That was a dramatic way for the Pac-10, particularly UCLA and Stanford to save its 2008 season. The conference headed into the tourney with one of its best regular season's in recent memory and six teams (for the 2nd season in a row) but was on the brink of seeing only one or maybe two teams advance to the round of 16, after three of its six got drubbed in round one.
Stanford barely survived with an overtime victory over Marquette. Thanks to NBA bound Brook Lopez, Stanford moves on. I don't know whether I should be celebrating Lopez or cursing head coach Trent Johnson who seemingly did everything he could to lose this game by losing his temper towards the end of the 1st half. All I can say is thank you Brook Lopez, and thank you CBS Sports On Demand, which allowed me to watch the game in its entirety in Buenos Aires on my laptop. After that performance, Brook is surely off to the NBA with a top 10 spot guaranteed in the draft. I can only hope they have a couple more wins in them and that twin brother develops into a dominant big men next year.
UCLA almost became the second big upset of the tourney (along with Duke which looked terrible in nearly losing in round one and fell to West Virginia in the 2nd round) by skating past Texas A&M. Now they have a clear path to the final four devoid of any top 10 opponents until then.
And congrats to Washington State, which routed Notre Dame in route to the sweet 16. To be honest, they've looked the best of the bunch.
So that makes it three Pac-10 teams in the sweet 16, a nice tidy number that will kill any negative East Coast bias against the West Coast but unless two (or ideally all three) of the teams make more noise, it won't help alleviate that bias.
I'm praying to the college basketball gods that Stanford gets a 4th chance to play UCLA (in the final four!)
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