A bit of perspective: Before Friday, teams from the Atlantic Sun had won a total of three NCAA tournament games. This year’s A-Sun rep just won two, and in so doing it became the first No. 15 seed ever to reach the Sweet Sixteen. This slayer of giants is a school in Fort Myers that opened its doors in 1997, started playing Division I basketball in 2007 and has been Dance-eligible for all of two years.
A tournament that was supposed to belong to Louisville or Indiana or Kansas or some other blueblood has been stolen, at least for the moment, by Florida Gulf Coast, which went 15-17 last season. Having stunned third-seeded Georgetown on Friday, the Eagles laid waste to San Diego State on Sunday and now advance to the Midwest Regional to play – how cool is this? – the state university of Florida.
Maybe we should have seen this coming. (Although genius boy here picked Georgetown, which has lost to a double-digit seed five times in the past six NCAAs, to reach the Final Four.) FGCU beat Miami, which would win the ACC, by 12 in November, and two seasons running the Eagles have upset Mercer on its floor in the A-Sun tournament.
Still, this IS the A-Sun, once Georgia State’s unassuming conference and now Kennesaw State’s. How long had it been since an A-Sun team had won an NCAA game? Since 2001, when Georgia State and Lefty Driesell upset Wisconsin, and that was so long ago the league was still known as the Trans America Athletic Conference.
Oh, and here’s an interactive assignment for y’all: Go to Google; start typing “Florida Gulf Coast”; note that the fourth hint offered is “Florida Gulf Coast coach wife.” Amanda Marcum, who’s married to Andy Enfield, appeared on the cover of Maxim in a swimsuit in 2002. She’s the Katherine Webb of this Big Dance.
Sherwood Brown, FGCU’s best player, is becoming the Michael Jordan of this Dance. Yes, that’s an exaggeration, but Brown is a talent who wags his tongue in celebration, and his tongue and his hair and his outrageous shots have been the highlights of the first week of a tournament that, to be frank, needed a Florida Gulf Coast.
A regular season that ended with a mid-major ranked No. 1 in the land figured to spawn havoc unseen in any NCAA. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Georgia Dome: Other than FGCU, March Madness had been a relative model of sanity.
Three of the biggest upsets were sprung by Oregon and Cal, both from the Pac-12 and both seeded No. 12, two of those came against teams from a non-Big-Six league. Is it really an upset when Goliath smites David?
Harvard of the Ivy League beat New Mexico (another inspired Bradley Final Four pick) of the Mountain West, about which more later. Then Wichita State ousted Gonzaga, which was a major upset – the ’Zags were ranked No. 1, as noted – that didn’t feel like an upset at all. The Shockers are a solid mid-major in the vein of VCU and Butler and George Mason, and Gonzaga, which used to be a giant-killer, was miscast as a giant.
Of the 16 teams still playing, 13 hail from Big Six conferences. Some insist that the Atlantic 10 and the Mountain West should be considered full-blown major leagues, but those two each dispatched five representatives to this tournament (to the ACC’s four and the SEC’s three), and nine of those 10 have been eliminated.
So who’s left? There’s Louisville, which hasn’t yet been tested, and there’s Kansas, which hasn’t yet led at the half. Indiana and Ohio State were pushed to the limit in Dayton on Sunday. Michigan State and Michigan cruised in Auburn Hills on Saturday, although two Spartans did throw towels at one another during a timeout.
Miami, which this observer has playing Louisville for the title, barely made it through the Round of 32 against an Illinois team of middling worth. Duke wasn’t able to creat the pace it wants against Creighton but managed to win. Ole Miss, which beat slow-going Wisconsin on Friday, was undone at the end Sunday by fast-moving La Salle, which is the only team in this tournament to have survived and advanced three times. (Yes, it’s possible to take a berth in the First Four and run with it, so to speak.)
Syracuse flew across country, shurgged off the annual report of an NCAA investigation and rode its zone defense to a halting victory over Cal. Marquette could easily have lost twice, but the excellence of Vander Blue carried the Golden Eagles past Davidson and Butler. But even Blue’s dramatics paled alongside the history written by Florida Gulf Coast.
Florida did the Florida thing by winning big twice over the weekend. Still, imagine the pressure the date with their Gulf Coast baby brother will heap on the Gators, who haven’t handled pressure well. (They’ve lost every game decided by 10 or fewer points.) Imagine if the Eagles have another 40 minutes of lob-dunking and tongue-wagging in them.
Even as you’re imagining, remember this. VCU made the Final Four but lost to Butler, which lost to UConn. Davidson lost in the Elite Eight to Kansas, which won it all. George Mason, which served as the template for upstart insurgency, won four times to reach the 2006 Final Four, where it smacked into … Florida, which won by 15 points. Sooner or later, reality descends on the maddest of Marches.
About the Author
