What Went Down In The First Round Of The NCAA Tournament

I think there’s some validity to that idea, Jake. On the other side of Jared’s point, the lower seeds probably do come into the game knowing they have a chance to win.

Per Jake’s question, I think it might make the No. 2 seeds more alert to the possibility that they could lose, and be worse for those No. 15s.

Personally, I think the answer to this is no, but I’m curious to hear all of your thoughts: Do you think there’s any effect of early tournament games on later ones? You do hear about players sitting in their hotels and watching games, and you sometimes even hear about how they take meaning from them. As in, did Saint Peter’s win last night make the three No. 15 seeds playing today feel like they have a chance?

Sheesh, Jacksonville State has some flamethrowers.

Yes, Josh. The Tigers’ guards seem to think they’re the NBA prospects on this team.

Someone should show that mock draft to Auburn’s starting backcourt, Santul.

One of my friends has assured me that I will love Smith’s game when I do my deeper dive before the draft, so I’m excited to get a closer look at him today. I’m sure there will be tougher opponents than Jacksonville State but it’s just good to see how a guy plays.

For the more NBA-interested folks among us, Auburn’s starting five features two likely top-20 picks in Jabari Smith and Walker Kessler, with Smith being tossed around as a potential No. 1 pick. Smith has been compared favorably to taller shooters like Michael Porter Jr., while Kessler’s aircraft carrier-like wingspan and elite shot-blocking has earned him comparisons to top-flight defenders like Jarrett Allen and Jakob Poeltl.

Yes, they are holding their own against mighty Auburn!

OK, Jacksonville State is super fun. This game has a lot of action!

Jacksonville State also took maybe the strangest route to reach this tournament. JSU didn’t actually win its conference tournament — Bellarmine did. Bellarmine, though, is new to Division I and thus cannot make the Big Dance due to some annoying NCAA red tape. So, JSU is here even though it lost to Jacksonville (which IS in Florida) in the semifinals.

And yet there is also a Jacksonville in “actual” Jacksonville (Florida): The Dolphins!

Today I learned that Jacksonville State is in Alabama, not Florida. March Madness is actually the best time for a U.S. geography lesson.

It sure seemed like a lot of it came from them not being able to space the floor, Saint Peter’s collapsing on Tshiebwe and Calipari inexplicably not really having any adjustment to counter. If one was so inclined, that game could be held up as an example of the dangers of building with that old-school approach.

Neil, how much of that terrible offense has to do with Kentucky’s stylistic choices? Jake wrote for us a couple of weeks ago about how this Wildcats team was eschewing threes at a rate not seen by high seeds in recent memory — did going for an old-school approach doom them?

I’m just excited to see Davidson play because I want to see more plays like this:

Michigan State vs. Davidson should make for a fun one later tonight. This Spartans team has limped into the tournament with losses in 8 of its last 13 games, and Davidson can shoot from just about anywhere. As a fun note, Loyola Chicago head coach Drew Valentine is the brother of former Michigan State standout Denzel Valentine, who was on the last Sparty team to get upset in the opening round.

Kentucky’s offense was SO ugly late in that game. And it helped the Peacocks pull off one of the biggest upsets ever:

Tony’s earlier point about Kentucky’s late-game struggles with offensive execution is great, and Calipari didn’t have much to say about it in his postgame press conference. But this jumped out at me: “We were in every time out trying to encourage. You’re going to be fine; we’ve just got to make a play. You know, at one point with five minutes to go, one of the guys got on a guy and said, ‘Stop, there’s five minutes, just be positive. Just leave it alone. Just be positive.'”

That is not something you expect to hear from, of all teams, Kentucky — especially a Kentucky team this old and this experienced.

That game was awesome, Sara! The Mount started that game down 22-5 at the end of the first and only lost by four points.

That was so much fun, Andres. Great night of games all around!

She came out on fire, too. She had nine of the first 13 points when her team started that game with a 13-0 run.

It hasn’t exactly been an inspiring two seasons since John Calipari got a “lifetime contract.”

According to ESPN, there are only 743 perfect men’s brackets left. If Nate is still in Vegas, I would ask him to bet my savings that that number goes down to 0 after this afternoon. Fingers crossed for another 15-2 upset sometime today.

Tony, Kentucky just looked scared out there. They played like a young, inexperienced team — or what Calipari’s teams usually are.

It’s usually unwise to bet against Kentucky in the early rounds. From 2010 (when John Calipari got to Lexington) to 2021, Kentucky had the best performance against KenPom expectations and against seed expectations, according to Bart Torvik — and it wasn’t particularly close. In other words, when David went up this Goliath, the latter almost always prevailed. Last night was an aberration of historic proportions — not only in terms of the scale of the upset, but how it came against one of the surest bets in March.

I liked your tweet last night, Tony, that everyone who said they knew where Saint Peter’s was before yesterday was lying.

It would be helpful to have Calipari explain himself and tell us what offense he was running in OT last night. Kentucky just looked lost on some of those possessions. Shoutout to Jersey City though!

Kentucky’s overall free-throw shooting didn’t help! I expected the Wildcats to get a generous whistle in Indianapolis, and they did, but they ended up making only 23 of 35 total free throws. Most notably, Oscar Tshiebwe missed two on the first possession of overtime, and Sahvir Wheeler missed two in a row later, with Kentucky ahead 75-72. That left the door open for Saint Peter’s.

This was Coach Cal’s most experienced roster since he took over at Kentucky, by KenPom’s metric. And it looked about as discombobulated as any team he’s coached. Kentucky went 1-for-6 from the free throw line in OT. That didn’t help.

As Loyola and Ohio State feel each other out early, let’s talk about last night’s shocker. A LOT of us had Kentucky in the Final Four — including the FiveThirtyEight model. What happened to the Wildcats?

Excited to check out this profile on Aliyah Boston, Sara. Thanks for sharing! She will be great this afternoon.

In the men’s bracket, I’m really excited to see whether Yale lands a few early punches against Purdue. As Neil and I wrote this week, Purdue has one of the hallmark characteristics — an exceptionally poor defense — that has doomed past top seeds in the early rounds. The Bulldogs only has the 207th-best adjusted offensive efficiency in the country, according to KenPom, but can they put some game pressure on the Boilermakers?

In the women’s bracket, I’m excited about the prospects of Virginia Tech starting a Cinderella run with a win over Florida Gulf Coast. The Hokies haven’t been to a Sweet 16 since 1999, and they haven’t been seeded this high since then, either. Our model thinks their chances of getting there are slim (30 percent), but with their mix of 3-point marksmanship and a low turnover rate, they might have the ingredients to make a run.

Same, Andres! The Cyclones could win a couple of games or lose very badly — no way to tell which.

I’m actually looking forward to seeing your alma mater, Sara. I want to see how Iowa State fares against LSU tonight.

Not sure we can call Virginia Tech’s men’s team a “bid thief,” as the Hokies may have made the tournament even if they had lost to Duke in the ACC final, but it’ll definitely be interesting to see if they can keep it going against Texas this afternoon. The Longhorns have not won an NCAA Tournament game since 2014, but this is their first trip under Chris Beard, who has proven to be a great tournament coach.

And on the women’s side, Dayton-Georgia is one of a few potential upsets the model has its eye on. Dayton currently has a 43 percent chance to pull off the 11-6 upset.

I’m looking forward to one of the games after our live blog will wrap: Houston vs. University of Alabama at Birmingham in the South regional. Houston will be a pretty fascinating test case for the approach we statheads love to use when analyzing the tournament — adjusting a team’s scoring margin for its average opponent iteratively, a la Ken Pomeroy’s ratings — as opposed to a more traditional take on a team’s strength of schedule. The Cougars are No. 4 in Pomeroy’s rankings, yet also beat only two NCAA tournament teams this year, Memphis and Bryant. So do we really trust them as much as the numbers say we should?

Speaking of South Carolina, I’m always excited to watch Aliyah Boston play. We just published a profile of her this morning!

It’s hard to get too excited about them, though, because they have to play South Carolina next if they win.

Jared, speaking of the Canes, they’re currently leading South Florida in the first women’s game of the day!

Miami-USC. Go Canes!

The opener should be a close one! Oddsmakers have Ohio State vs. Loyola Chicago as a pick ‘em. The FiveThirtyEight model gives Ohio State a 55 percent probability of advancing, but there is no model that can account for Sister Jean.

THE WOMEN!

Thanks for joining us on Day 2 of our live coverage of the first round of the men’s NCAA Tournament — and Day 1 of the women’s tourney. Though we were a little short on excitement Thursday afternoon, last night delivered in spades. Close games abounded, but the big moment was when No. 2 Kentucky lost to No. 15 Saint Peter’s. Lots of brackets were busted there, but I think we can all be Peacocks fans going forward.

So let’s start off with the games we’re about to watch. Which matchups are you most excited for?

All right! That will do it for today. Thank you for joining us! We’ll be back Friday for the first afternoon game, Loyola of Chicago against Ohio State at 12:15 p.m. Eastern. We’ll have plenty of women’s games to talk about, too, as their tourney gets started.

Enjoy the night card, and we will see you tomorrow.

Although we didn’t have as many upsets as some (most) of us would have liked, it was an interesting slate. Most of the high-majors held up, and the more experienced teams won out. Games like Providence-South Dakota State, Memphis-Boise State and Michigan-Colorado State still registered above 2.0 on the excitement index. And of course, Iowa-Richmond was the headliner at 7.3. A sleepy start seldom holds.

On a more serious note, Richmond-Iowa gave us some more unclear data on the influence of conference tournaments. Richmond struggled in the regular season, got hot in the conference tournament and kept it going. Iowa also got hot in the conference tournament and then completely laid an egg. Win some, lose some.

That Ted Lasso was really onto something: Richmond just needed to believe.

I was surprised by the general … lack of surprises? Apart from Richmond’s upset of Iowa, there weren’t many game outcomes that upset the balance of power in this tournament. (Even the two other seed upsets, No. 11 Michigan over No. 6 Colorado State and No. 9 Memphis over No. 8 Boise State, were projected by our model.) Hopefully tomorrow will bring a much more active excitement index.

Oh, and how ’bout them Tar Heels?