NCAA Tourney Musings

Michigan:
When the tournament started, I had two competing thoughts in my head.  Michigan was a great team that just bogged down in the B1G, when the freshmen hit the wall and there was no let up to let them catch their breath.  Michigan was a team that rode hot shooting the first half of the season to hide their serious flaws of being inexperienced and mediocre on defense.  The first weekend of the tourney has highlighted the former thought as the correct one.  Without going all giddy school girl, OH MY GOD! Now that was an impressive couple of games from the Maize and Blue.  VCU and South Dakota State were never in their respective games against Michigan, on a weekend where Trey Burke's shot was missing and his decisions were, at times, lacking.  When the tourney started, I saw Kansas as a major road block and a favorite over Michigan.  Now...maybe not.

Wet blanket time! I love Mitch McGary. I love the development we've seen from him this season.  That being said, don't get overly excited from his opening weekend.  Both SDSU and VCU run guard-heavy lineups with underwhelming bigs.  SDSU's bigs were 6'8" and 6'7", VCU's Reddic was 6'9" and impressive but in foul trouble the whole game, the others bigs combined to play a total of 21 minutes. If you go into this weekend expecting a big game from McGary against Withey, you will be disappointed come Saturday.  He WILL struggle against Withey and we just need for his contributions to outweigh or be neutral to his struggles.

Andy Enfield:
This man is a god among men.  The anecdotes coming out about the Florida Gulf Coast coach are amazing. He is the greatest free throw shooter in NCAA history.  He is a great young coach of a team nicknamed Dunk City.  He helped found and is still involved with a company that has been valued at over $100 million.  He met his wife and they hit it off when he gave her a ride from New York to Boston so she could attend an NCAA tournament game.  Later that week, they had their first date in New York. The date: attend a St John's NIT game, with dinner at Taco Bell afterwards.  He proposed to his wife by hiding the ring in a box of Krispy Kreme donuts.  Did I mention that this is his wife?

The wife of Andy Enfield

That's right. Andy Enfield is married to a former supermodel who loves basketball, Taco Bell, and Krispy Kreme.  This man is living the dream. The tournament has been great so far, but my lasting takeaway (assuming no Michigan title) is that Andy Enfield is living every man's fantasy life and now occupies a spot high up on my list of amazing lives.

Updated Final Four prediction:

I am sticking with the four B1G schools.  Indiana looks the weakest, but I have no belief in Cuse, Marquette, or Miami to beat Indiana after they have a week to regroup.  So Michigan State vs Ohio State and Michigan vs Indiana in Atlanta is my current prediction.

Other unattached thoughts:

• I love buzzer beaters in the NCAA tourney. I love the group of play-by-play announcers CBS has accumulated for this year's tourney.  BUT, Gus Johnson was fired two years ago and since, we have had only 2 buzzer beaters: Aaron Craft's anti-climatic jumper against Iowa St and Vander Blue's driving layup against Davidson.  Neither were true buzzer beaters, as they left time on the clock and neither will be remembered as all-time great tourney moments.  Just saying, but it seems like CBS removing the Law of Gus from their tourney formula has led to a lack of exciting finishes.
• I am supremely impressed with the performance of the Pac-12.  I went into the weekend expecting a poor showing, and instead, we saw two teams from an underwhelming league move onto the Sweet 16.  That's more than two mid-major conferences I liked better: the Mountain West and Atlantic-10.  It'll be interesting to see what Dana Altman's Ducks and Sean Miller's Wildcats do this weekend, now that they are in to the upper echelon of 2013's edition of college basketball.