At Least UAB Won

Dee Brown is back

Well, my Blazers are doing it again. They rolled into an NCAA Tourney game against an SEC team and laid another whooping on them. If I'm the AD at Tennessee, I pay Mike Anderson whatever he wants to coach my team ... it's obvious he can beat SEC opponents if nothing else.

In addition to UAB running roughshod over LSU in the All-Acronym battle of the day, we were treated to:

- A mediocre game between Texas Tech and UCLA.

- A shaky Illinois victory over feisty Fairleigh Dickinson that was notable only for the fact that Dee Brown broke out of a miserable shooting slump, going 7-10 from the floor with 19 points. That is good news for an Illini team that simply looks tired. I think they'll beat Nevada and the winner of the UW-Milwaukee-BC game, but that might be all this team has left. It's been a long and emotional season and they look the part.

- Our first true down-to-the-wire game of the day as West Virginia's Tyrone Salley made a huge block and followed it up with a fastbreak dunk to beat Creighton by two. It was nice to see a team make a play to win a game, rather than see someone crumble down the stretch.

I guess that's it for day one. All in all, a pretty poor opening day. There were very few close games, only a handful of upsets, and maybe one or two memorable moments. The 48 points that high schooler Jon Scheyer threw up the other night will stick with me longer than all of these games put together.

I'll be back later to post some general thoughts on the day before calling it a night.