Friday, March 16, 2007

Just a quick recap; VCU, you are my heroes!

Before the second day of the NCAA Tournament begins, I thought I would do a quick recap on how i'm doing with my picks. I did about 115 different brackets and most of which are in crisis mode, so to speak. I had, in a lot of them, Oral Roberts not only beating Wazzu in the first round but I had them winning the second round game as well. Another upset that I thought would happen is ODU over Butler, obviously I neglected to take into fact Butler's superior 3-point shooting and it proved to be ODU's downfall as they hit just 4-20 from the arc and Butler hit 9-24. But with that said, as of right now I am 14-3 and i'm doing quite well if I do say so myself. Now this wasn't the most exciting games that we have seen, well until the later games started.

In my opinion the two best games were VCU-Duke and Xavier-BYU. Both games came down to the last possession and were back and forth for there entirety. There were a lot of players that stepped up Thursday but the three that stood out the most to me were:

3. Stephen Curry G (DAV)

Freshman, Stephen Curry took the game over and carried everyone on his back. Curry had 30 points, 4 rebounds, 3 assists and 3 steals. Although Davidson ended up losing to Maryland, his performance proved that this Davidson team not only deserved to be in the Big Dance, but they could have probably beaten a lot of teams given the chance. Curry is just a freshman and he and his Wildcats appear to be looking at plenty of trips to the NCAA Tournament in the near future.

2. Drew Lavender G (XAV)

The 5'7" Junior was huge in the final two minutes against BYU. As the clock was melting away, Lavender hit two clutch floaters in the paint, after that he grabbed a crucial rebound on BYU's missed shot and sank the two following free throws that proved to be the final blow against a sharp-shooting Cougars. Lavender had 17 points in all, 4 rebounds and 5 assists. And he's going to have to have another huge game against his former coach, Thad Matta and his Buckeyes Saturday if the Musketeers look to have a chance to pull off the huge upset.

1. Eric Maynor G (VCU)

The sophomore guard, Maynor, hit a15-foot floater with 1.8 seconds left and powered his VCU
Rams over the Duke Blue Devils to a 79-77 upset win Thursday night. Not only was this a huge upset it was the only upset of the day as all of the other top seeds won out.Maynor had 22 points, 8 assists, 3 rebounds and 3 steals. He was also a huge reason why the Rams were able to over come two double-digit deficits including one that was 13. Also this first round upset is even more significant because it was the first time Duke lost in the first round since 1996, and it also ended the Blue Devils' nine straight appearances in the Sweet 16. VCU will need every bit of Maynor's big shot dramatics if they hope to knock off the number 3 seeded Pittsburgh Panthers on Saturday.

Here's the full scoreboard of the action from yesterday.

(13)Davidson- 70
(4)Maryland- 82

(11)Stanford- 58
(6)Louisville- 78

(10)Texas Tech- 75
(7)Boston College- 84

(14)Oral Roberts- 54
(3)Washington State- 70

(12)Old Dominion- 46
(5)Butler- 57

(15)Belmont- 55
(2)Georgetown- 80

(14)Pennsylvania- 52
(3)Texas A&M- 68

(11)George Washington- 44
(6)Vanderbilt- 77

(11)Virginia Commonwealth- 79
(6)Duke- 77

(16)Central Connecticut State- 57
(1)Ohio State- 78

(9)Michigan State- 61
(8)Marquette- 49

(15)Weber State- 42
(2)UCLA- 70

(14)Wright State- 58
(3)Pittsburgh- 79

(9)Xavier- 79
(8)Brigham Young- 77

(16)Eastern Kentucky- 65
(1)North Carolina- 86

(10)Gonzaga- 57
(7)Indiana- 70

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