Marquette in the "West Region" of the NCAA Tournament by Al Kelly

Thursday had a couple of upsets as usual but Friday was as crazy a day as I can remember. Two #15's beat #2's. Even one upset like these two hadn't happened in more than ten years and it had only happened four times previously. In other upsets we had a #13 and a #12 moving on to play each other. And in the South region there were as many upsets as victories by the favorites. Underdogs #10, #11, #12, and #15 moved to the next round along with favorites #1, #3, #4, and #8.


Saturday and Sunday evened things out. The make up of the Sweet 16 is fairly normal. 4 Big East, 4 Big Ten, 2 SEC, 2 ACC, 2 Big Twelve, 2 Mid Majors. 11 of the top 16 seeds(#1's to #4's) are still alive. The year of the mid majors didn't materialize with only #10 Xavier and #13 Ohio making it to the regionals.

The unusual part of this year's tournament is based on the geography of the participating schools. Apparently all the schools in the western part of the country have moved to Division ll. Only 2 teams west of the Mississippi and not very far west at that-Kansas University in Lawrence in eastern Kansas only a few miles from the Missouri border and Baylor in Waco in eastern Texas almost due south from Lawrence-are left in the tournament. In fact Wisconsin and Marquette are the next two schools furthest to the west. The only one of the six so called super conferences, the Pac 12,  is in the western part of the country and their regular season champion, Washington, wasn't considered good enough for an at-large bid after they lost in their conference tournament.

You can probably blame it on TV, ESPN, in particular. College games in the East and Central time zones get the most publicity and the most games in prime time. The best players and best coaches end up at schools in the Eastern half of the country. Since John Wooden retired how many great coaches have there been in the West? Lute Olson at Arizona and Jerry Tarkanian at UNLV are the only ones that come to my mind.

Another oddity this year is the makeup by state. Ten schools are from 4 states: Ohio-4 teams, Kentucky-2, North Carolina-2, Wisconsin-2. Here are the other states' schools: Texas-1, Florida-1, New York-1, Michigan-1, Kansas-1, Indiana-1, California-0, Illinois-0, Pennsylvania-0, etc.

Unfortunately with all this unbalanced geography we still have a "Regional" final in the West which is in Phoenix, AZ this year. The last four teams in the "West Region" are  Louisville (approx 1725 miles from Phoenix), Marquette (approx 1850 miles from Phoenix), Michigan St.(approx 1925 miles from Phoenix), and Florida(approx 2030 miles from Phoenix). If we drive and leave Milwaukee Tuesday morning we should be there by game time. I guess that of the four schools Louisville will have the home court advantage. Lets hope all the retired Marquette alums live in Arizona.

Being in the "West Region" also means we get "rewarded" with the late night games. We tipoff at 10:17PM EDT on Thursday with the game probably ending around 12:30AM EDT.

Is Friday a work day? I guess any Marquette fans as well as Florida fans better take the day off. (Fans could always DVR it and watch it Friday.) I wonder what the TV ratings will be for this game??

I suppose it could be worse. We could have gone to DePaul or Loyola. Plus its really disappointing that Mike Brey and his ND squad get to watch us from their couches.

Here's a thought: Would Al have gone to the NIT??

GO WARRIORS!!