Thurs Recap

Overall, a good day for the Big XII today. Kansas looked sharp, K State beat the 6th seeded Men of Troy handily, and Cash Machine U beat the Fighting Mormons. The Baylor Bears couldn't hit the broad side of a barn in the first half, so the 52 points they scored in the second half were not enough to overcome Purdue. The Bears had an historic season, with lots of reasons for hope for 2008-09.

The game of the day (so far, late games just starting) was the Belmont Bruins versus the Duke Blue Devils. Belmont was up 71-70 with with 48 seconds left in the game and 29 seconds left on the shot clock. Belmont did nothing offensively until there were 10 seconds left on the shot clock, then with Duke plaing addressive defense, were only able to throw up a runner that barely hit the rim. Gerald Henderson grabbed the rebound, drove the lenght of the floor and made a finger roll layup to take the lead with around 11 seconds left.

The end of this game embodied one of my pet peeves in basketball. Belmont did not have anything to gain by draining the clock. Duke was going to get the ball back - even if there was a made basket - with 10+ seconds left. As G Henderson demonstrated, it only takes about 3 seconds to get down the court and get a shot off. All that was accomplished by draining down time was Belmont allowed a sixth defender, the shot clock, to come into play. Had Belmont ran their offense and taken a shot in rhythm, sure they would have given the ball up earlier, but there was plenty of time to either way. Belmont had a chance to wreak havoc on brackets everywhere, but was unable to finish the job.

Alright, enough beating up on them. A #15 seed gave a #2 seed all they wanted and then some, and I tip my hat to the Belmont Bruins for giving us an entertaining game.