Lyles was a beast
These traps that Virginia is using aren't working.
Virginia
Blown out by a 16 seed
Struggling to get to 50 points against a 16 seed
Those ty traps
March Madness > the NBA playoffs, forever. Too bad regular season college basketball is so ty by comparison.
ACC is always overseeded. Always. Tony Bennett can't coach his way out of a paper bag once in the tournament.
The worst part for Virginia is this wasn't even a choke. UMBC was just simply the far superior team.
I had Virginia losing to Kansas State yet I was still giving them too much credit
I guess I'm the only one who feels bad for Virginia. Tony Bennett is a class act. Pitino or Rat Face deserved this, not him.
It makes more sense that it would happen to a team like Virginia or Villanova as a 1 seed rather than a Duke or Kentucky. Duke and Kentucky as a 1 seed generally would have multiple five star NBA lottery type players. Virginia and Villanova have had success in part because they keep kids 3-4 years, develop three star kids into really good college players within a system. But the difference in talent between a 1 and 16 might not be quite as mammoth. Still really surprising but the Virginia, Villanova, Xavier 1 seeds talent wise would appear to be as fragile as any for this type of upset.
It would have been so much sweeter had it happened to Ratface or Calipari.
Disastrous first round for me (took a lot of upset chances that didn't pan out), but at the end of the day I still have 6/8 Elite 8 teams and 3/4 Final Four ones--including both NCG opponents. The Virginia loss is only crippling for those who had UVA winning it all. Other than that I'm guessing it screwed the majority of bettors equally
I had UVA, Villanova, UNC, and finally Sparty to win it all.
yeah I definitely agree with all of this. You knew it would happen some time, and I figured it would be a team like Wichita State or Gonzaga who cruised through a weak conference with only 2 or 3 losses overall. Like you said, they also would have a roster full of decent upperclassmen, who are just well coached and have a good system. There's an enormous amount of pressure on the 1 seed. I can't think of anything in college or pro sports that's talked about as a greater situational upset, and they bring it up every year. The bottom line was that somebody was just going to choke and try to do too much in a situation where the 16 seed still has a small lead late in the 2nd half. Somebody in the UVA press conference basically admitted that, and said when they were down 5 they were trying to make home run plays so they wouldn't make history. It's just a lot harder to choke when you're Duke/Kentucky and you have players like Anthony Davis, Demarcus Cousins, or Jahlil Okafor who the other team physically can't match up against.
I'd say it's the system more than the players in Virginia's case. They just play way too slow, which keeps inferior opponents in games and makes it far more difficult for them to keep up when an opponent has a hot shooting night.
Houston choking at the line came back to haunt them. A Michigan prayer gets answered.
Crazy game. Crazy ending. Houston dominated the game from a physical standpoint but never built much of a lead. Surprised they didn’t put some pressure on the inbounder. A deflection or off target pass, the game's over.
Houston gave us all a preview of what the Rockets are about to do in the playoffs, tbh.
March Madness is a weird tournament. It's the only sporting event I can think of that continually gets worse the further it goes along.
First 2 days are phenomenal. Then a steady decline all the way to the Nat'l Championship.
There is nothing like looking at the top of the TV and saying to yourself, "Well that's a close game with 2 minutes to go. I think I'll flip the channel over to that game." You don't even care what the two teams playing are.
Ball looked like it was off of Michigan State.
Didn't matter anyway, Michigan State still sucks
So Michigan State ended the game missing 14 straight shots. Possibly the biggest choke in the tournament.
I think basically the selection committee sucks at seeding teams. They seed at least one conference higher every year than they should, and take other teams that they shouldn't. The first days are thrilling because of upsets, but the upsets come as much because the committee sucks at what they do. It's partially an illusion, partially suckiness.
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