The first week of March Madness is always the craziest week of the year for me because it involves brainstorming the ever-important, hoping-for-at-least-2-laughs opening e-mail to the pool, as well as setting up all of the brackets in my spreadsheet, watching as many games as possible, and coming up with recaps of the action. This year, I threw in a trip to Saratoga and back just to ratchet up the chaos a little more. As the saying goes, I can sleep when I'm dead.
Right now, I'm very much alive and caffeinated and ready to take on the 2022 version of March Madness. The brackets are complete and I kept my eyes open to watch at least a bit of 19 of the first 20 games in this year's tournament. The only game that I did not get to see any of was the opener in Dayton. Yes, this First Four recap will only be 75% complete, but the last game of the quartet gave us a lot of extra action, so it evens out a bit.
Game 1? Your guess is as good as mine. The only thing I can tell you is that this year's Madness started off very similarly to last year's version. Texas Southern was a 16 seed playing in the First Four for the second consecutive season and apparently the Tigers really enjoy playing in Dayton. They advanced to the main bracket with a win in last year's debut game and turned the trick a second time on Tuesday night with a 76-67 victory over Texas A&M - CC Music Factory.
I arrived home from Saratoga at halftime of the second game, so the halftime crew on TruTV got me up to speed on how the first half of Indiana vs. Wyoming went. And the reviews were not good. The consensus was that Indiana should have been pleased about getting to intermission with a 5 point lead since they had played poorly in the first half. On the other hand, the Cowboys needed to be thankful that they were within shouting distance after being very sloppy with the ball for the first 20 minutes. Seemed like a very "glass is half full" read on two teams who were struggling on the court. Maybe I should have gotten back on the PA Turnpike instead of watching the second half, because what I witnessed seemed eerily similar to the halftime description. The Hoosiers struggled to put the ball in the hoop, going 2-13 from beyond the arc and missing 8 of 20 attempts from the charity stripe. But the good news for Indiana was that Wyoming was willing to give them plenty of extra attempts to score. Wyoming's Hunter Maldonado and Graham Ike combined for 15 turnovers in this game while the entire Indiana team only had 8. The Hoosiers proved to be slightly less bad in this matchup, but an ugly win is still a win. Indiana moves on with a 66-58 victory.
If there was a pair of First Four games to miss, it was the pair that took place on Tuesday night. The action on Wednesday was far superior to what was on display the night before. First up was possibly the best matchup of 16 seeds that this tournament has ever seen. When you're talking about 16 seeds, you're not expecting to see teams that excel on the defensive end. But if you're lucky, you might see some offensive fireworks. The matchup between Bryant and Wright State was like the 4th of July on steroids. Bryant featured Peter Kiss, the leading scorer in all of college basketball. Wright State countered with Tanner Holden, who was merely the 17th highest scorer in the nation. These two gentlemen were not shy about putting up shot after shot, but neither were their less heralded teammates, to be honest. It was a close, high-scoring affair at the half, with Wright State holding a slim 44-42 edge. It took 11 seconds for Bryant to tie it up once the second half began. With such a frantic pace being played, you had to wonder which of these two squads would eventually run out of juice. Turns out it would be Bryant, as that dunk 11 seconds past intermission would be the last time they would pull even with Wright State. Kiss was able to put up 28, but Tanner was even better, going for 37 points and 11 rebounds. Wright State moves on after a very entertaining game, taking down a valiant Bryant bunch by a score of 93-82.
You would think that on a night with only two games being played that 175 total points would be the high water mark, but Notre Dame and Rutgers would combine for more than that. It wasn't expected to be a high scoring affair, especially when you consider the fact that the Scarlet Knights won a game earlier this year with only 48 points. But in this matchup of two teams who unexpectedly made early exits from their respective conference tourneys, offense wasn't scarce. Rutgers almost got to their full game total from that early season victory as they went into the half with a 41-36 advantage. The two teams scored in completely different ways. For Rutgers, they depended mostly on 1-on-1 matchups, relying on their star players to create offense on their own, either by taking the defender off the dribble or stepping back and launching three-pointers. For Notre Dame, success on offense was a team effort. Specifically, all 5 members of the Irish would take up position out by the three point line, drawing out the Scarlet Knights defense. Then they would rotate the ball and look for opportunities to slash to the hoop. Rutgers was so terrified of the Irish's ability to hit threes that they would bring their defense out to the perimeter over and over again. With both teams being relatively successful with their respective approaches, there was little reason for either team to change things up. And the score remained close throughout the second half. But both teams appeared fatigued late due to all of this scoring that they weren't necessarily used to. The score was tied with 1:50 left and it would remain tied 110 seconds later as no one could buy a bucket at the end of regulation. We were headed to overtime.
In OT, Rutgers looked like they might have finally gained an edge as they had a 1 point lead and the ball with only 27 seconds remaining. But nothing is ever easy in March. The Scarlet Knights threw the ball away on the inbounds and Notre Dame quickly scored to take the lead. Suddenly Rutgers went from running out the clock to needing a bucket to survive. They put up a 3 and connected with 8 seconds to go. Now it was the Irish who were in desperation mode, but once again they drove to the hoop and scored, sending us to double overtime.
It was starting to feel like we might never find a winner as the clock ticked past midnight on the East Coast. Having officially reached St. Patrick's Day, one might have thought luck was on the side of the Irish as they grabbed a 3 point lead with only 41 seconds to go. But Rutgers went iso, got the ball to their best player, and he sank a jumper from deep to tie the game yet again with 23 seconds left. Notre Dame took their time, not hiding their intention to drive to the hoop in the waning seconds. This time, Rutgers was able to make a stop, but Notre Dame grabbed the offensive rebound and followed with a layup to take the lead by 2 with 1.4 seconds to play. The deflated Scarlet Knights got the ball inbounds, but took too many dribbles and weren't able to launch a heave to win it before the buzzer sounded. Notre Dame survives with an 89-87, double OT victory.
While the game was highly entertaining, it paled in comparison to the post-game interview with an exuberant Mike Brey, head coach of the Irish. He excitedly yelled "You know what day it is? St. Patrick's Day!" as if it was a foregone conclusion that his team would win once the clock struck midnight on the East coast. Then when he was asked how his team would handle a double overtime game and then a flight to San Diego before having to play Alabama in less than 48 hours, Brey responded that all he cared about was making sure there was Irish Whiskey on the flight there. That's my type of guy!
Goodbye Dayton, hello field of 64! It was time to get a little bit of sleep before Thursday's crush of 16 games and the first look at the 2022 pool standings.
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