Re: College Basketball 2015-2016 - hitchhiking to Houston
The UConn women's game started at 11 this morning, put them on in the background while I was doing some chores.
They run one of the very best fast breaks I've ever seen. Rebound - Pass - Pass - Pass - one bounce layup. The ball touches the floor once; four different players touch it, each sprinting up the floor in lanes so that someone is almost always open.
Anyway, their opponent (Robert Morris) was clanking open jumpers, and also committing a few turnovers. 39 - 4 at the end of the first quarter, then with most of bench in for half the second quarter, 63 - 15 at the half. Just think, if Robert Morris made a few more shots, it might only be 51 - 27 instead.
Funny thing, so far the only time that a # 16 seed beat a # 1 seed was in the women's tournament, 1998. Harvard beat Stanford, which had lost two starters in the prior week or so. and Harvard was way under-seeded because back then, no one paid any attention to women's ball and they just assumed Harvard was worse than it actually turned out to be once you looked at a few metrics. Here is ESPN's retrospective on that game:
http://espn.go.com/espn/wire?id=3300407
Yesterday's Middle Tennessee State over MSU sure felt awfully close to a # 1 seed losing, though. and Georgetown was really lucky not to lose to Princeton in 1989.
If you've never read the Sports Illustrated "Long Form" story of that game, it is a great read and a really well-told story:
http://www.si.com/longform/princeton-georgetown/