NCAA Tournament - St. Mary's (11) vs Villanova (6)

[jfan]

Whew!!

[stever20]

23 straight neutral site wins? That's unbelievable, but did they forget about the Wisconsin game?

it's 8 this year so far. 3 in Orlando, LaSalle, UConn, the 3 BET games, tonight
15 last year Lafayette, 3 in Atlantis, Gonzaga, Hofstra, the 3 BET games, 6 NCAA games


The Wisconsin game 2 years ago was the last Neutral loss.

[billyjack]

I saw the last 10 minutes. It played out like one of the thrilling 1980's Villanova wins in the NCAA's. Close lead, slow pace, tight possesions, players know their roles, and a well-coached Villanova team making the necessary plays for the win. Seriously, this was like so many Massimino style wins. Fantastic to watch. Even had the veteran leadership of Booth-Paschall to remind us of Pinone and Stewart Granger.... or McLain, McClain, Pinckney... or Pressley and Jensen... or Plansky. On a side note, Mark Plansky announced the Friar NIT game on Tuesday and did a great job!

[adoraz]

Sounding like a broken record here, but big props to Nova for helping the league out. If we didn't have Nova these past 6 years, things would be pretty bleak.

Mediocre BE showing yesterday but certainly not unexpected. I wasn't expecting any of our teams to make a run this year.

That said, next year should be a really good one and I hope Hall and Marquette can retain their players.

[kayako]

it's 8 this year so far. 3 in Orlando, LaSalle, UConn, the 3 BET games, tonight
15 last year Lafayette, 3 in Atlantis, Gonzaga, Hofstra, the 3 BET games, 6 NCAA games


The Wisconsin game 2 years ago was the last Neutral loss.

If La Salle @ the Palestra is a neutral site game, then all of our Wells Fargo games are also neutral site.

[stever20]

it's 8 this year so far. 3 in Orlando, LaSalle, UConn, the 3 BET games, tonight
15 last year Lafayette, 3 in Atlantis, Gonzaga, Hofstra, the 3 BET games, 6 NCAA games


The Wisconsin game 2 years ago was the last Neutral loss.

If La Salle @ the Palestra is a neutral site game, then all of our Wells Fargo games are also neutral site.

yeah I was looking at Ken Pom who had it as a semi-away game.... Looking officially...

anyways taking that out takes it down to 23.... last year with 15
3 in Orlando, UConn, 3 BET games, and then last night for 8.

[herodotus]

Sounding like a broken record here, but big props to Nova for helping the league out. If we didn't have Nova these past 6 years, things would be pretty bleak.

Mediocre BE showing yesterday but certainly not unexpected. I wasn't expecting any of our teams to make a run this year.

That said, next year should be a really good one and I hope Hall and Marquette can retain their players.

No question about this. The biggest reason why we're considered Power 6, and the AAC isn't, is the performance of Nova, vs the performance of UConn. If Nova was under .500, and UConn was stacking titles, we'd be eating their dust. Fortunately, that's not the case. The rise of PC, and SH from irrelevance has helped, as has the performance of the newbies, but don't get it twisted, without Nova's performance, we'd be seen as a good, but borderline mid major league. We need another program (ahem Hoyas), to become a fixture in the Top 15-20, and to make some deep runs, preferably a Final Four run, to protect us in the event Nova has a true off year, like 2011.