In the opening segment on ESPN they ran highlights of Tuesday night’s games. Seth Greenberg, “Please don’t call them VA tech. It’s Virginia Tech. VA Tech really annoys Virginia Tech people.”

Noon Session

ACC #8 Clemson vs  #9 Florida St.

For most of the day, Florida St. dominated. Xavier Rathan-Mayes has turned himself into a phenomenal player in such a short amount of time, but he just hasn’t had enough help. I spent a lot of the game constructing what-if scenarios? What if Xavier Rathan-Mayes hadn’t been academically ineligible last year? What if Andrew Wiggins had decided to go to FSU instead of Kansas? Can you imagine a backcourt of Wiggins and Rathan-Mayes and FSU’s frontcourt? How good would they have been? And what if Aaron Thomas hadn’t had to leave the team earlier this year with his own ineligibility issues? What would it have looked like with Thomas and Rathan-Mayes working together for a full year?

At least Florida St. has a good recruiting class coming in. I know Leonard Hamilton isn’t a perfect coach. His teams commit too many turnovers. He plays non-shooters too many minutes at shooting positions. But I do believe he has at least one more truly great team ahead of him. He just needs to find the right group of players to compliment his great defense.

I was also going to write a little bit about seniors. A lot of these games today don’t have bubble implications. But they still have drama, because for many of the seniors playing today, when they lose, their career is over. ESPN showed an early graphic about Clemson’s Rod Hall making his 106^th career start. Shane Battier, “It sure feels like Hall has been around forever.”

And then all of a sudden things started to come together. Rod Hall scored 19 points in the second half. He scored a career high 25 points in the game. (What are the odds of having a career high at this stage of your career?) And even though Florida St. had held a double-digit lead for most of the game, the Seminoles started turning the ball over.

First the Seminoles couldn’t inbound the ball within 5 seconds. Then Florida St.’s Phil Cofer ran the baseline, somehow slipped, and dropped the ball right at the feet of Clemson’s Jaron Blossomgame for a wide-open lay-up. Then Florida St. tried to inbound the ball and it ricocheted off Devon Bookert’s head.

Somehow, Clemson had the ball, down two in the final seconds. After a timeout, the senior Rod Hall had the ball with one last chance to tie in the final seconds. Hall drove around his defender, and put a shot up on the rim. After the ball hung for a very long second, it quietly rolled off. A Florida St. FT and a Clemson missed three later, and the game was over. And Hall will probably never forget that shot that hung on the rim.

Mid-Afternoon Session

ACC #12 Boston College vs #5 North Carolina

This game was never quite a blowout, but Boston College never made a serious challenge either. I don’t have much to say other than the obvious; North Carolina is a great transition team.

But I do want to overcome one myth. Some people feel like ESPN will never criticize ACC teams because the ACC is ESPN’s golden egg. But that hasn’t been the case so far in this tournament. Shane Battier has been more than happy to criticize Virginia, “They may have won the league title, but because of the unbalanced schedule, they didn’t play anybody”. And Seth Greenberg and Jay Williams weren’t exactly complimentary of the Tar Heels at half time. Greenberg, “This North Carolina team is good, but that isn’t the standard at North Carolina. This team should be a Final Four contender. Teams should be afraid to see North Carolina in their bracket. That just isn’t true with this year’s squad.”

Pac-12 #9 Washington St. vs #8 California

California won this game easily, so let me turn to a statistical distraction. I have my doubts about Washington St. head coach Ernie Kent. I’m not sure you can win consistently playing the kind of defense his teams play. And if he doesn’t recruit like he did at Oregon, I’m not sure that he can guide Washington St. to the NCAA tournament. But his high tempo, attacking system does improve some player’s scoring numbers. In the major conferences, here are the players with the biggest improvement in scoring, year-to-year. Washington St.’s Josh Hawkinson is at the top of the list:  

Now for some of these players, the increase in scoring was entirely due to increased playing time and pace. If you want to know who got more efficient, I covered that last week.

MWC #9 Air Force vs #8 New Mexico

Including Cullen Neal in the above table might be a little misleading given that he only played 3 games this year. I’m not sure his numbers would have held up for the whole year. But after massive roster attrition in the off-season, New Mexico was never able to recover from the early season loss of Neal. After dominating the MWC in recent seasons, New Mexico was eliminated on Day 1 of the MWC tournament.  All 10 players that played for Air Force scored at least 4 points on Wednesday.

Late Afternoon Session

MWC #10 Nevada vs #7 UNLV

UNLV’s Christian Wood, the player with the 4^th biggest improvement in scoring listed above, had 28 points in UNLV’s win against state-rival Nevada.

Pac 12 #12 USC vs #5 Arizona St.

The only thing better than when a senior gets a career high for points at the end of the season (see Rod Hall above) is when a freshman does. USC’s Elijah Stewart has been a bit of a disappointment. On a USC team with ample playing time, the Top 100 recruit has often been ineffective, as he was in USC’s home loss to Washington St. a few weeks ago. But on Wednesday, he finally came through. With his team down by as many as 14 points, he started knocking down jump shots. For awhile, he was the only one chipping in. But he kept hitting them until finally the lead was down to 5. And then his teammates completed the comeback. A 21-4 closing run gave USC the relatively shocking win. And in a very disappointing season, Stewart gave USC fans a reason to be excited for next year.

Big Ten #13 Penn St. vs #12 Nebraska

This was a classic duel between Penn St.’s DJ Newbill and Nebraska’s Terran Petteway. Both proved to be basically un-guardable.

At some point Mike Tirico and Dan Dakich started making some corny puns. Then they read twitter comments about how corny their puns were.

Penn St. built a second half lead, and Nebraska kept chipping away, and chipping away. Finally, Nebraska cut the lead to 1 point with 45 seconds left. There was a 10 second differential between the shot clock and game clock, and if Nebraska could get one more stop, they could take a shot for the win.

Penn St.’s DJ Newbill demanded the ball, but drove into a triple team. His shot bounced off the back of the rim. But somehow Penn St. fought for the rebound, things ended up in a scrum, time ticked off the clock, and the jump ball was called. Penn St. maintained possession, and by the time Nebraska was able to foul and get a shot, all they could attempt was an off-balance three. Penn St. prevailed.

The most amazing part of this game was Penn St.’s blocks. Penn St. is only 7^th in the Big Ten in block rate, and 128^th nationally, and yet the Nittany Lions set a Big Ten tournament record with 16 blocks in the win.

Evening Session

And finally, we reach the point in the conference tournaments where there is too much action to track all of it at once.

A10 #12 Fordham defeated #13 George Mason

ACC #7 NC State defeated #10 Pittsburgh

Big 12 #9 TCU defeated #8 Kansas St.

Big Ten #11 Minnesota defeated #14 Rutgers

Big East #9 Marquette defeated #8 Seton Hall

SEC #13 Auburn defeated #12 Mississippi St.

A few comments: Despite Kansas St.’s better record and better “profile”, the margin-of-victory numbers actually favored TCU in that match-up. The Horned Frogs win probably shouldn’t be classified as an upset. Marquette’s Matt Carlino hasn’t always seemed like himself since returning from an injury, but after knocking down 8 threes on Wednesday, I think it is safe to say Carlino is back.

Finally, I still can’t reconcile how poorly Pitt has played this year. I still expected them to at least give NC State a scare, but they really didn’t.  This is only the second season in Jamie Dixon’s career where he won’t post Top 25 margin-of-victory numbers, and this is by far his worst defensive team ever.

Pac 12 #10 Colorado defeated #7 Oregon St.

A10 #11 Duquesne defeated #14 St. Louis

ACC #6 Miami FL defeated #14 Virginia Tech

Big 12 #7 Texas defeated #10 Texas Tech

Big East #10 Creighton defeated #7 DePaul

SEC #11 South Carolina defeated #14 Missouri

The big outcomes were obviously Texas and Miami FL winning. If either team had lost, they could have booked a ticket to the NIT. But Texas was more dominant that Miami. I’ve been critical of Miami’s Davon Reed for being too passive at times this year, but he hit a big three when it was still a one point game. It helped to break the game open and it gave Miami a comfortable margin.