I thought yesterday might have been my worst day ever at picking the ncaa tournament (I got only 2 of 8 games correct) but then today was so much worse, as my Georgetown Hoyas (#2 seed in the Midwest Region of the tournament) were upset by #10 seed Davidson, despite having a 17 point lead (!) in the second half. Total bummer for all of us hoyas.
my thoughts (non Hoyas probably will want to skip the rest of this post):
Big man Roy Hibbert's disappearing act finally killed us. We survived his goose egg in the Big East vs. Villanova but his 6 point performance today just did not get it done for us, and that was the end of that for us.
How do the refs call every touch foul all day long (47 fouls in the game) & then make no-call on the drive by Chris Wright with 20 seconds left? WTF? What's up with calling 47 fouls in a game anyway? Is that why we're watching? to see the refs blow their whistles? Ask Joe Kresse what he thought about the refs in last years final 4 - today was similar
I would have guessed about a zero chance of the Hoyas not playing next weekend in the sweet 16. Usually when the hoyas lose in the ncaas I at least have an idea that it's coming but I certainly did not ever expect us to lose to Davidson. I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised, since historically we do poorly in the ncaas when we don't win the big east tourney, like this year.
One of my GU friends emailed this:
"I only saw the last two minutes -- can someone tell me how we could shoot 63%, 55% for 3pters, out rebound them and still lose?? I know 47% from the foul line did not help -- what happened?"
That sure sounds like a recipe for a win to me. The main reason we lost was the free throw situation - they scored 24 on 30 attempts, and we only scored 8 on 17 tries. Almost half of the misses were by Vernon Macklin, who went 4 for 8, but he was only in the game because of Hibbert's constant foul trouble. So if you say the Hoyas lost because Macklin couldn't hit his free throws, did we really deserve to win today?
Lucky for me I got to see lots of the Tennessee-Butler game & still have no idea how Davidson caught up from that 17 point deficit. I guess I'll have to plunk down the 70 bucks next year for the "every game in the first 2 rounds" package - you win direcTV, NCAA & CBS. Your seeming cluelessness in determining what game to show has finally broken my spirit and you can have some more of my money.
Lastly, and this was the only hoops related thing that cheered me up all weekend, our friend Phil was visiting his folks in Omaha this week & lucky for him his alma mater UNLV was seeded to play there so he got to see them play (and win) in his home town. And even luckier for him, he got his pic taken with Grand-MaMa LJ himself, Larry Johnson. (Phil is the one on the right):
Added to post on Monday 3/24:
2 other things I noticed on the box score:
1) Georgetown had 20 turnovers to Davidson's 4. I doubt a team has ever won a game where they turned the ball over 16 times more than their opponent did.
2) Because of all the turnovers, we took 41 shots from the floor to their 57. I doubt a team has ever won a game where they took 16 fewer shots than their opponent did.
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