March Madness Update

The NCAA Tourney. Very exciting. Good reason to love this time of year.
But whatever happened to the four compass points? The word "north" isn't even mentioned in a compound form in the breakdown of these brackets. They are: East; West; Southwest; and Southeast.

Anyway: in the east, matters went as the selection committee had presumably expected last week The teams rated 1 through 5 all won their opening game. Xavier (#6) lost to #11 Marquette though. Then in the second round, Marquette had itself fitted for a glass slipper with a surprising victory over #3 Syracuse.

The UConn men -- as I mentioned last week they were selected as the #3 seed in the West -- won their first two games -- against Bucknell and Cincinnati respectively. So the Huskies are a sweet sixteen contender now scheduled to play the Aztecs of San Diego State today. The winner of that one will play the survivor of Duke-versus-Arizona on Saturday.

But let's turn our attention to the women's side.

The Marist women certainly had an exciting first-round game. They were the 10th seed in their bracket, playing 7th seeded Iowa State Cyclones. Early in the second half, Marist seemed to have a commending lead, then the Cyclones came charging back (twisting back?) to within 6 points at one moment.

To their credit, though, the Red Foxes kept their collective wild-canine heads.

I saw this on ESPN2. Or at least, when they showed it. As is necessary for first-round action, there was a lot of cutting back and forth. In particular, that stretch run where Marist re-asserted its lead after losing most of it? TV viewers missed most of that.

The second-round game, against Duke, was even more intense. Marist came within a whisker of a 2-10 upset. The injury of their star, Allenspach, near the end of the first half was likely decisive.