NCAA Round 2, Saturday Specials and a look ahead to tomorrow

In our opening NCAA tournament posting the team here at Picks4Players offered up 8 opportunities where we saw the lower seeded team as having real opportunities to win their first round games. Of those 8 opportunities we selected 5 outright winners in Maryland over Cal, USC over Boston College, Wisconsin over Florida State, Michigan over Clemson, and the Siena Saints ousting Ohio State. Of the 3 upset selections that did not come through Utah State battled Marquette down to the wire before falling by one point. Our upset special of the day, Portland State battled in the first half before finally being worn down by a bigger, deeper, and more athletic Xavier squad.

We really went out on a limb on Thursday and as predicted, North Carolina took it to Radford, putting up 101 points without starting point guard and tempo controller Ty Lawson. Look for LSU today to give North Carolina all they can handle today and whether or not they win, look for Trent Johnson to immediately be the front runner for the position at ACC rival Virginia. The timing isn’t great for Trent, but Virginia will give him tens of millions of reasons for multiple years to make it the right time and not have Trent burn too many bridges at LSU. Trent’s path from the WAC, to the Pac-10, to the SEC, to the ACC? All coaches should take that expressway.

Today also look for Connecticut, Villanova, Washington, Duke, Memphis, Oklahoma, and Gonzaga to move forward. We’ll check back later today with an update and prep for tomorrow.