So Your Favorite March Madness Team Lost? Welcome To March Sadness
Andy Lyons. Getty Images.The annual four day storm that is the opening rounds of March Madness hit and boy did it hit hard. I'd say like a freight train but I think that saying is probably now dead forever. We'll say it hit like a hurricane, as at least Miami is still dancing. That puts us now in the eye of the storm allowing our bodies a quick break before the Sweet 16 hits us again this Thursday. For many fans left in the wake, I thought I'd pull together some stats you probably haven't seen that might help explain exactly what happened to a few of the colossal fails from the long weekend. We start at the scene of the marquee derailment:
Purdue didn't attempt a two-point shot from 9:25 left in the game until :12 left
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Let's check in on the 25 longest droughts between two-point shot ATTEMPTS so far in the tournament through the first two rounds. Again, not made shots. ATTEMPTS!
It's been a tough year for trains altogether. Especially those in the mid-west. You've certainly heard Purdue has lost to double-digit seeds in three consecutive years which is an all time sad stat, but I can't get over the fact that they just chucked threes for basically the last ten minutes of the game when they had Zach Treedey vs literally the smallest team in the tournament. Luckily they were able to end this streak with :12 left by missing a layup, so I guess there's that. I don't know how you don't fire Matt Painter after looking at this graph. I get that FDU came in with a game plan, but if can't figure out how to adjust what exactly are you doing here?
Who Shat the bed out of the gates more: Oral Roberts or Iowa State?
What do Oral and Cyclones have in common? They fucking suck. My god, talk about dead on arrival. Both these teams suffered easily the saddest start to an NCAA tournament game I can remember. Oral Roberts didn't score for the first eight minutes going down 15-0, while Iowa State made their first shot from the field with 9:54 left in the first, trailing 18-4. But if you think that's bad, let's talk overall field goal production. This is where Iowa State takes the crown made of their own bricks as they shot 14/60 from the field the entire game. Clearly the worst of the tourney so far, it's also second worst from any tournament team this entire season. The only team to suck even harder? You guessed it. That'd be our friends Oral Roberts vs Houston way back in November when they shot a lousy 14/62 from the field. Lesson to be learned here is that Cougars are wise and generally don't allow consistent Oral, so you're going to have to find a way to earn it.
Missouri prolonged the misery by committing the three saddest fouls of the tournament so far
Sometimes you gotta just let the winning team run the clock out. But not when you're about to lose to a 15-seed. In that case, you have to go out kicking and screaming like a little brat. And that's what Missouri did by fouling Princeton while down 14 points with :45, :32, and :26 ticks left. This was just sad. The only denial of the inevitable that was anywhere near as bad came from Baylor also fouling thrice with less than a minute to go. But they were only down nine and anyone that saw Iowa come back to beat Michigan State earlier this year after trailing by 11 with a minute to go knows there was at least some sort of precedence. But 14? Come on. It took them almost ten minutes to get 14 points to start the game.
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Everything was going smooth for Arizona until they just… stopped
Not a political comment but I came out of hearing Kamala Harris' post game speech to her alma mater Howard being quite convinced this woman has never witnessed a sporting event in her entire life until attending that game. Telling a team of D1 basketball players how proud you were that they "played until the last second" and "you did not stop and that was so inspiring" are compliments you say when literally every other possible compliment didn't end up applying.
Anyway, I bring this up because after reviewing what happened to the #2 seed Arizona Wildcats, I began to wonder if Kamala was onto something after all. Arizona was up by as many as 12 midway through the second half and didn't trail until 2:03 left in the game. But they had already given up at that point by not scoring any points for the final 4:45 of the game. It just seemed like all of the sudden they just quit. I don't really even know what happened, but Kamala would not have approved.
- Jeffro
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