Dayton v.s. Goliath

Well, its the matchup everyone saw coming: Dayton v.s. Florida for a trip to the Final Four. Not exactly.  Florida was the favorite to bring home a National Championship coming into the tournament so for them to be playing tonight in the Elite Eight is no surprise.  Dayton on the other hand is a complete shocker to most.  The No. 11 seeded Flyers have had to claw their way just to get to this point.  Their first game in the tournament was a  60-59 upset of Ohio State followed by a 55-53 victory over the heavily favored Syracuse Orangemen.  These were two very impressive wins for a team that has gone unnoticed up until this week.  The last team to beat Dayton not named St. Joe's came back on January 25th against Rhode Island.  The Flyers added another tournament win this past Thursday when they took care of Stanford 82-72 in a game where they just dominated in all aspects offensively.  This run by Dayton is reminiscent of the great cinderella stories made by VCU, George Mason, and Davidson.  

Next up for Dayton is your number 1 team in the country: The Florida Gators.  On paper this is a complete mismatch against a team who has a lot more size and defends better than just about anyone in the country.  Beating the Gators will take a lot more than what it took to defeat the Buckeyes or the Orange.  The Gators will full court press for the entire game, they have great perimeter/interior defenders who are all athletic and can drive opposing coaches nuts.  It's also worth mentioning that Florida is a very deep team and very efficient offensively to go along with the teams incredible defense.  They are arguably the most complete team in the country, which is why they were deserving of the number one overall seed.  Dayton can certainly pull off the upset today but here is what they will have to do.  Since the Flyers lack the size to compete with the Gators inside, they will have to get big games from their guards Khari Price and Vee Sanford.  Dayton has a lot of depth as well since they play 11 players regularly in their rotation.  Athleticism is another huge strength for both teams and a big factor in this game will be who can control pace and get easy buckets in transition.  The longer Dayton can hang in the game, the more pressure it puts on a team that really hasn't dealt with that much pressure at all this season.  There are many interesting matchup's in this one, but I think the one everyone needs to take a serious look at is the battle of the bigs, Kavanaugh-Young.  Kavanaugh needs to stay out of foul trouble since the Flyers are thin on their front line.  Florida is expected to roll over Dayton, and they easily could do that, but if there is anything we can take away from this year's tournament it is to expect the unexpected.   

This Week is for the Little Guys

Championship week is one of the best weeks of the entire College Basketball season.  There will certainly be some great games in  the big conferences like the ACC, Big Ten, and Big 12 (All of which will probably send at least six teams to the Tourney).  But this week is all about the conferences and teams more importantly that the average fan might not know anything about.  All week long, every single non-power conference championship game will be shown somewhere on the ESPN family of networks for the entire country to watch. The one thing I've learned over the years watching these games is to expect the unexpected.  Unlike the bigger conferences who send multiple teams to the dance, these smaller conferences only get to send one, making it do or die, winner take all.  This sets the stage for fantastic finishes, storming  the court, and some March "Madness."  
There are 32 conferences in College Basketball, with only six of those being power conferences.  Along with these six, there will only be a few other conferences that send multiple schools to the tournament.  So over the course of this next week, most of these conference champions will be the only representatives from their conferences.  These championship games will have so much emotion to them that it will feel like their Super Bowl.  The winning teams always go crazy and jump around uncontrollably like a little kid in a candy store.  For the teams who don't find a way to win, it is easy to see the frustration on their faces.  To get that close to the dance and fall short is hard to deal with.  It's truly something that you just won't get with the Big Ten because half of those teams are already going and don't have to improve their resume's this week.  
We have already seen two big upsets as Tournament teams from last year Belmont and FGCU lost at home in their conference championships over the weekend.  Florida Gulf Coast became the first 15 seed to ever make the sweet sixteen last year, but will not be going this time around.  In their places is Eastern Kentucky and Mercer.  Expect plenty of other upsets to take place this week and especially when the tournament gets going next week.  This year especially since parity in college basketball might be at an all-time high.  There is no team this year where you look at and say that whoever they play will be an automatic win.  Could this finally be the year a 16 beats a 1? We almost got that last year when Southern lost to Gonzaga by only six points.  I'm not saying it will happen, but don't be stunned if it does.  So as you sit back and watch these conference championships, think about the importance of these games for teams like Weber State, Delaware, Robert Morris, and all the other small schools who want to see their name called sunday night. It's going to be a great couple of weeks, so as former WR Terrell Owens once said, "get your popcorn ready."

Cavaliers are the Kings of the ACC

Duke and North Carolina have owned the ACC since the conference started back in 1954, but this year, the Virginia Cavaliers left no doubt as to who the best team in the conference actually is.  The AP No. 5 Cavaliers are currently 25-5 (16-1 in the ACC) and have already clinched the regular season title with one game remaining at Maryland.  It is their first outright regular season title in 33 seasons and their sixth overall championship.  The team is led in scoring by guards Malcolm Brogdon (12.6 p/g), and Joe Harris (11.3 p/g).  The Cavaliers are currently on a 13 game winning streak and their most important win might have been this past weekend.  Virginia defeated then No. 4 Syracuse at home 75-56 in a game where the Cavaliers scored 48 points in the second half.  Most of the experts weren't expecting either team to put up more than 50-55 points, but Virginia exploded for 75 in their best effort of the season.  It is just one win, but this one win did a lot for this ball club.  First off, it sent them soaring up in the rankings from 12th in the country all the way up to 5th in just one week.  Along with that, this was a statement win for a team who really didn't have too many of those over the course of the season.  This team was overlooked all year by just about everyone because they were overshadowed by teams like Duke and Syracuse who get all of the publicity due to their talented Freshmen.  

Along with all of the success that this season had in store for the Cavaliers, adversity was something they certainly had to overcome.  A loss at the hands of Wisconsin in which Virginia only put up 38 points was looked at early on as the low point in the season, but that was not the case.  A road loss to Green Bay three days later was another "bad loss".  However, easily their worst moment of the season came Dec. 30th at Tennessee where they got routed by the Volunteers 87-52.  Losing by 35 points to an unranked opponent is embarrassing for a team as successful as Virginia.  This game certainly caused a positive affect on the team, as they have gone 16-1 since that loss with the only other defeat coming on the road at Cameron Indoor Stadium.  With a good mix of Senior leadership and talented underclassmen, this team is poised for a deep run in March.  Joe Lunardi, ESPN's Braketologist, currently has Virginia as a No. 3 seed for the NCAA Tournament which begins  March 20th.  

Last season, there was another ACC team who made a great late season run like the Cavaliers are currently doing.  That team is the Miami(FL) Hurricanes, who finished atop the ACC last season.  That team started four seniors along with current NBA stand out Shane Larkin.  Like the Cavs, Miami was overlooked for most of the season, until they got a huge home win against #1 Duke.  For them, that was the game where people really started to take notice.  Miami ended up losing in the sweet sixteen to Marquette, but it was still a very successful season. With Miami and now Virginia winning the ACC, that means it has been two years since Duke and North Carolina have been atop the conference.  This is very rare, in fact, there have only been four years since 2000 that UNC or Duke haven't had at least a share of the ACC crown. In terms of being regular season Champions, the Tar Heels have claimed this title 29 times, while Duke has 19 of their own.  The closest school to them is North Carolina State with only 7 titles.  Could there be a changing of the guard in the ACC? Perhaps now that Syracuse, Pittsburgh, and next year Louisville are in the conference.  The fact is that the conference is deeper than it has ever been and that just means it will be a lot harder for teams like UNC and Duke to have the same dominant success that they once had.  

Virginia looks at least at the moment that they are poised for success over the next couple of years as they are only graduating 3 seniors, 2 of which are starters.  Joe Harris, one of those seniors, will go down as one of the best players to ever wear the Cavalier uniform.  He is a four year starter who averaged at least 10 p/g in all four seasons at Virginia.  Another man who deserves a lot of credit for this year's success is the man at the helm, 6th year head coach Tony Bennett.  Bennett has a 101-58 overall record as the head coach of Virginia and has made great progress with his teams over these last couple of seasons.  He isn't mentioned among the great head coaches like coach K, Boeheim, Pitino, and Calipari, but he is a very successful head coach who is on the rise.  In a season with so much parity all across the country in College Basketball, Virginia is a team that can definitely  make it to New Orleans.