Although the Los Angeles Dodgers had an “almost” NL MVP winner and a Cy Young winner in 2011, that’s pretty much all they had. Amid the continued ownership turmoil, the team made very few acquisitions during the offseason to better their 82-79 third place finish.
The San Francisco Giants had a pretty good year last year, but came up eight games short of the division champion Arizona Diamondbacks, ultimately settling for a disappointing second place finish. So how will the Giants do in 2012?
The Magic are coming off a tough loss to the Miami Heat where they only scored 81 points and tonight face a Bulls’ team that has the league’s 2nd ranked defense.
While the Mavs have won 3 straight games, including an impressive win over the Spurs in their last game, they have lost 7 straight on the road.
Minnesota really struggled down the stretch in the regular season, which cost them a shot at the Big Dance, but they looked good in their opening round win in the NIT.
While Tennessee did not make the Big Dance they ended the season well winning 4 of their last 5 games and they had no problem winning in the opening round of the NIT.
Some college giants have been slain so far in the Big Dance, but all the #1 seeds are still alive and can Creighton pull off the shocker facing a UNC team that is stacked and has the best frontcourt in the nation?
Kansas played stifling defense in their easy opening round Big Dance win, but it is Purdue that will have to play good D against a stacked Kansas team if they are going to pull off the upset.
Both 12th seed South Florida and Ohio have already pulled off some upsets in the Big Dance and USF and their stellar defense has held their 2 opponents in the Big Dance to only 54 and 44 points respectively.
I thought the Cincinnati Bearcats might squander an opportunity and lose to Texas in the first round – they didn’t.
#6 Cincinnati Bearcats (25-10) vs #3 Florida State Seminoles (25-9)
Sunday March 18
East Region – Nashville, TN
9:40PM
Moneyline: No money line currently listed
Spread: Florida State -2
O/U: 127
Cincinnati
Now they have an even bigger opportunity to make it to the Sweet Sixteen, something nobody could have predicted a few months ago.
As you can tell by the small line they have a legit shot too.
Florida is one of the most unpredictable teams of recent memory.
Against the Longhorns center Yancy Gates dominated (15 points, 10 boards and 3 blocks). It was to be expected as Texas had no one who could really look him in the eye. Florida does so they are going to have to get production from him and other sources to pull off the upset.
Sean Kilpatrick is the Bearcats leading scorer but he had a poor game with just 8 points. If he has another these guys are history. [soliloquy id=”82219″]
Florida State
Other than that one route against North Carolina it seems that the Seminoles never do things the easy way. They escaped against Atlantic 10 champ St. Bonaventure by tightening things up in the second half – winning by three and leaving ATS bettors with losing tickets.
They really put the clamps on A10 player of the year Andrew Nicholson who didn’t miss in the first half and that made the difference.
On offense they seem to have finally figured out that they should just keep feeding Bernard James in the post. He shot 8 for 11 and scored a season high 19 points with 9 rebounds.
Cincy, with Gates, has better size to matchup but they should still work the offense through James.
I feel confident in writing that they can not afford another poor performance by Michael Snaer in this tournament. He was 0 for 7 for the game .
Spread Pick: Florida State -2
O/U Pick: Over
Score Prediction: Florida State 69 – Cincinnati 62
Who would have guessed that the Round of 32 matchup would be Lehigh vs. Xavier? If you had this matchup in your bracket then you have to be one in a million.
The Michigan State Spartans survived the upset bug that bit two No. 2 seeds and advanced to the third round of the West Regional’s on Saturday where they will face a St. Louis Billikens squad which rode its stingy defense to a 61-54 victory upset over Memphis on Friday night.
New Mexico comes into this third round matchup aiming to win its first ever back-to-back game set in the NCCA tournament, but it won’t be an easy task against a Louisville Cardinals team who have posted five straight wins after beating 13th-seeded Davidson in the opening round on Thursday.
While it wasn’t considered a banner season by their extremely high standards, the Duke Blue Devils are once again a #2 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
The top overall seed in the NCAA Tournament will be on display Saturday night in Louisville. Kentucky will have a virtual home game against the upstart Iowa State Cyclones.
Shaka Smart and the VCU Rams are at it once again. After starting in the First Four they went to the Final Four last season.
