Sunday, March 30, 2014

Elite Eight

Two upsets today on the second day of the Sweet 16 round:

Maryland took down Tennessee, 73-62. Alyssa Thomas netted a career-high 33 points for the Terps.

North Carolina upended South Carolina, 65-58. Tar Heel freshman Diamond DeShields overcame two injuries to put up 19 points.

The other two games were blowouts:

Louisville ground down LSU, 73-47.

Stanford thrashed Penn State, 82-57. My choice for NCAA player of the year, Chiney Ogwumike, had 29 points.

ESPN photo gallery.

This sets up the next round:

Tomorrow, Baylor faces Notre Dame and Connecticut plays Texas A&M.

Tuesday it'll be Louisville against Maryland and Stanford versus North Carolina.

More NCAA Tournament news:

As I noted on twitter, both South Carolina and North Carolina have been nominated for the WBCA's "Together we R" team award. Gamecock assistant coach Nikki McCray was diagnosed with breast cancer last fall, and Tar Heel coach Sylvia Hatchell announced she had leukemia shortly thereafter. Congratulations to both teams for persevering at such high levels this season.

McCray's biggest support system has been her team.

Sister act, Ogwumike style.

UConn assistant coach Chris Dailey keeps the team engaged.

More college news:

Arkansas has hired ESPN analyst Jimmy Dykes as their new coach.

What?

Dykes discusses.

WNIT results:

Sunday, 3/30

South Dakota State 76, Indiana 64
South Florida 60, Mississippi State 58

Monday, 3/31

Rutgers at Bowling Green, 7 p.m. ET
Washington at UTEP, 9 p.m. ET

McDonald's All-American game:

Top 2014 prospect A'ja Wilson will compete against the guys tomorrow in the slam dunk contest.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"...With a victory over Baylor on Monday night, the Irish (35-0) will join a select group of schools to make four straight Final Fours...."

ND "will" join? Is the E8 outcome already decided? Bad writing. Questionable prediction, too.

Abacus Reveals said...

In actuality, there's nothing wrong with this usage of language -- the introductory prepositional phrase establishes the conditional nature of the statement. Thus, the auxiliary verb "will" is perfectly legitimate, both grammatically and logically.

IMO, the sentence is quite well-written -- I particularly like the use of "select" as an adjective!!

Class is dismissed.

Anonymous said...

Raises hand. Um...my Lady Bears, a select team of fabulous athletes, WILL win tonight. How's that?

Abacus Reveals said...

Cute!

I have no issue with the prediction (indeed, I'd love to see it happen), only the literary critique.

See, I'm being nice and not putting an "again" at the conclusion of the prior sentence!!