Observations from the first weekend…

How much does the Big Ten suck? Well, the Big Ten is out of the NCAA Tournament after one weekend…Ohio State (No. 2 seed), Iowa (No. 3), Illinois (No. 4) and Michigan State (No. 6), and Wisconsin (No. 9) lost in round one…while Indiana (No. 6) lost to Gonzaga in the second round.
I think I’m most bothered by Michigan State…the pre-season top 5 team and potential tournament dark horse turned out to be soft as tissue paper…Ohio State was a paper number 2 seed at best…Big Ten Tourney champs Iowa does just what their coach has always done…remember Steve Alford still has just one NCAA Tournament win as coach of the Hawkeyes…Illinois relied too much on Dee Brown (who is good) and James Augustine (who is not)…Wisconsin, a system team if there ever was one, ran their own system sloppily and got whacked…Indiana needed a yin to Marco Killingsworth’s yang…in the end, it looks like the Missouri Valley Conference was the “power” conference in the mid-west…

Wow…Florida's 6-foot-11 energizer-bunny/pogo stick Joakim Noah averaged 16.5 points, 7.5 rebounds and 4.5 blocks in tournament victories over South Alabama and Wisconsin-Milwaukee…

Best and beefiest head-to-head matchup in the sweet 16: Duke's 6’9 260 lb. Shelden Williams vs. LSU's 6’8” 315 lb. Glen Davis…

I guess it’s not always about the team…with Duke's J.J. Redick and Shelden Williams, Gonzaga's Adam Morrison, Villanova's Randy Foye and Washington's Brandon Roy the top 5 players in the nation are all still alive in the Sweet 16

Best team matchup: the speed of Florida vs. the size of Georgetown…by the way the Hoyas front-line goes 6-9 Brandon Bowman, 6-9 Jeff Green and 7-2 Roy Hibbert…and Hibbert, the Hoyas' center, had 20 points, 14 rebounds and 3 blocks on Sunday absolutely dominating Ohio State’s Terrence Dials the Big Ten player of the Year…and one of those blocks went back 11 rows…

Best shooter: PJ Couisnard's of Wichita St. who’s 20 pts included a perfect 4 for 4 from 3-point range to go along with 9 rebounds and 5 assists as the Shockers beat Tennessee…

Worst shooter: Tennessee’s Chris Lofton who goes 0 for life, well actually 7-21 from the field including 6-18 from three I the loss to Wichita St….

Shot of the weekend: Northwestern State's Jermaine Wallace hits a ridiculous fadeaway 3-pointer from the corner with 0.5 seconds left with Iowa’s Jeff Horner draped all over him to give NW State (14) the upset over Iowa (3) 64-63….

Worst broadcaster: Billy Packer sucks…after he rips the selection committee a new one for having so many mid majors in the dance and now three of them — Wichita State and Bradley from the Missouri Valley and George Mason from the Colonial — earn trips to the Sweet 16…

Best Coach: Jim Larranaga of George Mason who best two of 2005's Final Four teams in Michigan State and North Carolina…plus the 56 year old coach rallied his players in the locker room by playing the Purple Ribbon All-Stars' rap track Kryptonite…he then told his players, with a straight face, that they were UNC's kryptonite…

Great performances:

Patrick Sparks for Kentucky goes for 28 pts on 10-16 from the field in an 87-83 loss to UConn…amazing to watch, dude has nothing…no hops, no quicks...nothing...and yet he can shoot, pass, sees the floor well, plays within himself and really thinks the game…

Marcus Williams for UConn goes for 20 pts and 8 assists in a 87-83 win over Kentucky…and right into the 1st round of the upcoming draft…

Folarin Campbell of George Mason goes for 15 pts, 7 rebs and 4 assts in a 65-60 win over UNC…Carolina tried every guard on the roster and nobody could hang with him…

Allan Ray of Villanova goes for 25 pts and 4 assts in an 82-78 win over Arizona…’Zona point guard Mustafa Shakur is going to be having nightmares about Ray…

Marcus Williams of Arizona goes for 24 pts, 8 rebs, and 4 assts in an 82-78 loss to Villanova…he’s a freshman and ‘Zona only loses SG and serial drunk driver Hassan Adams so the ‘Cats will be good next year…

Quick note on the women’s tournament…OK…so Candace Parker of Tennessee dunked twice in a 104-52 drubbing of Army…yes it’s impressive, but really, have you seen the film? Two very pedestrian fingertip dunks…boring, at least when Michelle Snow did it for Tennessee a few years ago she banged it with 2 hands…West Virginia's Georgeann Wells was the first woman to dunk in a college game, on Dec. 21, 1984, against the University of Charleston (W.Va.). A technical foul was called as her teammates ran onto the floor. Wells, a 6-foot-7 center, dunked again three games later against Xavier…

Best names in the tournament from Luke Winn of SI.com:

All-Religion Team

David Godbold (G, Oklahoma) - This Sooner deity shoots 33% from trinity range.
Joakim Noah (F/C, Florida) - Floods the court with intensity and can hit from behind the ark.
Moses Ehambe (G/F, Oral Roberts) - Trying to lead the Golden Eagles to the promised land.
Christian Moody (F, Kansas) - Focus of recruiting Armageddon between KU and Moody Bible Institute.
Mohamed Tangara (F, Arizona) - This one went to the Mt. Zion Christian Academy.
Kevin Massiah (F, Wisconsin-Milwaukee) - Often vanishes (plays 12 min. per game), but the Massiah will come again.

All-Tunes Team

Jazz Williams (G, Southern) - Hasn't been played since November.
Tony Bennett (G, Bradley) - Left his shot in San Francisco: 4-for-13 vs. Southern Illinois in MVC tourney.
Mustafa Shakur (G, Arizona) - Rap is that he'll be too amped opening the tourney in hometown Philly.
Ashanti Cook (G, Georgetown) - This 43% trey shooter is "Always On Time."
Ramon Sessions (G, Nevada) - Recording only 4.6 points and 5 assists per game, he won't break records.

All-Noise Team
Squeaky Johnson (G, UAB) - Greases the Blazers with 6.2 assists per game.
Boo Davis (G, Wisconsin-Milwaukee) - Will hear it if he doesn't come up big against Oklahoma.
Boomer Herndon (C, Belmont) - Junior sounds like a natural for a Sonics uniform.

The All-Automotive Team
Boubacar Coly (F, Xavier) - Last seen stalled on the sideline after a minute of action on Jan. 9.
Engin Atsur (G, NC State) - This Engin couldn't against Wake Forest on March 10 (3 points in 38 minutes).
Hans Gasser (F, Washington) - Gasser can fill it up, but he only gets off the pine for 10 minutes.

All-All-Name Team
Longar Longar (C, Oklahoma) - At only 7.3 minutes per game, he spends a longar time on the bench.
Trajinski Grigsby (F, South Alabama) - Grigsby scoring only 1.3 points per game.
Luc Richard Mbah a Moute (F, UCLA) - Bruins' top rebounder hails from same Cameroon town as teammate Alfred Aboya. Yow.
Pierre Marie Altidor-Cespedes (G, Gonzaga) - Lacks height (he's only 6'), but not vowels.
Mamery Diallo (F/C, Gonzaga) - The fading Mamery played in only eight games this season.
Atila Santos (C, Northern Iowa) - No Hun is feared when he plays only five minutes per game.
Tack Minor (G, LSU) - His skills aren't sharp. Minor's been buried since Dec. 23.
Mani Messy (F, Seton Hall) - Had ample time to litter bench area this season (played in just two games).

Great article from Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN.com about the passing of one of NCAA hoops greatest coaches Ray Meyer:

Meyer's life was one of giving, and forgiving

A lot of grown men will set a record for tear-duct usage come Tuesday at Chicago's St. Vincent DePaul Church. That's when the arc of Ray Meyer's life, all 92 years of it, will be celebrated and mourned in a 10 a.m. service on the same campus where he coached basketball in five successive decades. That's when you'll witness the trickle-down effect of someone who knew the eloquent power of a warm smile and the lasting meaning of an act of kindness. Meyer died Friday of congestive heart failure. It figures it would have taken this long for his pump to give out. After all, Meyer's heart was his strongest feature. He was known by everyone, including his own family, as "Coach.'' I didn't know him well, but you didn't have to. He wasn't a nuanced man, which was part of his charm. With Meyer, there was right and wrong, friend or foe, loyal or disloyal. There was no in-between. And there also was no black or white. You earned Meyer's trust based on character, not color. Meyer won basketball games, to be sure. You don't need to run your forefinger down the list of all-time NCAA victories very long until you see Meyer's record at DePaul: 724-354. He won the 1945 NIT, when the NIT was a bottle of Dom Perignon and the NCAA tournament was a can of Blatz. And he was nimble enough to lead DePaul, the only head coaching job of his career, to the NCAA Final Four when he was 29 and again when he was 65. That might have been the genius of Meyer. He understood how to build a bridge from one generation to the next, and used something as basic as family and, well, love to do it. Basketball historians will point excitedly to his use of 6-foot-10 George Mikan -- the game's first true skilled star -- as some sort of revolutionary milestone. And they have a point; Meyer instantly recognized the impact Mikan could and would have on the sport. But no way does Mikan share the lede of Meyer's obit. To fully appreciate Meyer you have to remember he came from humble beginnings. His father died when he was 13. His first contract at DePaul was for $2,500, which might not pay for the make-up crew for a Mike Krzyzewski Chevy commercial. Better yet, Meyer retained his humility even when DePaul, Marquette with the eclectic Al McGuire, and Notre Dame with Digger Phelps, were an integral, quirky part of the national hoops landscape in the 1970s and early '80s. DePaul was part of the elite, and Meyer was its gap-toothed leader. On Friday, when news of Meyer's death became public, Phelps would refer to his longtime friend as "a gentle man," which was mostly right. Meyer was gentle. And exacting. And dictatorial if he had to be. And capable of holding a grudge. Just ask DePaul, which Meyer froze out for two years in protest of the way the school handled the forced resignation of his successor and son, Joey. But Meyer was forgiving, which is why he eventually ended the cold war with the school he loved. He was compassionate, a softy. He loved his summer basketball camp in the woods of Wisconsin, and loved even more the phone calls or notes he'd get years later from former campers. Until recently, I never knew Meyer earned a sociology degree at Notre Dame and later worked for the Chicago Relief Association, an organization dedicated to assisting the city's poor. Maybe that explains why Meyer was big on giving second chances. I remember doing a story on a former DePaul player who had had his share of post-college difficulties. There were run-ins with the law and talk of mental instability. Meyer's voice grew soft as he defended the essential goodness of his former player. He said the player was the victim of an assault where the attackers took a tire iron to his head -- and that the kid was never the same after it. Meyer did what he could to help. On occasion -- and Meyer said he witnessed it -- the former player would sit down at a piano and begin playing as if he had been classically trained. This is when Meyer's voice almost broke. He cared for his stars. He cared for the fallen. It only makes sense that Meyer died in March, when basketball matters most. He loved attending Final Fours. You'd see him in the stands with Joey. You'd see him at Sunday Mass in the church closest to the Final Four dome. Sometimes you'd see him Tuesday morning at the airport. That's when I saw him last. At the Atlanta airport in 2002, the morning after Maryland won the national championship. Chicago Tribune columnist Rick Morrissey and I said hello, and Meyer instantly began chatting up Rick. The next day I called Joey and kiddingly asked why his old man was giving me the DePaul freeze-out. An hour or so later my phone rang. It was Coach. He apologized. For what, I don't know; I'd rather talk to Morrissey than me, too. But this was so Ray Meyer. Just another act of kindness. I'll try to return the favor Tuesday at St. Vincent's. I just hope I can find an empty seat.