Through the Rounds of the NCAAs

Maybe you read my column last week. In it I explain that even though CBS trumpets upsets and near upsets as proof that any team really can win the NCAA Tournament, the reality is that the usual suspects wind up winning the trophy.

The first round goes almost shockingly according to form with only Lousiville (losing to Gonzaga), Indiana (Pepperdine), and Seton Hall (Oregon) falling in the first round. The Hoosiers, with a 6th seed, were the highest seed to exit early.

Then welcome to round two. Two number one seeds and three number twos lose and on the face of it I don't look so smart. Look at the upsets! It's March Madness, Baby!

Not so fast. Arizona is notorious for its early round gags and was missing star center Loren Woods. Stanford lost to North Carolina when the Tar Heels finally played like the pollsters thought they'd play when they ranked the Heels in the top five before the season.

Among the second seeds to lose only St. John's surprised me and even that one didn't come out of nowhere. We saw last year how good Gonzaga was and the Zags are reminding us again now. Cincinnati lost the country's player of the year, Kenyon Martin, and lost both its games after Martin's injury.

And Temple? I know the Owls' crotchety old coach John Chaney was a sentimental pick to make the Final Four but sentimental picks never set good screens. Temple's vaunted matchup zone doesn't scare people if the Owls can't score, either. They couldn't and they're back home.

Then again Chaney was the sentimental pick as much as for the fact that he looks more disheveled than even most of the sports writers so enamored with him.

So CBS is twice as thrilled. They get their upsets but the teams winning them happen to be teams like North Carolina and UCLA. Not exactly Cindarella Cities, those. And the strongest two teams entering the tournament, Duke and Michigan State, escaped unscathed the first two rounds.

What I'm leading to is that for all the apparent mayhem of round two, most of the big names, if not the highest seeds, have survived. If there are no Wildcats from either Kentucky or Arizona still around, things still proceed in a mostly orderly fashion to the Final Four.

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