2022 NCAA Tournament: Day One In Dayton Is In The Books

The first two games are in the books and whoever picked Texas Southern and Indiana to advance, well it was your night. Your brackets are still looking fresh and undamaged.

The rest of you?

Eh. You can still do okay.

Texas Southern and Texas A&M Corpus Christi put on a decent show. It was nothing special basketball wise but it was solid. Both teams showed a lot of heart.

We were really impressed with Trevian Tennyson of Texas A&M-CC. He was a smart, resourceful player who made lots of really good decisions.

Incidentally, he didn't play for whatever reason - maybe he’s redshirting - but Shaquille O’Neal’s son Shaqir is a freshman at Texas Southern. One possible connection: Texas Southern coach Johnny Jones played and coached at LSU. He was a Dale Brown assistant just before Shaq showed up and was head coach there from 2012-2017.

Incidentally, if you get a minute, check out the A&M-CC campus. They’re called Islanders for a reason.

As for Indiana-Wyoming, IU was consistently just a bit better. Not much though. Wyoming was in it until quite late - it was a six point game with 4:49 left.

Texas Southern gets Kansas for their trouble. One of the players said the standard stuff about putting your pants on the same as anyone else but the only way this team is beating Kansas is if a) KU is unprepared and b) the Tigers go nuts on three pointers. It could happen, but the odds are very much against it.

As for Indiana, the Hoosiers will get St. Mary’s, and the Gaels are almost always a superb defensive team. But there’s a path for the Hoosiers if things go their way.

On Wednesday night, Notre Dame takes on Rutgers and Wright State takes on Bryant. We expect Rutgers will take out the Irish and Wright State will do the same to Bryant. But Rutgers might make a run and there’s no chance that either Wright State or Bryant will: the winner will see Arizona next.