Last nights sweet 16 games were all of what you expect out of March Madness. PLENTY of excitement, tons of commercials, bad coaching decisions and horrible referees.
In the first game we had Vanderbilt leading Georgetown virtually the entire first half with the second half turning into a true back and forth battle. The entire game can really be summed up in the last 15 seconds. Georgetown has the ball down one and run an extremely sloppy out of control play finished off with Jeff Green banking in the winning bucket with 2.5 seconds left. Vanderbilt immediately takes the ball out and tries to dribble the length of the court in less than 3 seconds and settles for a desperation heave from half court. Upon further review it became abundantly clear that Green traveled badly on the play. Just a terrible missed call that cost one team the game and awarded it to another. This is indeed somewhat of a theme for the NCAA tournament. They are paying these refs quite a bit of money. You would think they could fin some that are competent, but please don't look in the ACC. For a conference that has the best basketball most every year, they easily have the worst referees. But that's not even the whole story. How does Vanderbilt, holding 2 time outs, not call one after the basket. With 2.5 seconds left you can't dribble the length. You need at least 4-5 seconds for that. You HAVE to throw a long pass to give yourselves a chance. Everyone on the planet has seen the Duke/Kentucky play from 92. Coaches have been using adaptations of this play for years.. a perfect example would be Valparaiso with Bryce Drew several years back. You absolutely have to call a timeout there and set up the home run pass. If it doesn't work, so be it, but it gives your team a better chance than 2 dribbles and a half court shot. An absolutely horrible call courtesy of Stallings to end a game. This is the kind of thing coaches should be fired for. At the very least publicly admonished, which is what I am doing here.
The second game of the night was a really sloppy and in my opinion horribly played game between USC and North Carolina. All North Carolina was trying to do the entire game was outrun USC down the court, and failing that, they had nothing. USC only had a few attempts at one on one moves and a forced shot. Some really crappy offense was featured in this game. The story of the game for most was North Carolina's INCREDIBLE 16 POINT 2ND HALF COMEBACK. I will honestly give them credit for sticking with it and trying to make plays. They did have some incredible luck down that stretch that bears mentioning, as well as some very helpful calls, and a terribly coached USC team. All those things allowed for the comeback to happen. First off, Marcus Ginyard came up huge. Big time put backs left and right. UNC won that game based on second chance buckets alone. They couldn't make a jumper to save their lives, but always seemed to have a man that wasn't blocked out with a free run to the hoop for the put back. This is where USC coaching comes into play. How hard is it to block out. Do you not hear from every coach at every level that you have to do it. So how does a D1 college team so spectacularly fail at it. My blame goes on Tim Floyd, instead of throwing a hissy fit over bad foul calls, perhaps a timeout and a little focus on blocking out and running some offense would have helped. Maybe he did do that and his guys didn't listen or respond.. If thats the case, don't look for USC to ever do anything important while he's coaching there. It will just get worse as far as players ignoring the coach once OJ Mayo is there. To me, that was the game, but one of the biggest reasons for the ability to get offensive rebounds at will was the loss of Taj Gibson for most of the second half for USC. He was whistled for his 4th foul with about 12 minutes remaining. It was a VERY soft foul. Extremely suspect in my opinion. It all but lost the game for USC, and it was terrible. Hansbrough would play 3 minutes a game if those fouls were called on him. When he finally reentered the game with 8 minutes left, the lead was gone and the momentum was completely out of the Trojans. They were absolutely devastated in the 4 minute span. A timeout may have helped, but again.. Tim Floyd was coaching.
Thursday nights theme was well played and great basketball. Friday nights was sloppy play, bad calls and horrible coaching moves. I admittedly did not see any of the games from the Midwestern region, but from what I can tell, they were pretty similar to the ones from the east. Plenty of close games last night. but that doesn't always mean they were good.
