Second round action

The most interesting finish so far was that of Purdue's win over Washington. The game came down to the wire for the Boilermakers who made just enough late free throws to take the 76-74 victory over the Huskies of UW.

Washington was down by considerable margins early in this game and for them to battle back took quite an effort. They had 3 players recording 20 points or more in Jon Brockman and Quincy Pondexter who both had triple doubles and freshman Isiah Thomas, who was the main reason for the comeback scoring 24 and using his quick dribble penetration to cause problems in the lane in the second half.

Keaton Grant recorded a double-double off the Purdue bench to help stave off the late surge from the Huskies and JaJuan Johnson was a man all game scoring 22 points on 9 of 16 shooting and adding 4 blocks on the defensive end.

Purdue will face another pack of Huskies in the sweet 16, this time it is the top seeded Connecticut Huskies.

The other game currently being played is that between Oklahoma and Michigan. The Wolverines had hung tough all game but clearly rang out of gas toward the very end of the game. Blake Griffin was a beast as usual recording a double-double that included 33 points and 16 rebounds. Willie Warren and Austin Johnson also added double figure scoring for the Sooners with 16 and 12 respectively.

CJ Lee, Manny Harris, and DeShawn Sims all scored 11 points for Michigan. Anthony Wright added 14 off the bench but there was just no answer for arguably the best player in the country in Griffin.

The Sooners await the winner of the Arizona State and Syracuse game to be played tomorrow.

Other less interesting results include North Carolina's win over LSU (though if Lawson hadn't returned in this game and played so well in the second half this game was on pace to be far more interesting than it actually turned out), UConn blowing out Texas A&M, Memphis smothering Maryland with defensive pressure, and UCLA coming up well short of Villanova.

The evening session of play pits Texas against Duke and Western Kentucky battles Gonzaga. Both could, and should, be highly contested match-ups and anything can happen. If I were a betting man I would take the higher seeds in Duke and Gonzaga, but I have heard good arguments for Western Kentucky and Texas as well. Should be fun, enjoy.