Fans of March Madness upsets were spoiled with a flurry of them during the first two rounds of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
The Sweet 16, which starts on Thursday, features teams from 11 conferences, with five of those squads hailing from non-BCS leagues.
Butler (Horizon League) and Xavier (Atlantic 10) are no strangers to the second week of action, but Northern Iowa (Missouri Valley), Saint Mary’s (West Coast) and even Cornell (Ivy League) are also helping take meaning out of the term “mid major.”
UC Santa Barbara’s first-round loss to Ohio State rendered the Big West Conference a one-and-done league for the fifth straight season, but other tournament underdogs are making the most of their one shining moment.
Bracket busted
No. 9-seed University of Northern Iowa provided the biggest shocker of the tournament thus far with its 69-67 win over No. 1-overall seed Kansas in Saturday’s Midwest Region second round.
UNI guard Ali Farokhmanesh’s dagger 3-pointer dealt the deathblow to the heavily favored Jayhawks’ national championship aspirations — along with millions of office pool tournament brackets.
ESPN.com reported that of the roughly 4.78 million brackets submitted to its Tournament Challenge game, 98 percent had the Jayhawks in the Sweet 16. Of the entries completed, 59 percent picked Kansas to advance to the Final Four and 42 percent had Bill Self’s squad winning it all.
And that was just one of many scenarios that turned the first weekend upside down.
Wild, wild, West Coast
Apparently, quality basketball is played on the left side of the Rocky Mountains.
Gonzaga, whom current Long Beach State head coach Dan Monson guided to the Elite Eight in 1999, won its annual NCAA first-round game before bowing out to Syracuse in the second round. But, fellow WCC member Saint Mary’s carried the league’s banner.
The No. 10-seeded Gaels stunned No. 2-seed Villanova in the South Region second round. After watching center — and self-proclaimed beast — Omar Samhan bulldoze through the Wildcats’ frontcourt to the tune of 32 points on 13-of-16 shooting, SMC looked like the favorite from a BCS conference, while over-seeded ‘Nova played like the undersized mid-major underdog.
Even No. 11-seed Washington, despite being from the brand-name Pacific-10 Conference, carries the Cinderella label into the Sweet 16 when considering how overlooked the league has been this season.
Well, at least one coast is living up to, perhaps exceeding, expectations.
Revenge of the nerds
No. 12-seed Cornell punched the Ivy League’s first ticket into the Sweet 16 since 1979, with upsets of No. 5 Temple and No. 4 Wisconsin in the East Regional.
While teams like Kentucky seek highly-touted freshmen that will likely bolt for the NBA after one year, Cornell provides a fresh approach to success by fielding a group of nine seniors that plays fundamentally sound basketball.
Coincidentally, the long-range gunners from Ithaca, N.Y. will next face John Calipari’s high-flying Wildcats in a matchup of contrasts. Calipari’s freshmen sensations will challenge a school known more for high SAT scores (insert Derrick Rose joke here) than its hoops program.
East coast bias indeed
Monson should take it easy on filling the 49ers’ slate with Big East opponents (they faced West Virginia and Notre Dame this season).
The opening rounds showed that playing Big East competition doesn’t seem to do much in preparing teams for the NCAA tournament.
The Big East sent eight teams to the NCAAs and only Syracuse and West Virginia survived through the first and second rounds.
In addition to losses by Villanova, No. 6 Marquette and No. 9 Louisville, the conference saw other high seeds handed humiliating defeats with No. 3 Georgetown dismantled by No. 14 Ohio and No. 6 Notre Dame bounced by No. 11 Old Dominion.
No. 3 Pittsburgh fell to No. 6 Xavier in the second round.
Too bad those ousted teams couldn’t fly Big East doormats DePaul and Providence out to their regional sites to rack up wins against. These losses truly exposed the conference.
Or maybe that’s just part of the madness.