tough" non-conference opponent, whereas Cal at least tried to play somebody else. I'm leaning towards the Bulls here, but it would not shock me if the Bears could shock the nation. Remember last year the Pac-10 was bad-mouthed all year, yet did pretty well in the NCAAs.


If I get a chance I'll come back to talk of early action scheduled tomorrow, when the fun kicks off for real. But if I don't get that chance, I hope you'll do what I plan on starting noon tomorrow, and enjoy.