Dunks are more exciting than free throws, and that’s stating the obvious, but Doug McDermott is the type of player who excites bettors even though he’s not a big-time dunker.
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I suppose there is a silver lining for UNLV basketball today, hidden somewhere in the mess of yet another opening-game loss in the NCAA Tournament.
It was not predetermined, and this is unlikely to be a popular pick. Even since the return of senior forward Ryan Kelly from a foot injury, Duke has been far from dominant. So how did it come to this?
If anything, the shove exposed the urgency that has attached itself to Mike Montgomery’s legacy. Perhaps it was for motivation’s sake, of driving his best player to greater heights. Perhaps it came from that cavernous place that said the moment was big, the game was bigger, and not many of either are left in his coaching career.
The Mountain West stuck out its chest a little farther Sunday when five of its nine basketball teams were selected to the NCAA Tournament, but that’s already old news. What matters now is how each performs when the madness begins.
It was a little past 3 p.m. Sunday when Bryant Gumbel’s brother announced that seventh-seeded San Diego State would play 10th-seeded Oklahoma in the NCAA Tournament in Philadelphia on Friday.
It’s tough to predict how far Oklahoma State will go in the NCAA Tournament, but few teams are loaded with better young talent, starting with freshman point guard Marcus Smart. He’s a good bet to go early in this summer’s NBA Draft.
This is what happened at some point in a conference room Sunday that housed the NCAA Tournament selection committee in Indianapolis: UNLV was placed in the bracket as a No. 5 seed and Cal was placed opposite it as a No. 12, and a red flag appeared on the movie theater-size projection screen displaying the matchup.
This was the condensed version. The appetizer. The 15-hour edition of something that takes the actual selection committee five days to complete. This was NCAA bracketing on speed and chocolate sauce.