So how did you spend one of the greatest days of the sports year? There was wall-to-wall NCAA Tournament action from noon til past midnight on the East Coast and it seemed like more people than usual ditched work to disappear into bars to watch games (one of us even had a men’s league game at night where various members of the starting five showed up half in the bag – it did not go well) … But before we really get into yesterday’s action, you may be interested in the image leading off today’s Smack. That would be a woman named Amanda Marcum, and she’s married to a head coach in the NCAA Tournament. Who has the juice to land someone like that? A coach from the Big East? ACC? Big 10? PAC 12? Nope, not even close. Try the Atlantic Sun. She’s the wife of Florida Gulf Coast head coach Andy Enfield. Besides Maxim, Marcum has been on the cover of Vogue, Elle and in Victoria’s Secret ads. This article joking (we think) refers to her as the secret weapon behind FGCU’s victory over Miami earlier in the year. Georgetown, you’ve been warned … Thursday kicked off with Michigan State/Valparaiso in the Spartans’ back yard of Auburn Hills. The Spartans started slowly (nerves?) but then morphed into the usual bunt-force trauma squad that they become every year at tourney time and exerted their will, beating Bryce Drew‘s squad by 11 … Nerves were evident in other games as well, even messing with various star players. In the Butler/Bucknell 6-11 matchup, the teams’ respective stars (Rotnei Clarke for Butler, Mike Muscala for Bucknell) combined for a total of three baskets in the first half. Muscala never really got it going, finishing with just nine points (he averaged almost 20 per game during the season), while Clarke finished with 17, including the dagger three to give Butler the W … How about the 14-3 upset of Harvard over New Mexico last night? As Doug Gottlieb pointed out at the end of the game (and Harvard’s first NCAA Tournament win ever), what makes that upset even more impressive is that it comes after the team’s co-captains were both dismissed from the team part way through the season amid a cheating scandal … Other notables from Day 1: Everybody’s super sleeper Belmont got smacked by Arizona, the likely overrated Gonzaga barely got by 16-seed Southern, and the criminally underrated 12-seed Oregon blasted Oklahoma State …
There were a handful of games in The League last night, highlighted by one of the most impressive bonehead plays of the entire season by the Sixers‘s Damien Wilkins. For the majority of the game Philly led the vastly superior Nuggets, until they let Corey Brewer hit a three to pull the Nuggs within two points, 100-98, with less than 10 seconds to go. Brewer then fouled Evan Turner, who missed two free throws. Brewer then launched a three with a little more than two seconds to go, but was knocked down by Wilkins. Brewer stuck all three fouls shots, game over … In Chicago, the Bulls got the business from LaMarcus Aldridge and Damian Lillard, as the Blazers rounded out the season sweep. Lillard had 24, including a bunch of killer buckets in the second half, while LA gave ’em 28 on a steady diet of LA-like buckets … After the game, Aldridge said of playing in Chicago: “This is one of my top three cities to play in, all the tradition. They traded me on draft night, so this is always fun.” Aldridge was taken by the Bulls second overall in 2006 before trading him to Portland in a deal involving their pick, Tyrus Thomas. So yeah, we’d be pretty insulted for a long time too … Wait ’til you see the move Nate Robinson used to split a double team and then rip a dunk down the lane … The big news, we guess, out of Chicago was another update Derrick Rose gave to reporters about when he’s coming back to the court. As per usual, there were no concrete details or an exact time frame. “It could be tomorrow and I could feel like I could play the next game,” he told reporters at the Bulls’ practice facility. “Nobody knows but God.” … This would never happen for a number of reasons, but what if Rose suddenly came back for Chicago’s game against the Miami Heat and their streak on Wednesday night? Media madness – but not fair at all to Rose … We’re out like New Mexico.
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