Saturday Trends and Indexes 3/21 (NBA, NCAAB, NHL, Misc.)

[Udog]

Saturday's six-pack

Notes, observations from Siena's double OT win over Ohio State on Friday night, watched in a bar with two or three dozen fans of one of this area's two Division I basketball teams........

-- Ronald Moore was 2-6 from the arc Friday, but the two makes might be the two biggest shots in Siena history, tying game at end of the first OT, then winning it in second OT. Very clutch.

-- Thad Matta claims he told his kids to foul at the end of the first OT, but I'm guessing he won't sleep well for a month after losing this exciting, tense game the way he lost it. His kids didn't execute.

-- Siena's bench played total of 17 minutes, which isn't much at all.

-- Ohio State led by 11 in second half, but let it slip away; you can see why having senior leaders is so important-- Ohio State doesn't have a senior who plays-- they lacked leadership in this game

-- Siena's Ryan Rossiter had 16 points, 15 rebounds Friday; if you had a kid and wanted to show him an example of the consummate team player, you'd show him film of Rossiter. Smart, tough, a real glue guy in the finest sense of the word. He helps his team win.

-- Good news is that Siena wins a tournament game for the second March in a row; bad news is that Louisville is on deck Sunday.

[Udog]

Saturday's List of 13: Wrapping up the first round of NCAAs

13) Siena's win Friday is good for our area; gets people out to local bars, laughing and talking basketball. We have two D-I teams in this area, but Siena is by far the more popular one. We have somewhat of an inferiority complex around here where sports are concerned, so if a local team makes some national noise, good for them.

12) While Siena's win was best game of the day, Wisconsin-Florida State, and Oklahoma State-Tennessee were also excellent contests, with the Badgers nipping FSU in OT, and OSU beating the Vols on a 3-point play by Eaton in the last five seconds.

11) Biggest upset of first two days was Cleveland State's thrashing of Wake Forest late Friday; Deacons were only top-4 seed to get beat in the first round. ACC teams were just 3-4 in the first round.

10) North Dakota State's Ben Woodside is an NBA player; he laid 37 on Kansas Friday, as a spirited Bison effort ended in an 84-74 loss. This was the first year State was eligible for the tournament, but they had four possessions in second half, when they were down by only three points. Had they scored on one of those, who knows?

9) Arizona shot 54.5% from floor, Utah bigman Nevill had two fouls in first 5:00 as Wildcats coasted to an 84-71 win, and now face #13 seed Cleveland State Sunday, in the third 12-13 second round game in the last two years. How many games does Russ Pennell have to win for Arizona before he gets considered for the permanent job?

8) Pennell has already done something Lute Olson never did; he won an NCAA tournament game as lower than a #4-seed. Olson was 0-6 in NCAA tourney at Arizona when lower than a 4-seed.

7) Florida State was up 31-19 at half over Wisconsin, gave up a 13-0 run to start second half, went ahead again by 7, then lost at the end to a gritty but overachieving Badger squad, 61-59 in overtime.

6) West Virginia is only Big East team to lose in first round; they'll be so much better next year, when they get PG Mazzulla back from his shoulder surgery. Mountaineers were rudderless ship on offense this year; if Butler or Ruoff didn't score a lot, they generally struggled.

5) Stephen F. Austin's big guys got their first two shots blocked by Syracuse kids, and Lumberjacks stayed away for rest of first half. It has been long time since I saw a team as intimidated on offense as the Lumberjacks were in this game-- Austin does play good defense; in Friday's game, they forced 21 turnovers, but they just didn't score. .

4) Of the last six teams to get an at-large bid into the NCAA tourney, five of them won their first round game.

3) Dayton's fine coach Brian Gregory signed a contract extension on Thursday; he is now signed thru 2018, or just about when the current crop of 4th-graders is ready to hit college campuses.

2) For those of you who care about such things, favorites were 5-11 against the spread Friday; over was 7-9.

1) While basketball is very popular in Albany, not everyone likes it as much as we do; as the Siena game went into overtime Friday, one of the lovely bartenders at Graney's asked, "How many innings are in a basketball game?" Try answering that without getting in trouble.