#Monday Morning Sports: #March Madness

No. 9 seed Northern Iowa Panthers turned out to be the  2010 tournament's bracket buster with it's second round  win over No. 1 seeded Kansas Jayhawks. The Panthers advanced to the sweet 16 round.

The March to Madness

             Wow, if it wasn't for conference tournaments and March Madness, hard core football fans would be standing on the edges of buildings, bracket in hand, and threatening to jump. March basketball is as close as any sport can get, with the only other exception being playoff hockey, in matching football's intensity. God bless college basketball-in March. It's American on a number of different levels. As with most of the popular sports in our culture, it was invented here. We don't need soccer, cricket or any of those third-world country sports. we know what we want and that's we came here to do. The premise of the NCAA tourney is that anyone can get hot and win it.  For me, it's about the possibility of  a team that comes from what otherwise would be a D-II or D-III school in football, laying the wood and breaking the hearts of a nationally ranked powerhouse program. It's much easier to put together a DI basketball program. All of that said, do we really need another four teams? It's a feeble attempt to add teams and feels like a quick money grab. If your gonna go--go big!
        
First Impressions: 2011 NCAA tourney bracket 
*A Soft and wide open field, this is probably the least flattering field of "68" in a while. But, that's been the season as a whole. No sexy team, no wow factor. Ohio State's good, but as good as No. 2 seed Syracuse, No. 3 North Carolina and No. 4 Kentucky? All are in the Buckeye's region.
*As expected, the Big East got 11 seeds with no team seeded lower than 11.
* The Wisconsin Badgers are going to have their hands full with Belmont.
*Oakland over Texas. Oakland had some quality wins. Oakland upset Tennessee a week after Tennessee upset Pitt.
*The potential for a Penn State v. San Diego State second round match up.
*Can UCONN's Kemba Walker keep up the frenetic pace of tourney basketball? I think that he can. UCONN has a talented young team that follows Walker's lead. I look for UCONN to go deep. Five Big East games in five days only helped this team.
*Congratulations to Penn State; they knew what they had to do and they did it. Interesting first round match-up with Temple. A lot of history between those two schools. I expect history to hold true and Penn                                  State to continue the dominance of the Owls.
*Can all 11 Big East teams adjust to non Big East Conference officiating? It's my opinion this is the reason for  conferences poor showing in recent years.
*Can Pitt make it past the second round with the potential to play either Butler or Old Dominion. This match-up feels eerily similar to the 2003 Pitt team's second round loss to Kent State in a NCAA tourney game that played in Pittsburh's old Civic Arena. Arguably the toughest loss in Pitt basketball history.
* After an up-and-down season, could Michigan State be just a tournament team? The bracket sets up nice for Sparty.