Good for Ezra! I'm really happy to hear that he continues to grow and is playing at such a high level. I sure wish he hadn't left but it's good to know that he's being successful.

Jim Les certainly has and great eye for recruiting players who are diamonds in the rough. Ezra was completely overlooked by everyone except Les and look at him now.

Great for him, seems like a solid young man.

Vandy lost to Texas A&M in the semis.

Manjon got 16 points and dished 7 assists in the lost cause for Vanderbilt.

UC Santa Barbara at a 14 seed will play Baylor, 3 seed, in Denver. Seth Davis of CBS thinks the Gauchos will pull an upset.

What are the chances for the Aggies making it in the other tourneys - NIT, CIT, and CBI? I don't think the Ags will be in the NIT. I just don't know the criteria for CIT and CBI.

Unfortunately, I don't think we'll be invited to any post season tournaments since we finished in 6th place in the BW and then lost big in the BW Tournament.

Irvine is in the NIT as the BW regular season champ. They play Oregon. Hopefully, for Russ Turner, the Ducks don’t have a player named King on the team again.

CBI costs a fair amount to enter ( I thought I read. something like $50k) so unless you host a game it can get costly to play in

Click on the image to enlarge it:

Click on the image to enlarge it:

Irvine plays at Oregon on Wednesday, March 15th at 8 pm PT. Live on ESPN2.

Gotta root for the Big West! Here is what Jay Bilas predicts for UCSB's first round game: "Winner: Baylor. The Baylor guards are just too good."

Eastern Washington beat Washington State. That was one of the two preseason losses that disappointed me; the other was UOP. Maybe EWU wasn’t that bad.

They had like a crazy long winning streak after that game with the Ags. Deserved to mke the NCAAs.

Kind of interesting since Wazzu beat EWU in Spokane around the same time Davis played there.

The Irvine at Oregon NIT game is about to start at 8 pm on ESPN2.

Terrible half of basketball by Irvine. Down 35-22 at the half. Oregon is without 3 of their top players but Irvine can't hit a shot. They are shooting 20% overall including 1-12 from 3.

okay, I can still be ticked at the UOP home loss!

Irvine goes one and done in the NIT losing to Oregon 84-58. The Anteaters had beaten Oregon in Eugene 69-56 way back on November 11th.

UCI missed 56 shots in their loss to Oregon! The Ducks missed 40 themselves, setting up a game in which their were 100 rebounds.

ESPN gives the Gauchos a 9.4% chance of upsetting Baylor on Friday.

Vanderbilt won its NIT opener over Yale. Manjon had 18 points on 6-7 shooting, 2-2 from 3! Oddly enough, he had zero assists (team only had 8)

Kihei Clark, the PG for Virginia who originally committed to the Aggies out of HS before switching to Virginia, unfortunately ended his college career on a sour note. #4 Virginia had a 2 point lead over #13 Furman with 12 seconds to go. Clark got trapped in the corner after inbounding the ball and tried to heave a long pass down the floor that was intercepted by a Furman player who passed the ball to JP Pegues who hit a 3 pointer with 2.2 seconds left. Virginia missed a long 3 at the buzzer and Paladins upset the Cavaliers 68-67.

Another big upset: #15 Princeton 59 #2 Arizona 55. Princeton finishes on a 9-0 run. Arizona averaged over 80 points per game this season. Defense and disciplined basketball wins it for Princeton.

Crazy start to the Madness!

that's brutal. that similar thing happened to us this year, correct? in that milwaukee tournament? anigwe or ade grabbing a rebound and throwing out to midcourt to avoid a travel?

Definitely similar.

#14 UCSB and #3 Baylor is about to start at 10:30 on TNT. Tough draw for the Gauchos but anything can happen in March Madness.

gauchos, I think, will need to shoot well from the outside. I don’t think they’ll have their normal success driving to the hoop vs Bears

Looks like you're right about the Gauchos drives. On the other hand, Baylor is slicing through the UCSB defense with surprising regularity. If Norris can get his offense going, though I like Santa Barbara's chances. He hasn't even tried one shot through most of the first half. Baylor leads 22-19.

36-35 Gauchos at the half in a great half of basketball. SB is executing beautifully on offense. They'll be in a position to win this game if they and tighten up the defense and get a few stops. Baylor is very athletic and they're tough to defend.

They had their chance in their second half but Baylor pulled away.

Big West really feels like if you can just lock up the one main guy on each team, it’s hard to find scoring elsewhere. What Baylor did to Ajay is what started to happen to Pepper at the end of the season and in the tourney.

Teams really fall apart after the main guy.

That's a good point.

The power programs are just so very deep too. They also have nearly all the best, athletic big men so their size and strength makes it very difficult for mid-major programs to match up with them. That size and strength advantage wears down the smaller teams as the game progresses and you could see that happening today. The Gauchos on managed 19 points in the second half and just couldn't stop the size and strength of Baylor.