Bests: A touch of Cinderella
Comeback.
Cleveland State, 10-21 two years ago, brought down formerly top-ranked Wake Forest, holding the Demon Deacons well below their 81-point scoring average.
Perfection.
USC’s Taj Gibson, right, scored 24 points on 10-for-10 shooting for the second-best performance in NCAA Tournament history with a minimum 10 attempts, behind Kenny Walker’s 11-for-11 for Kentucky in 1986.
Shot at Goliath.
North Dakota State’s Ben Woodside scored 37 points — half his team’s output — against Kansas, and was so unstoppable the Jayhawks tried five different players on him.
Worsts: Obama bombs bracket
Presidential plunge.
Well, there’s always the approval ratings. Because the upsets and buzzer-beaters just aren’t going Barack Obama’s way. The president’s bracket took a precipitous plunge Friday night when two of his Sweet 16 teams — Florida State and Wake Forest — were upset. The presidential bracket fell to the 4.23 percentile — 4,434,808 spots off the lead in ‘s contest. Put another way, that’s more people than voted for him in any state but California.
Not a shot.
Syracuse and Stephen F. Austin combined for a total of four 3-pointers in 37 attempts. The Orange finished 2-for-16 from beyond the arc.
NO START FOR SALLIE
Still off the bench.
The record-setting 35-point effort by Memphis sophomore guard Roburt Sallie from off the bench Thursday did not earn him a starting job for today’s second-round game against 10th-seeded Maryland.
“I’m not going to start him, but I can’t wait to put him in,” Memphis coach John Calipari said Friday.
Sallie agreed. “I don’t think it would be smart anyway, at this point,” he said. “(It) might mess up team chemistry.”
Tom Kensler, The Denver Post
BIG RED SUPPORT
Idahoans for Cornell.
Who knew Cornell had about 3,000 alumni in Idaho?
That many turned out for its gutsy loss to Missouri. Actually, it shouldn’t be a surprise. Cornell has 255,000 living alumni, but there were no reported sightings of its 28 Rhodes scholars or 40 Nobel laureates.
John Henderson, The Denver Post
HIGH RATINGS
Tuning in.
CBS executives believed fans would turn to the games as a welcome distraction from the floundering economy. TV ratings from the first day Thursday may be proving that true.
Despite a dearth of wild finishes and big upsets, the games’ average rating was 9 percent higher than last year.The Associated Press
