Friday, March 22, 2013

Awful Ending For Cincy; Kansas State

For the first time this March, we had a legitimate moment where you needed to be handy with the remote, as both Cincinnati-Creighton and La Salle-Kansas State were tight toward the close at the same time. For the most part, the Bearcats and Blue Jays were tight throughout with Creighton beginning to pull ahead. That was before a flagrant foul call on Doug McDermott that gave Cincinnati two free throws and the ball. Of course, Shaquille Thomas missed both freebies, before Sean Kilpatrick drilled a three. Cincinnati ended up with a chance to tie the game, but another three (and an awful look and poorly-timed one at that) by Kilpatrick was missed and Creighton moved on. Score one for the new Big East over the old one.

La Salle looked like they weren't going to be worrying about a close game at all when they ran Kansas State off the court in the first half. Then, the Explorers became ice cold and the Wildcats became white hot and went from being down 44-26 at the half to up 57-56 with seven minutes left. Then both teams became ice cold. Down 1 under a minute left, La Salle got to the foul line twice, but missed one with 8 seconds left with a two-point lead. Then you'll see one of the worst offensive plays ever run by Kansas State who saw Angel Rodriguez basically run the clock out without any good look, despite having a timeout. Bruce Weber in fact tried to call the timeout, but not until basically the game was over. Another NCAA disappointment for Weber, which has now followed him from Illinois to K-State.

Kansas State's loss means that the 3, 4 and 5 seeds have lost in the West Region. Either Gonzaga and Ohio State are both reaching the Elite 8 or we are going to see a crazy region the likes of the Southwest Region back in 2011 when VCU went to the Final Four. I'm willing to bet on the latter.

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