Friday, March 17, 2017
COMEBACK KIDS USC ADVANCE; THREE 11’S IN SECOND ROUND
Air Fabone 23 sets record by winning 30 straight games; goes 31-1 for round
CERRITOS APT/CYPRESS, CA (smt)- If not for the 11 seeds, the tournament has produced very few surprises, and even some of the 11s were not surprises to our pool participants. For the second time in the tourney and 13th time overall, #11E-USC rallied from a double-digit deficit to win, stunning #6E-SMU. SMU led 53-43 before losing 66-65 missing a last second buzzer-beating floater. #11MW-Rhode Island won making it 3-for-3 for the 11 seeds but #6S-Cincy prevented the sweep beating #11S-Kansas St. #10S-Wichita St, by far the most popular upset pick, struggled but won as did #9MW-Michigan St. #7MW-Michigan St squeaked by while #2S-Kentucky, #3S-UCLA, and #7E-South Carolina used late game spurts to prevent an upset. #3E-Baylor, #3MW-Oregon, #2MW-Louisville, #1S-UNC, #1MW-Kansas, and #2E-Duke advanced as well.
Another so-called controversial ending as #9S-Seton Hall intentionally fouled #8S-Arkansas in the final with 18.3 seconds left except, the player pushed instead of trying for ball resulting in a flagrant-1 giving the Pirates two shots and the ball. While most of twitter and TNT host Casey Stern is a complete idiot, ignoring the experts repeatedly stating the trip was NOT part of call (it’s like those political pundits who only focus on a small part of the issue, not the real or big issue, just to make their point), if the player only TRIED for the ball (hit the arm), there is no issue here, even if the Arkansas player tripped and fell hard. He had plenty of time to adjust and didn’t. IMHO, this was worse than the intentional foul Vandy committed yesterday since it put Arkansas up two possessions with the ball while the former left a lot of time and still down by one basket. And as the experts also stated which idiot Stern continued to ignore, the reason the officials called the common foul is that they can change a common foul to a flagrant-1 but they CAN’T change a flagrant-1 to a common foul, so in a game this important, the refs wanted to make sure they got the call right.
Air Fabone 23 kept on winning, eventually getting the first 30 games correct before South Carolina turned up the D and the O turning a close 3-point game into a 20-point blowout in the last ten minutes. The original records were the first 22 games (Buckeye Mike ’09) and 23 games in a row (The Flying Elvi ’15) (Edit to add: The Swami (4th-Tied, 58) also won the first 23 28 games). He also went 31-1 for the round breaking the previous reocrd of 30-2 shared by two and leads with 62 points. Sandit and King Kobra are second with 60 points. With most favorites winning, Quinnsanity (8th-T, 56) went a perfect 16-0 (was tied for 100th yesterday) with 7 others going 15-1. But three did go 9-7 and three are tied for last with 40 points.
With most favorites winning, only the two who had Maryland lost their champ(picked by locals). It was worse for Continue reading