Sweet on this tourney
>
>
>There's much to love about 16 teams left
>
>
>By Bob Ryan, Globe Columnist | March 22, 2005
>
>Don't ask. I have nine of the Sweet 16 left, OK? At least I have three of
>my
>Final Four left (Kentucky, Louisville, Oklahoma State). Overall, however, I
>would have been better off consulting one of my 5-year-old triplet
>grandchildren. Or my golden retriever.
>
>But I'm lovin' the NCAA Tournament. How could you not?
>
>Having the field at 64 is absolutely perfect, isn't it? (Yes, it's actually
>65; don't get me started on that.) It is now ingeniously structured so that
>there are different attainable goals for different teams. The Vermonts and
>Bucknells win one, and their season, careers -- and, who knows, maybe even
>their very lives -- are made. The Wisconsin-Milwaukees -- actually there is
>no one else left like Wisconsin-Milwaukee -- are totally vindicated just by
>getting to a regional. And the rest may or may not be feeling pretty
>satisfied, depending on their particular 2004-05 circumstance.
>
>Of the 16 teams left, eight are from the top tier of the tournament (seeds
>1
>through 4) and eight are from the other tier. The four No. 1s have held up
>nicely, but of the 12 2, 3, and 4 seeds, only four remain. Does this mean
>the tournament committee did a poor job? No. It means it had an almost
>impossible job to begin with.
>
>Fifth seeds Villanova and Michigan State can play. When Wildcat guards
>Randy
>Foye and Allan Ray are on, they are scary good. State has some maligned
>upperclassmen who might be staging a last-hurrah validation surge. When you
>look at their schedule, you see a 24-6 team with only one questionable loss
>(George Washington), and even that was to a tournament team. That was also
>eons ago (Dec. 4).
>
>There are three No. 6 seeds left. Wisconsin is a known Big 10 quantity with
>an annoying style of play. Utah is always there, isn't it? The surprise
>team
>is Texas Tech, but it plays in the rugged Big 12 and that Knight guy has
>won
>853 games for a reason. I didn't think the Red Raiders would get by
>Gonzaga,
>but I'm hardly shocked that they did.
>
>The No. 7 team still hanging around is West Virginia. I'm going to tell you
>right now that no set of fans in America has had more rewarding moments in
>the past two weeks than West Virginia's. I mean, it's not like I've
>attended
>a million college games this season, but the three best games I've
>witnessed
>in person have all involved West Virginia, and that's the God's honest
>truth. Its Big East semifinal against Villanova was a high-level,
>emotionally wrenching keeper sprinkled with great athletic feats; the 63-62
>conquest of Creighton was a coaching clinic masterpiece featuring one of
>the
>great parity box scores I've ever seen; and the 111-105 double-overtime
>triumph over No. 2 seed Wake Forest was a tribute to heart, guts, and 117
>other assorted intangibles. There may be no worthier surviving team in
>which
>to invest your emotional energy than John Beilein's Mountaineers.
>
>As a still-breathing 10 seed we have North Carolina State, a solid team
>from
>the Atlantic Coast Conference that has one element many people cite as a
>key
>to tournament success, and that is a certified star. Julius Hodge was the
>reigning ACC Player of the Year when the season started, but for whatever
>reason he did not play particularly inspired basketball earlier this
>season.
>(Some surmised that he had second thoughts about not going to the NBA and
>was in some self-pitying funk.) Now the only people to pity are the
>opponents. Hodge is a legit box score filler who can help every teammate on
>the floor.
>
>If these sound like a lot of familiar names, it's because they are. Throw
>in
>the No. 4 or better-seeded teams left and we have a remaining field of 16
>that includes 11 schools who have won at least one championship and three
>others who have been to Final Fours. The only ones who have done neither
>are
>Texas Tech and, of course, Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
>
>Bruce Pearl's Horizon League champion Panthers can really play, but I fear
>they have the wrong matchup Thursday when they play Illinois, which is not
>only a No. 1 seed but is, in fact, the No. 1 seed. UWM's calling card is a
>devastating full-court press (devastating against Boston College, anyway).
>Illinois just happens to have the best guard trio in America. I can't quite
>see Dee Brown, Deron Williams, and Luther Head being fazed in any way. But
>let me go on record as saying that there are two players in the tournament
>on whom I have taken out the adoption papers, and one of them is UWM's Joah
>Tucker, a 6-4 tweener, who, as Pearl says, "is a matchup nightmare." (The
>other is West Virginia's Mike Gansey.)
>
>It will be a good weekend of basketball, but it will have to go some to
>improve on the four days we just had. Unless you're talking about a
>Villanova-Georgetown scenario, it is very difficult for the Final Four to
>measure up to the emotional and artistic level of the first weekend, when
>64
>teams are letting it all hang out and upsets are a given. Last Friday night
>might go down in history as the greatest opening day ever, what with
>Vermont
>taking out Syracuse and Bucknell chopping down Kansas less than an hour
>later. No, neither was the long-awaited 16 beating a 1, but both sure felt
>like it. Athletic theater doesn't get much better.
>
>You didn't hear much from those blowhards who denigrate the modern college
>game because so many of the 19-, 20-, and 21-year olds who would have been
>playing in the tournament two decades ago are now in the NBA. Who needs
>'em?
>While it's true that we never again will have the kind of killer teams we
>saw in the '70s, '80s, and early '90s, we simply don't need them to have a
>proper NCAA Tournament. I've lived through this tournament for almost 50
>years and I've covered it for 36 and I haven't missed one since 1989 and
>I'm
>here to tell you that it is greater than ever, that when you go there, the
>atmosphere is the same as it always was and that it stands apart as an
>American sporting spectacle. This is our World Cup, except that we do it
>every year, not every four years.
>
>Remember this: The NCAA Tournament is not about the LeBron Jameses and
>Dwight Howards who aren't here. It's about the Joah Tuckers and Mike
>Ganseys
>who are here.
