It's been a pretty thrilling week as far as basketball goes. Things are finally starting to wind down though. My niece played the last game of her high school career last night and it was just one of those nights where nothing seemed to go right. On the flip side, my nephews team had a couple big wins in his seventh grade contests that we went and watched Tuesday and Wednesday.
It added up to some late nights for us, but it was really a great time. It's always fun watching the little ones giving it their all. Then we have the college season that is rushing towards March at a fevered pace. I can hardly believe we are almost ready for "Selection Sunday".
As I said, my nieces team had a rough go of it last night in their first (and last) game of the playoffs. They just couldn't get anything to fall and when your team is so one dimensional that they rely heavily on three point shots, that is going to come back to bite you. To the credit of the other team, they came out to play and they had some amazing defense. In fact, they held my nieces team to just 2 points in the whole first half of the game.
It was horrible. I've said it in the past that my niece was kind of over the season and ready for softball to start anyway, but she isn't the kind of person to just roll over. Despite her attention being primed for softball, she still gave it 110% every time she was on the court. In fact, they actually had her covering the point guard instead of the position she usually covers. Simply because she is such an defensive beast.
They did manage to claw their way back, but it was too little too late. I put a lot of the blame on the coach for allowing the team to get to the point where they couldn't recover or pivot from something like this. There were also some pretty horrible calls by the officials. We were watching the stream of the game and you could hear my brother in law quite clearly barking at the refs. I'm shocked he didn't get asked to leave. I wouldn't be surprised if he did get asked to quiet down.
As I said, my nephews team had a couple of really good wins over the past two days. My nephew doesn't get to play a lot, but there were a lot of players who tried out for the team, so the fact that he even made it onto the team in the first place is pretty impressive. It was great to watch him play and I think with some practice he is going to be a really great defender.
As I said, things are getting exciting in the NCAA.
Last Thursday we had two games in the top 25 and neither of them were upset victories.
Friday there were zero games in the top 25, but then on Saturday we had fifteen games in the top 25.
(16) Wisconsin had a huge upset win over (7) Purdue who seems to be on a bit of a slide. The final score was 94 to 84 and this is just another loss to tack onto the one Michigan handed them and then Michigan State later in the week.
Probably the biggest match up of the week was (1) Auburn at (2) Alabama. Auburn handed Bama a 94 to 85 loss and they continue to stay at the top of the rankings. This loss by Alabama could push them down a notch and bring Duke into the number 2 spot.
(22) Mississippi State took down (19) Ole Miss 81 to 71, and Texas upset (15) Kentucky 82 to 78. (11) Michigan State had a huge win over Illinois at Illinois 79 to 65. You might remember I was very worried about that game. Finally, Utah beat (17) Kansas 74 to 67. It's nice to see Kansas trending down considering they were the number 1 team in the country at the beginning of the season.
Sunday gave us five games in the top 25 for what the sports channels were billing rivalry weekend. Wichita State upset (14) Memphis 84 to 79 in overtime. (20) Michigan had a close but big win over Ohio State 86 to 83. So big in fact that it somehow propelled them past Michigan State in the rankings. I don't quite get that, but whatever.
Monday there were only two games in the top 25 and neither one of them was an upset.
Tuesday gave us nine games and it started off with a bang when (21)Mississippi State took down (7) Texas A&M 70 to 54. (14) Michigan State followed suit beating (13) Purdue 75 to 66. It appears I was wrong about Duke taking over the number 2 spot because now Florida is sitting there. This ranking system seems pretty arbitrary to me at this point!
TCU upset (9) Texas Tech 69 to 66, and BYU gave (23) Kansas another blow stomping them 91 to 57.
Finally, last night there were four games in the top 25. (15) Missouri beat (4) Alabama 110 to 98 in the only upset of the night.
There is a game tonight, but my focus is going to be on tomorrow night when (14) Michigan State takes on (12) Michigan in Ann Arbor. This is a big game for Sparty and I hope they show up for it. The last thing we need is for U of M to have more bragging rights. They are already insufferable!
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