Recap of March Madness Day 2

Continuing on what I did yesterday here are my thoughts on the second day of the tournament after the jump.

What I liked

Top seeds struggling to win. Especially in years when I don't trust my bracket -- like this one -- I'd love to see a 1 vs. 16 upset. Even if that meant my national champion pick would lose in the first round. And boy did we almost get that scare today. Sure it wasn't No. 1 Georgetown's 50-49 win over No. 16 Princeton in 1989, but the Pitt-East Tennessee State game was awesome for the first 37 minutes. Although Pitt did prevail, it still was cool seeing a 16 seed do well. And Louisville only led by two at the break.
CBS' stat that Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" had been played 98 times (at least) during the first two days of the tournament. And as a fan of fight songs, I also liked the stat that the Tennessee band played Rocky Top 47 times during the day.
My Bracket. Ok so I lost two Sweet 16 teams (Utah and Temple). And I didn't call Cleveland State, Arizona or Dayton. However, I feel that many people had Wake Forest and/or West Virginia advancing to at least the Sweet 16 if not the Elite Eight or even Detroit. So coupled with the fact that I have 13/16 Sweet 16 and all Elite Eight left, and I'm happy with round one. And my champ, UConn, beat Chattanooga 103-47.

What I didn't like

That awful travel call against Dionte Christmas. With 45 seconds left and Temple down by just five, Christmas got a hand off at the top of the arc near the Temple bench and tried to step through two defenders. As he stepped through he both put the ball down on the floor and got fouled. Yet the ref blew the whistle for too many steps. As my friend with whom I was watching the game said, it'll join the Allen Ray travel call (at 1:10) in 2005 against UNC as recent controversial late travel calls that screwed over Philadelphia college teams.
Speaking of Christmas, the fact that his last collegiate shot ever was an airball with 18 seconds left. Similar to what I wrote about Eric Maynor yesterday, that finish wasn't fiiting for one of the Big 5's best scorer's ever.
The cut away form the Wisconsin game. For whatever reason, the geniuses at CBS decided to switch from the Wisconsin Florida State game to the Sienna Ohio State game with about three seconds left in the former. Now I understand that CBS tries to swtich back and forth to the more compelling game, but they switched IN THE MIDDLE OF A SHOT!!! Literally the ball was coming down and they switched games, so I had no clue if the potential game-winning shot went in.
Fortuantely for my viewing pleasure, he missed, which brings me to the next thing: we still don't have a true buzzer beater. Maybe I'm being too strict in my definition, but there has yet to be a winning shot that was in the air when the buzzer sounded. True, Sienna's three in the second OT, and the "and 1" plays of Wisconsin and Oklahoma State were all sweet finishes. But in those games there were 3.9, 2 and 7.2 seconds left, respectively, when the winning shots were hit.

What surprised me

Cornell staying in it through halftime. I had predicted the Big Red would be swamped by Missouri's press and would be out by halftime. Well they did better than that, and in fact led 23-22 with 4:29 left in the first half. Although they'd never lead again, they didn't really go away too soon. They trailed by just four at the break, and didn't fall down by double digits for good until 14 minutes were left. Only then did Missouri absolutely dominate as I had predicted.