Surviving and Advancing the Ugly Way

Here are some stats from this afternoon's opening round game: twenty-one turnovers, and only twenty-one second half points. 2 for 16 from three-point range, including 0 for 6 on the part of Rautins, who played 28 minutes and scored no points, as in zero points. Nothing. Devo wasn't that much better, going three for 15 from the field, and committing six turnovers. That's two turnovers for every made basket. The Orange totally dominated on the boards, (we really need to give some props here to PH2, who had 16 boards, and who probably played harder than everyone else combined, despite not scoring that much), ended up with a half decent shooting percentage, notwithstanding their inability to sink any threes; yet they couldn't outscore this 14 seed in the second half. Stephen F. Who?

If was the worst half of basketball since the first half of the Rutgers game. Remember that night? We had schlepped into Cuse for a 9 o'clock tipoff, and when they were down 20-19 at the half, I was wondering why had I done this? I was going to stay up until 1 in the morning, and drag my ass around all next day, to see that? Fortunately, they played with intensity in the second half of that final home game, ran away from Rutgers, and continued to play with that same focus all the way through the Big east tourney. But today, they reverted to their early season practice of playing down to the level of their opponent, making the final score a lot closer than it should have been.

Still, they advanced. And not all of the high seeds managed to do that. Wake got beaten by the same Cleveland State team that beat the Orange on that last second sixty foot heave. And not every two and three seed looked great the past two days. So in that sense, we're glad they managed to make it to the second round. Jimmy Valvano's mantra for the tourney, which has by now become a cliche, was "Survive and Advance." That's what the Orange did today, winning their first NCAA tournament game since the spring of 2004. As I recall, their last victory was over Maryland, when they made it to the sweet sixteen. That's my goal for this year, so one more win and we'll be there. Check back on Sunday. And go Orange.