Three-point play (and-one): NCAA Tournament first day

*Exhales*

1. The Big Least

The conference widely regarded as the nation’s most powerful was a late Villanova miracle away from losing all four teams that played Thursday. The Wildcats were the only team from the Big East to win on the tournament’s first day when they beat 15-seeded Robert Morris in overtime. Scottie Reynolds waited until the extra period before he hit his second shot of the game. He finished with 20 points, but 15 of them came from the foul line.

If anyone thought the Wildcats’ near loss was embarrassing, it was nothing compared to Georgetown’s blowout defeat at the hands of Ohio. Ohio finished the season with a 7-9 record in the Mid-American Conference, and had to win four straight games in the conference tournament to even make the big dance. The Bobcats shot 13-for-23 from behind the three-point line, and Georgetown couldn’t keep control of the ball. A week after knocking off Syracuse in the Big East Tournament, the Hoyas turned it over 18 times in a 97-83 loss.

Marquette blew a 15-point second half lead against Washington to lose by two points to the Huskies. Quincy Pondexter’s runner with 1.7 seconds left gave the Huskies the 80-78 win. Washington was hardly an underdog in this game. Marquette won most of its games by fewer than 10 points, and Washington is playing its best basketball of the season.

Notre Dame provided one of the best finishes of the day. Carleton Scott’s three-pointer as time wound down found its way halfway through the net before rattling out, and Luke Harangody’s put back made no difference as the Irish still lost to Old Dominion 50-49. The Irish were in relative control most of the game, but went ice cold from the field late. As they continued to miss from behind the arc possession after possession, it was clear the Irish were going to live and die by the three no matter how long they stayed in the tournament. ODU was able to score just enough to edge Harangody and company, sending them home packing after a strong finish to the season landed the Irish in the dance in the first place.

2. Murray State didn’t waste any time giving us this year’s “One Shining Moment”

With one Danero Thomas 15-footer, Murray State went from virtual unknown to America’s favorite Cinderella. Thomas’ shot at the buzzer lifted the Racers over Vanderbilt for the tournament’s first major upset, 66-65.

What’s not to love about the Racers? They play an uptempo style that makes for entertaining basketball, and just won their first tournament game in 22 years.

They led virtually the entire game over the fourth-seed Commodores, who lost for the second time in three years as a no. 4 in the first round; they also lost to Siena in 2007.

Butler handled UTEP in the second game of the pod, setting up a mid-major showdown in round two, at least on the surface. Both teams hail from small conferences, but Butler is a perennial top-level team, while the Racers are anything but. It will be another contrast of styles when those two teams meet, as Butler loves to rely on breaking its opponent down in the halfcourt and hitting power forward Matt Howard in the post.

The Racers, meanwhile, will force the issue by pushing the ball on every possession, looking to get fouled as much as possible and hopefully hit three’s in transition. It’s not out of the question to say the Racers could pull off a second upset. Definitely tune in for that game.

3. Jimmer Freddette steps up for BYU

Many of you know Freddette as the player who has stolen my heart with his sweet shooting stroke and remarkable shot selection. He strongly reminds me of Steve Nash, and he scored 37 points today in the Cougars’ double-overtime win over Florida.

The man I profoundly proclaimed to be this year’s Stephen Curry didn’t disappoint. After scoring only eight points in the first half, Fredette kept BYU in the game after the Gators stormed back from a double-digit deficit in the second half.

He got some much needed help from reserve guard Michael Loyd Jr., who scored 26 points. Loyd hit several runners in the lane and also pulled off some magical spin moves to get to the rim.

BYU has the makings of a bona fide Cinderella. With a player like Fredette and a plethora of deadly outside shooters, the Cougars could make a deep run in the dance.

And one! 4. March madness hits the ground running

The insanity got started early, when all three of the initial games came down to the wire within minutes of one another. Between two CBS channels and my laptop, I feverishly tried to watch Villanova come back against Robert Morris, BYU escape Florida, and ODU stun Notre Dame. Two of those three went into overtime, while the Notre Dame game was decided at the buzzer.

The optimist in me hoped that the early going was a sign of things to come, while the realist in me wasn’t so sure.

It was a good day to be an optimist. In the second wave of games, Murray State pulled off the unthinkable with the heart-pounding win over Vanderbilt.

Just a short while later, Northern Iowa and UNLV went down to the wire as well. Ali Farokhmanesh nailed a three-pointer longer than his last name to put the Panthers ahead 69-66 with four seconds to play. It held on to be the game-winner, and Northern Iowa helped in carrying on the chaos.

In the night session, it was crazier still. Ohio, which less than one percent of America picked to win on ESPN.com, dominated Georgetown, who beat the Big East regular season champions exactly a week ago.

Meanwhile, Washington came back from a 15-point deficit with 13 minutes to play to beat Marquette 80-78. The Huskies moved on after Quincy Pondexter nailed a runner on the left-hand side of the lane with just less than two seconds left.

The final wave of games may have been the best of the day.

Tennessee emerged from a deadlocked battle with San Diego State with some clutch free throw shooting in the final minute. The Volunteers escaped to move on and face Ohio in the second round. Once a team in turmoil with three players kicked off mid-season, the Vols now sit in prime position to make a Sweet Sixteen appearance.

As the final seconds were ticking down ever so slowly in that game, Texas and Wake Forest were also headed to a memorable finish. After Texas tied the game with a late three-pointer, the Horns took an eight point lead right off the bat in overtime. Wake came storming back, and after Gary Johnson missed two free throws with ten seconds left, Wake rebounded the ball down by only a point. Ishmael Smith dribbled coast to coast before he pulled up from 16 feet to bury the game-winner.

It was the third overtime game of the day. In 2009, only two games went to extra minutes throughout the entire tournament.

On the west coast, New Mexico was holding on for dear life against 14-seed Montana. I’ll admit, I nearly picked the Grizzlies to pull off the stunner. The Lobos made all but two free throws in the final 90 seconds, which proved to be vital in their 62-57 win.

At the end of the day, more double-digit seeds advanced today than in 20 years in the tournament’s opening session.

I’m no longer listening to that realist side of my conscience…I’m playing the fool and hoping for an equally thrilling Friday.

Swing Picks – West Region

Don't forget to vote in the poll on who you think will win the national title on the right-hand side of the page. Thanks!

My ulcers haven’t gone anywhere yet. Fackkkkkk…

(4) Vanderbilt vs. (13) Murray State

Under coach Kevin Stallings, the Commodores (24-8) have been consistently good; never have they been great.

Vanderbilt enters the game as losers in two of its last three games. Both losses were against non-tournament teams.

The Commodores are extremely deep. Nine players average more than 12 minutes per game, while only one averages more than 30. A.J. Ogilvy is the most recognizable player on the team. The Australian center was a breakout freshman in 2008, but has not really improved much since then. He has good shooting touch but is not very physical in the paint.

The Racers (30-4) are also extremely deep. All five starters average double-digit scoring. As a team, the Racers score at a rapid pace (77 points per game), which leads me to believe they are more than ready for an up-and-down game with a slower Vanderbilt team.

The Commodores play bad defense at times, quite frankly. They allow nearly 70 points per game on average.

However, Murray State doesn’t have that signature win I’d like to see from the regular season that proves it can play with the big boys.

The Racers opened the season with a five-point loss to California, but other than that they never played anyone else that is still playing basketball.

Pick – Murray State -1

(5) Butler vs. (12) UTEP

I really, really like Butler. The Bulldogs had no fear in scheduling a brutal slate in the non-conference, and claimed wins over Ohio State and Xavier in the process. All five starters from 2008-09 returned this season, and they ran the table in the Horizon league, going 18-0 and also took home the conference tournament.

Gordon Hayward (15.4 ppg), Shelvin Mack (13.9 ppg) and Matt Howard (12.3 ppg) form one of the best trio of players this side of Durham.

The selection committee did them no favors (surprise, surprise) by matching them up with Conference USA regular season champion UTEP in the first round.

The Miners (26-6) dominated its somewhat unusually pedestrian conference, but lost to Houston in the league championship in surprising fashion.

If UTEP is able to pull off the upset, it will be because of guard Randy Culpeper. Culpeper scores 18 points per game, and has scored more than 30 points three times. In a win against East Carolina in February, Culpeper lit up the Pirates for 45 points.

The Miners just haven’t beaten anyone very impressive. Their record against teams in the NCAA Tournament is 3-4. Those wins were against a 16-seed, 12-seed and a 13-seed. It’s hard to say they can hang with Butler, but they just might.

Pick – Butler -3.5

(6) Xavier vs. (11) Minnesota

The Musketeers (24-8) finished tied for first place in the rugged Atlantic 10, a noteworthy accomplishment. That fact alone leads me to think they will succeed in the big dance. However, their record against tournament teams is subpar. In nine games against teams that made the field of 65, the Musketeers were 2-7.

Minnesota (21-13) turned a Big Ten Championship game run into an at-large bid, after nobody thought they had a chance to make the tournament a week and a half ago. In the conference tournament, they beat Purdue and Michigan State, who are four and five seeds respectively in the NCAA Tournament.

The Golden Gophers have proved they can beat the nation’s elite. They beat Ohio State, Wisconsin, and Illinois during the regular season. They have a solid backcourt with three good guards in Lawrence Westbrook, Blake Hoffarber and Devoe Joseph. Their balanced lineup allows them to play at a variety of speeds.

The Musketeers should win this game – they have the more talented team at least – but Minnesota has played better in games against better competition. This will be one of the closest games in the first round.

Pick – Xavier -1

Young Beamer making his own legacy

The year was 1989. It was late in the fourth quarter as coach Shane Beamer gazed upon the field from above, ready to send in the winning play call.

Instead of being inside Lane Stadium in front of 50,000 raucous fans, Frank Beamer’s 12-year-old son could only pretend he was in his father’s shoes. He stood on the wooden deck behind his house, looking down on an empty pasture.

This day, he was lucky enough to have found a friend to send down to the pasture with one walkie-talkie, while he held the other. They used the toys to communicate imaginative strategies, just like Shane saw his father do on Saturdays.

He had already spent the morning in the kitchen reading the game day itinerary aloud to his younger sister, Casey.

He had spent all week in the back of his father’s office, scanning old playbooks for a tip on this week’s game plan.

Twenty years later, Shane Beamer is forging his own path along the sidelines at South Carolina.

The son of the legendary Virginia Tech coach is responsible for the strong safeties, special teams and is the recruiting coordinator for the Gamecocks.

If families are rated on a scale from 1-10 based on frequent stress, those with coaches are an 11.

“When Shane told me he wanted to get into coaching after he was done playing, I said ‘you’ve lived in this house your whole life and you want to do this; are you nuts?’” Frank Beamer said.

Despite all the chaos that came from growing up as the son of a Division I football coach, a young Shane took advantage of his resources.

He began carrying the cord for his father’s headset on the sidelines at age 10. Around that same time, he began reading through stacks of papers tucked away in Frank’s office. Though he was introduced to the deepest secrets of coaching at an early age, he didn’t always appreciate his good fortune.

“If I have any regrets, I wish I had asked more football questions than I did,” Shane said.

As a high school player, Shane was never the best athlete on the field, and had a decision to make as his career drew to an end. He could walk on to his dad’s team, and risk never playing a snap, or play for a small school and continue playing football.

For advice, Shane looked to someone familiar to his situation: Terry Bowden. At the time, Bowden was the head coach at Auburn University, but long before that he had been a walk-on for his father Bobby at West Virginia.

Shane wrote to Terry, asking for consultation on what he should do after high school. Bowden explained to him that if he ever wanted to coach, he should stay with his father where he would learn much more than if he played at a lower level.

It was the first sign of the motivation Shane had to become a figure like his father, yet his parents never knew he had such drive at that time.

“We never knew he sent that letter, until Terry came up to us at a camp and told us,” Shane’s mother Cheryl said.

Shane went on to play for Frank at Tech, where he would become the starting long-snapper for the punt team, or the “Pride” team as it as known in the Hokies’ program. Fittingly, Frank has plenty of pride for what his son had accomplished even before graduating college.

“It was a real treat to get to see him every day for four years,” he said.

After graduating, Shane decided to trade the Blue Ridge Mountains of Blacksburg for the skyscrapers of downtown Atlanta, accepting a graduate assistant job at Georgia Tech. In his only year with the Yellow Jackets, he worked on the offensive side of the ball with Ralph Friedgen, now the head coach at Maryland.

After a season where the Jackets finished 9-3, including a seven-game winning streak to finish the regular season, Shane moved to Knoxville to work under Philip Fulmer at Tennessee. It was under Fulmer where Shane learned the defensive side of the football, as well as recruiting in the cutthroat SEC.

“Coach Fulmer was very influential from a recruiting standpoint. He was very intense when it came to recruiting,” Beamer said.

Landing a graduate assistant job at a big-time program is nearly as easy as going twelve rounds with Mike Tyson. Those who don’t know Shane might assume he let his surname carry him to such great schools, while in reality he worked tirelessly to give himself those opportunities.

“Having connections helped, but it was writing a lot of letters to coaches and doing everything I could myself that got me the jobs,” he said.

Shane’s first full-time coaching job came in 2004 at Mississippi State under Sylvester Croom, the first African-American coach in the Southeastern Conference. Shane coached the defensive backs. Croom’s ruthless work ethic and strong disciplinary background helped Shane learn the work it took to build a successful team from the ground up.

In 2007, Steve Spurrier, the former national championship coach at Florida who had returned to the college ranks at South Carolina, hired Shane to coach the outside linebackers.

Until then, Shane had only ever worked for coaches with philosophies marked by great defense and power running games, let alone growing up as the son of one.

Spurrier was a horse of a different color, though. In the 1990’s he made Florida great by instituting his “Fun N’ Gun” offense, which emphasized passing more times per game than Elvis had number one hits.

The change in styles was an adjustment for Shane, but his new boss and father had many more similarities than differences.

“They are both great competitors, whether its football or golf, they both hate to lose. Their strategies might be different, but they are both intense and want to win in everything they do,” he said.

After the 2008 season, Spurrier named Shane was named his recruiting coordinator; perhaps the toughest job at any SEC school. Nevertheless, he was well fit for the job.

“He is so good about writing handwritten notes to recruits. When he calls them he knows their whole life history it seems. His attention to detail is great, just like his daddy’s,” Cheryl said.

Obviously, signing high school kids to play for South Carolina takes more than a simple note, and Shane goes to great lengths to secure the best prospects he can.

“Recruiting in the SEC is cutthroat, lasting 365 days a year. You have to be up to it every day,” Shane said.

In the first recruiting class since taking the coordinating job, South Carolina’s commitments were ranked 12^th in the country, according to rivals.com.

Even with their busy schedules, Shane and Frank manage to have great communication during the season.

The two speak on the phone at least once a week, usually on Thursday nights, and the subject rarely deviates from football.

“We’ll talk a lot about X’s and O’s, the previous game and the upcoming one. When we do talk, it’s usually about football,” Shane said.

Through hard work, persistence, and some ultra-strong bloodlines, Shane, 32, has developed into one of the strongest up-and-coming assistant coaches in the country, which begs one obvious question: when will father bring son back to Blacksburg?

“I think they would love (to coach together),” Cheryl said.

Several obstacles stand in the way of Shane’s possible return to Blacksburg. One is the continuity of the staff at Tech. There have only been four coaches leave the Frank’s staff since 2000. The loyalty of the assistants to the Tech program is unparalleled, and the head coach is hardly one to break that up simply to hire his son.

“It has to be the right situation, but I do think he is a great coach,” Frank said.

The second roadblock in Shane’s path home is the scrutiny he would face as a part of his father’s staff. Just 120 miles away, Virginia coach Al Groh had to fire his son and offensive coordinator Mike under tremendous pressure from the fan base to make the change.

Several other sons of great coaches have always been under a close watch. Terry and Tommy Bowden were both head coaches at Auburn and Clemson, respectively, and had to constantly deal with the pressure of being Bobby’s son.

Jay Paterno has caught great criticism at times over the years for the lack of production from the quarterback position at Penn State.

Obviously, any coach whose players aren’t performing at a high level will hear the jeers of the fans. Being the son of a coach is even worse, though, as you can be accused of only keeping your job because of your dad.

If that “right situation” ever does occur, you can bet Shane will be on the Lane Stadium sidelines once again; this time with a big-boy walkie-talkie, and real players instead of his sister.

Shane’s eventual return would only make sense for the Beamer family, whose impact on the university and community is indescribable.

Should he ever return, very little would change around the Tech program. When asked to name a difference between her husband and son, Cheryl Beamer was at a loss for words.

“Let’s just say this: the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”