After two rounds of NCAA tournament play, Gonzaga University is likely the most exciting story, not only because they are making their first-ever trip to the Sweet Sixteen, but also because they have played in arguably the most exciting basketball games of anyone left in the field.
A day after Gonzaga's 82-76 victory over the University of North Carolina, coach Kelly Graves said, "If I wasn't the coach and down there sweating all last night -- if I was just a fan -- I would've really appreciated that game. I thought it was a well played basketball game at a high pace and just a high level. Hopefully, that's the kind of game that we'll see tomorrow for both teams -- I anticipate it will be another track meet."
Texas A&M coach Gary Blair - who Graves called, "the master of hyperbole" -- was a bit more confident about what their game would look like.
"You will have a high scoring ball game tomorrow just like the North Carolina game," said Blair. "I don't think either one of us can shut the other one down."
Ultimately, Texas A&M shut themselves down in the first half, shooting poorly and turning the ball over 13 times.
Nevertheless, Gonzaga's thrilling 72-71 victory over Texas A&M Monday night was just as exciting as the coaches predicted, although nobody would have guessed that Gonzaga would win with star point guard Courtney Vandersloot committing 11 turnovers.
"By far this is the hardest second-round game that we’ve had to play since I’ve been in the NCAAs," said Blair. "They executed, we didn’t guard very well the first 20 minutes and then we put the pressure on them after the half. Then they started turning the ball over. As a result Vandersloot had an uncharacteristic game of six assists and 11 turnovers. But we were turning it over ourselves. It was a hard fought ball game, the crowd was into it and it was just a great atmosphere. Hopefully the television cameras didn’t start going from game to game to game because the game of the night was right here."
Kevin Pelton tweeted it was among the best basketball games he'd seen at Hec Ed all year.
Steve from the Women's Hoops Blog said it might have been the best women's college basketball game of the year.
Given all of that, for Matt Zemek to tweet that it was "a terrific advertisement for women's basketball" seems more than justified.
Graham Hays elaborated on the broader significance of this upset for women's college basketball, beyond David beating Goliath -- Gonzaga's transition from "mid-major" to major competition status.
Mid-major? Gonzaga Bulldogs pull major women's NCAA tournament upset - ESPN
The biggest upset of the tournament's first three days, seventh-seeded Gonzaga's 72-71 victory against No. 2 seed Texas A&M, might represent something more than a big win for the little guys. Instead, it's the culmination of a different story, one Gonzaga coach Kelly Graves has been working on for a decade. Beating North Carolina and Texas A&M to reach the Sweet 16 might mark the rise of the game's newest major.
For all of the talk about the lack of parity in women's college basketball and this tournament ultimately being the "UConn invitational", the fact that teams like Gonzaga and 11th-seeded San Diego State University have cracked the Sweet Sixteen says that the game is in fact growing and that there is more talent outside of Storrs than critics think.
Perhaps the personification of the "growing talent among lesser knowns" narrative is the performance of Vivian Frieson against Texas A&M. Chances are that you've already heard about her game winning shot, but it was the entirety of her performance prior to that and throughout the season that makes her so impressive.
I'm still trying to digest my thoughts after last night's Gonzaga - Texas A&M game in Seattle, but the world is not kind enough to wait for me to catch up.
The tournament marches forward, with or without the humor of Gary Blair.
While I will be pulling hard for the UCLA Bruins to represent the Pac-10 with an upset, Kaci from WTS will be bringing you another live blog from Cincinnati with the Xavier University - Vanderbilt game that starts at 7:06 pm EST.
The key in this game might be Vanderbilt's ability to limit Xavier on the offensive boards where they out rebounded opponents to a tune of 41.00% to 28.44%. Unfortunately, offensive rebounding was Vanderbilt's biggest weakness during the season as they were outrebounded on the offensive glass by just under 3%.
However, there's a reason why they call it March "Madness" -- strange things happen when the teams actually play the games. Neither statistics nor seedings seem to matter, even if the favorite eeks out a narrow victory.
#2 Texas A&M University vs. #7 Gonzaga University
Time: 6:40 PM PST
TV: ESPN2
Internet: ESPN360
Both Gonzaga University and Texas A&M University coaches said that Saturday night's first round matchup between Gonzaga and the University of North Carolina was a fun game to be involved in.
Tonight's game between one of the top teams in the country and among the top point guards in the country should be another great game.
In addition to the great game that most people expect, there will be a couple of WNBA prospects, perhaps a fringe prospect, a definite prospect for next year, and two of the more entertaining coaches in the nation should make this one a great atmosphere.
Key players, relevant links, after the jump, live updates will appear in the comments.
Over the past three days, Texas A&M University coach Gary Blair has bet a reporter a Diet Coke over trivia, disparaged Seattlites for spending too much at Starbucks, received a phone call from his wife about his wealthy cousin in Seattle during a press conference, and even joked about recruiting Seattle Storm fans to counter Gonzaga University's home state advantage in tonight's second round game in Seattle.
In other words, the guy knows how to put on a good press conference.
Perhaps he was baited into the latte comment (and his wife arguably "baited" him as well), but the point is this: he stands out as one of the biggest coaching personalities in women's college basketball.
The personality that manifests itself in the form off-hand press conference humor also helps him relate to players.
"He's funny, he's a funny guy," said TAMU forward Damitria Buchanan. "A lot of times in practice he'll start practice telling us a story or something and we're all standing there like, ‘Ok, uhhh...can we move on?' But it's cool playing for a guy like him. He's laid back and we get to have fun and also work hard at the same time."
All that said, one of Blair's better tangents of the weekend was a hockey-based tangent about assists that he used to describe Sydney Colson's value to the team.
"She's our little energizer bunny and she does the little things and she finds the seams in the defense," said Blair. "I'm surprised that she only had two assists...Sometimes it's like a hockey player: you can have two assists and sometimes she does that, she sets of the pass that leads to the assist. And maybe they'll change that rule for me because I'm a hockey buff too."
The issue of hockey assists is certainly not a novel idea - I tracked them sporadically for WNBA games I watched in 2008 and while I believe there is value to both hockey assists and lost assists, it's difficult to determine what that value is without having a clear understanding of the range. And of course there are other factors that are even harder to measure: to what extent was the passer responsible for forcing the defense to shift in ways that created the scoring opportunity? To what extent was the decision to pass (or not) at a given point in time influenced by recognizing a hot shooter or mismatch? And does any of that add value to the assist itself?
Most recently, Tom Haberstroh of Hardwood Paroxysm recently added an additional wrinkle to this question of assists with his look at weighted assists, which is absolutely worth a read in terms of thinking about the value of passers and point guards in particular. Henry Abbot extends this line of thinking making one comment in particular:
The players who get the good assists - TrueHoop Blog - ESPN
If, as a point guard, you pass it to the same guy wide-open five times, and he misses all five, maybe it's your job to talk to him on the team plane, and figure out where he'd like that ball instead. If you work that kind of thing out, you help your team immensely, and the assist measure will reward the point guard for that.If you don't have that conversation, well then, you get to blame your teammates for messing up your good assist numbers, but what's so great about that?
What's interesting about the ongoing dialogue about the value of assists and how they should be counted is that at some level it speaks to an obvious inability to difficulty of measuring things like court vision and basketball IQ. More interesting is that it demonstrates that there are some elusive intangibles in basketball that are worth trying to account for even if we can't quite figure out how to account for them.
When looking ahead to tonight's NCAA women's basketball tournament second round game in Seattle between Gonzaga University and Texas A&M university, it's interesting to think about the extent to which the statistical MVPs of the season become even more valuable when taking account for the intangibles they bring to the court that aren't counted.
Our friend Kaci from WomenTalkSports is live blogging from the Cincinnati sub-regional.
Although the DePaul-Vanderbilt game is coming to an end, you can join the Xavier-East Tennessee State game below:
And of course, I'm not bashful about my Pac-10 bias: I am full on rooting for Nikki Caldwell, Jasmine Dixon, and the UCLA Bruins to hold it down for the westside in Minneapolis against NC State. SBN's Bruins Nation is of course excited about that and will have a game thread that I will join barring unforeseen circumstances at 6:30 to watch that game. You can find that thread along with their analysis (which links to mine) here: UCLA vs NC State Game Breakdown.
The most fun part of March Madness?
Watching your perfectly constructed brackets fall apart...in person.
Regardless of whether disaster strikes in the Emerald City, we should have pretty good first and second round games here in sunny Seattle.
I will be providing live updates of the games in the comments here and hopefully our two readers will join as well. If you're not by a computer of some sort, you can always connect with your mobile device via mobile.swishappeal.com.
Game times:
Texas A&M vs. Portland St. 5 p.m. ESPN2
Gonzaga vs. UNC 7:30 p.m.
If you just can't wait until game time to start immersing yourself in Seattle-madness, you can find links to all of our pre-tournament analysis and prognostications (some of which have already been debunked) after the jump.
North Carolina guard She'La White stood at the top of key with the ball in her hands surveying the light team in baby blue practice jerseys set up to defend a half court drill. Once everyone looked set she turned to face dark team point guard Cetera DeGraffenreid to get the drill going.
"Defense," White called out to her light team teammates.
"Defense," shouted her teammates from behind her in unison, slapping the floor with one hand and popping up with their feet and hands in defensive position.
"Ball in," White called out tossing the ball to DeGraffenreid to commence play.
On one of the many times they ran the drill in yesterday's open practice in Seattle before the first round of the NCAA tournament, assistant coach Andrew Calder singled out Degraffenreid for making a half-hearted cut that led to hitting a wide open gap in the defense late and turning a wide open layup opportunity into a contested layup.
"Cetera, that was a baby cut," he shouted sternly. "A baby cut!"
The last open practice of the day in Seattle was not necessarily the most intense, but certainly the one least representative of what one might expect to see at an open practice in preparation for a tournament. At three points in the practice the team ran wind sprints as a consequence of lackadaisical effort, Calder whistling to stop fast break drills to get players on the line. After players failed to execute an entry pass on four consecutive plays in one half court drill Calder shouted flatly, "We can run -- I don't care."
Watching the scene reminded me of a former basketball coach of mine, an older man whose shirt struggled to contain his belly, yelling from his folding chair on the sideline during the pre-season, "We're gonna run 'till I get tired." It was a form of discipline as much as a means to get in shape, but a tool that definitely subsided as the post-season neared. However, in comparison to the rest of the field in Seattle, it seemed as though the teaching and disciplining has yet to end for North Carolina, perhaps a necessary consequence of having a young, athletic team that still needs seasoning.
"Our players are just so young," said Hatchell during the press conference prior to practice. "We have five freshmen who have never been to a NCAA tournament before and this is a great experience for them, but we have to know that if you go out on the court and don't have your best day then the season is going to be over. Every team that is here is very good and wants to advance."
Although it's clear that Gonzaga University is no less interested in advancing, the practice they ran just before the Tar Heels took the court was very different.
The notion that Stanford University will make it to the Final Four seems almost as destined as the University of Connecticut winning it all.
To the ears of many, any other outcome would almost sound insane.
Except, of course, to the Texas A&M University players.
"I think [President Barack Obama] had us losing to Stanford in the Elite Eight," said Sydney Colson. "So hopefully Barack has it correct up to there but I think we might upset him a little bit getting to that point. So that would be good."
The idea of Texas A&M upsetting Stanford - and President Obama - is not necessarily that far-fetched. There's a reason why both Mechelle Voepel and Graham Hays identified Texas A&M as the top #2 seed in the field and Charlie Creme suggested that a Texas A&M-Stanford Elite Eight matchup would be "one of the most anticipated games of the entire tournament".
Women's NCAA tournament: Experts' Final Four picks - ESPN
Stanford: The Cardinal have the scariest No. 2 seed; Texas A&M has so much good guard play that this really is not a good matchup for the Cardinal. However, Stanford will be near home and should prevail on the interior.
The fact is that anybody who has really paid attention to Stanford knows that they don't respond well to aggressive pressure on their guards. It just so happens that Texas A&M's success is predicated on aggressive pressure on opponents' guards.
"When you inherit a bad program like I did with Texas A&M a number of years ago the first thing you start with is your defense," said TAMU coach Gary Blair. "We had to develop that defensive mentality first. We have to play pressure defense no matter if we are playing half-court man, in a full-court press, or even in a zone. We want to attack...That's what our system is all about - it's about pressure. Our entire system is about pressure."
No team - aside from UConn -- is going to stop Stanford's three headed monster of Jayne Appel, Nneka Ogwumike, and Kayla Pedersen. So with Stanford guards JJ Hones and Melanie Murphy sitting out practices for much of the season due to injuries, the most obvious point of attack is their guard play. Although people like to say that Stanford has not been tested, guard pressure is part of what helped UCLA come within 4 points of them in January and absolutely what helped UConn pull away from them in December.
Of course, the first step is getting there and there's no guarantees of that in these type of tournaments.
"When tournament play comes - I don't know if you're watched a lot of the men's - but the seeding doesn't really matter at this point," said North Carolina guard Italee Lucas.
With that, who might be the sleepers in the Sacramento region?
