Great day of basketball from the Meadowlands, starting with the Vandy-Georgetown buzzer beater and finishing up with the highly entertaining North Carolina-USC match-up. Here are my quick thoughts from Jersey
Georgetown-Vanderbilt
- Solid game with a great finish. The atmosphere was fantastic (compared to UNC-USC) thanks to some enthusiastic fans from both schools. Georgetown traveled very well to Jersey and should have a slight advantage crowdwise over Carolina
- All that I've heard about this game since I got home is how Green traveled before hitting the game winning shot. Honestly I couldn't tell, all that I was wondering was how in the world he even got that shot off? He hit a fade away bank shot while being smothered by two Vandy defenders. Very difficult shot to make.
- My heart went out to the kids form Vanderbilt. Really, really felt bad for them. They gave their all and fell 2.5 seconds short of the Elite 8. At least no one cried like Adam Morrison.
- If you think Georgetown looks slow on television.....they look much slower in person. Still not sure how they are going to hang with the athletes on North Carolina.
- I enjoyed this game more than Georgetown-Vanderbilt (even with the buzzer beater) because...well it was just more exciting. Gtown-Vandy looks like it was played at high school speed compared to this one.
- USC impressed me. They played leaps and bounds better than North Carolina for 27 minutes. The Trojans had a great gameplan (attack the lane and double Hansbrough), Taj Gibson and Nick Young can play in the NBA and it looked like the Trojans were going to run the Tar Heels out of the gym with about 16:00 to play in second half. Then came the typical Carolina run.....
- The Tar Heels won this game just like they have been winning all season: by simply wearing down the opponent in the final 15:00. And boy did they ever. Following the 4th foul on Taj Gibson (game changer), the Tar Heels went on an 18-0 run and never looked back. Even with USC up big, you knew this was coming. I think Tim Floyd brought one player off the bench the entire game while North Carolina must have played 11.
- NBA Prospect: Brandan Wright - He will only get better
- Not An NBA Prospect: Tyler Hansbrough - Just eaten alive by the more athletic Taj Gibson
- Possible the quietest big game I've ever been to in my life. Carolina fans are just silent and USC had maybe 40 fans. I swear there were times I could hear Tim Floyd yelling from the upper deck.
- Highlight of the game (Outside of Tim Floyd's T): USC Song Girls.......Just wow. Even better in person.
- I have a new least favorite arena: Continental Airlines Arena. It's just the pits. Old, steep seats and the out of town scoreboard was so far away I couldn't read the scores. I can see why the Nets are moving to Brooklyn
- Anyone else not liking every regional round having the exact same court design. Let's see some originality.
- I think this needs to advertised more for anyone else planning to attend an NCAA Tournament game: they do not serve beer at the game. Found out the hard way.
- Gotta love the New Jersey Highway system. It took me 1 hour to get home from last night's game despite my hotel only being 2 miles away from the arena.
2 comments:
Yeah, Green definitely changed his pivot feet, but that was a great shot. Tough way to lose for Vandy, but you gotta hand it to Green for even making that.
Not surprising re: the crowd. UNC fans aren't going to drive all the way to Jersey when they expect to be in the Final Four and Southern Cal backers aren't going to take cross-country flights.
When I lived in L.A., I had good tickets at the Coliseum a couple of times for USC football games. I swear I spent half of those games staring at various Song Girls.
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