Tourney Update
The NCAA men's basketball tournament resumes tonight with third-round (also known as the Sweet 16) action in both the Atlanta and Oakland regionals. Action in the Washington D.C. and Minneapolis regionals continue tomorrow and Saturday.
Despite the dearth of local men's teams in the tourney, the Bay Area is still part of the tournament, hosting some pretty sweet regional games for both the Sweet 16 and the Elite Eight, including the "game of the tournament so far," the third-seeded Gonzaga Bulldogs featuring the nation's leading scoring and diabetic, Adam Morrison, going up against college basketball's blue bloods, the second-seeded UCLA Bruins. The Zags face the Woodens tonight in the nightcap game at the Oakland Arena, following the game between the number-one seed Memphis Tigers and the tournament Cinderella, the Bradley Braves. Bradley, a 13-seed out of the Missouri Valley Conference has already taken down Kansas out of the Big 12 Conference and Pittsburgh from the Big East.
Bradley-Memphis tips off at 4:27 PM; Gonzaga-UCLA will probably start around 7:00 PM. Chances are you can't get a ticket (or afford one), so if you want to catch the action, tune in to CBS. The winners of tonight's games play on Saturday in the O-rena.
The Bay Area's only other entrant into the men's tournament, the Cal Bears, blew a late lead and lost 58-52 in the first round to the Wolfpack of NC State.
The NCAA women's basketball tournament picks up again this weekend with some killer matchups, including defending champion Baylor going up against number-two seed Maryland and Rutgers challenging perennial power Tennessee and their dunking darling, center Candace Parker.
On Saturday, the Bay Area's lone remaining post-season hoops representative, the Stanford Cardinal match up against bracket beast Oklahoma and their dominating freshman center Courtney Paris at 7:00 PM in the San Antonio Regional of the women's bracket. The game will be televised on ESPN at 11:00 AM Saturday and broadcast on radio station KZSU (90.1 FM).
The Cardinal, making their 19th consecutive appearance in the NCAAs, advanced to the women's Sweet 16 for the 14th time in school history with wins over the Southeast Missouri Redhawks and the Florida State Seminoles in the opening rounds. Stanford will be without the services of its embattled Tree, so it will be up to Stanford stars Brooke Smith and Candice Wiggins, both finalists for the 2006 Kodak/WBCA All-America Basketball Team, to offset the power and presence of Paris.
The Bay Area's only other entrant into the women's tournament, the Cal Bears, (no, you're not crazy and we're not repeating ourselves) sagged in the second half of their opening round game and lost 78-68 i to St. John's.
The National Invitation Tournament (NIT) continues next Tuesday, March 28, with semifinal games featuring Old Dominion versus Michigan and South Carolina matching up against Louisville. The games will be televised on ESPN2 beginning at 4:00 PM.
The original field for this year's NIT, kind of a consolation tourney for teams the NCAA deemed not quite deserving enough for the Big Dance, included the Stanford men. The Cardinal started the tourney off strong with a convincing pummeling of Virginia, but couldn't take their winning ways on the road, losing their second-round game to Missouri State 76-67 in Springfield, Missouri on Friday.