Tuesday, March 06, 2007

NCAA Hoops Round-Up: God's Chosen Team in a 16 seed?

Mid-Continent Conference

Oooh, Mid-Continent. That's a bit of hyperbole. It's more like, "In The Middle of Fucking Nowhere" Conference. Regardless, Oral Roberts University defeated Oakland (as in Oakland, in Rochester, Michigan. Sweet, beautiful Rochester, Michigan). 71-67 Some of you younger readers may not know much about the Legendary Founder of Oral Roberts University, Oral Roberts. Oral was a humble televangelist. He didn't really found Oral Roberts University, you see, God told him to put a school there. Oral also went on TV and said, in essence, "Give me 8 million dollars or God is going to kill me." He got it. Classy. Anyway, despite the obvious and laughable nature of the school, this team is actually probably pretty damn dangerous for what is a likely 15 or 16 seed. If you really want to off the beaten path in your brackets, you'd could do crazier things that put this team as a first round upset. Their pair of starters, Tutt & Green, have been around for awhile and are prolific scorers. They'll be fun.


Horizon League -- Eat it, underqualified Major Conference Bubble Team!

Finally, in a small conference, a team with a resume to go the Dance without a Conference Tournament Final win got upset! Butler is ranked #17 or #19 in the country, depending which poll you read, and they are going into March Madness no matter what. It doesn't matter that they got beat tonight by Wright State 60-55. Wright State was emphatically Not Going until this victory. I personally hope this means Purdue is left out, which I find to be the most inexplicable Bubble Team in recent memory. This is the second time I've seen Butler's AJ ("If Steve Nash had been raised by Wolves") Graves, and this was his second off performance. He had moments where it looked like he might take over the game, but they were only moments. This guy is supposed to a crazy gym rat shooter and assist man, and I just haven't seen it yet. Butler would be wise to let this guy rest a bit--it looks like he could use it. The game belonged to Wright State's DaShaun Wood, who particularly in the first half, was just fucking unstoppable. For the game, he scored 27 points, on efficient 9-15 shooting, and hit big 3's whenever it seemed Butler was about to make a run.


Sun Belt Conference

Here's a guaranteed 16 seed come Sunday. The North Texas Mean Green, the #5 seed in the fucking Sun Belt, are moving on, after knocking off Arkansas State 83-75. They did so on the strength of Calvin Watson hitting his first 5 3-point attempts That's all I'm willing to write about The Mean Green.

1 comment:

Zach Landres-Schnur said...

So Wright State. Not sure how i feel about that.

(Oh, and the word verification was "Shatbig." not sure how i feel about that either.)