NCAA Tournament 2015: What A Great Day

There's a lot wrong with college basketball, but it's not in March: what a great day of basketball.

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You can take your pick: whether it was UAB's upset of Iowa State, which almost no one saw coming, or Georgia State's spectacular last second shot to take down #3 seed Baylor, or Purdue's win over Cincinnati on a last-second layup in overtime, it was a great, great day.

Shoot, it even had the requisite controversy as UCLA won on a basket interference call (not goal tending) against SMU.

There was something for just about everyone.

For us though, we start in the ACC, where all three games flirted with disaster.

Notre Dame beat Northeastern by just four, which is not what anyone expected. And as a reward, the Irish get Butler next.

Playing Butler in the NCAA tournament is about like wrestling a sumo wrestler. Most people just eventually give in. We'll see how Notre Dame does.

As for UNC, the Heels had a lucky escape: Harvard had the ball last and not a bad three point attempt, which would have won the game.

But it didn't and UNC advanced. Tommy Amaker's program acquitted itself well.

Then there's State.

At the end of the season, State had two real setbacks: the ugly loss to BC and the absolute butt-kicking by Duke left lingering questions.


The Pack seemed ready to cave to LSU. In the first half, it looked a bit like Phi Slamma Jamma as LSU went around, through and over State's defense. We thought that State looked young, and with the exeption of Beejay Anya, skinny compared to LSU's athletes.

And then, gloriously, it all changed. LSU's probably still trying to figure out what happened which was two things, really: 1) a collapse by LSU and 2) State finding its heart.

With 8:51, LSU was up by 14. And then they missed...everything.

Layups, three pointers, jump shots, over and over and over.

The Tigers did manage to hit three foul shots, but that was it. Some of it is down to State's stoutness down the stretch, but some of it was just, well, choking.

And as many chances as LSU afforded State, it wasn't like the Pack jumped on all of them.

With :51 seconds left, Anya jumped over everyone for a tip-in. LSU came down, panicked again and when State went back up to its end of the court, Trevor Lacey got in a jam and just passed the ball to Anya.

Normally a bystander on offense, Anya went first to his right, then turned and put up a left-handed sort of jump hook. 

Those were his only two baskets of the game.

Really what we saw were two young teams which don't yet have the confidence of winners.

That should help State a good bit. This team isn't that far away from being really good.