Evening Session
Southeast(Tampa, FL): #2 Flordia vs #15 UC Santa Barbara, 6:50 PM, TBS
Southeast(Denver, CO): #3 BYU vs #14 Wofford, 7:15 PM, CBS
West(Washington, DC): #3 UConn vs #14 Bucknell, 7:20 PM, TNT
Southeast(Tuscon, AZ): #4 Wisconsin vs #13 Belmont, 7:27 PM, truTV
Southeast(Tampa, FL): #7 UCLA vs #10 Michigan St., 9:20 PM, TBS
Southeast(Denver, CO): #6 St. John's vs #11 Gonzaga, 9:45 PM, CBS
West(Washington, DC): #6 Cincinnati vs #11 Missouri, 9:50 PM, TNT
Southeast(Tuscon, AZ): #5 Kansas St. vs #12 Utah St., 9:57 PM, truTV
Weird scheduling. No #1 seeds in action during the evening session and six of the eight games are from the Southeast region. The last four games of the night are a #5, a pair of #6s and a #7 playing. The headliner of the night will be BYU and Jimmer Freddette considering how prolific a scorer he is. The Wisconsin-Belmont game might be interesting. Wisconsin is ranked 10th according to KenPom and Belmont is 17th. Tempo? Wisconsin is 345th as expected while Belmont is 56th. That game could come down to who can force the other into their pace though it is easier to slow the game down than speed it up. There are some smart folks who think UConn might be in for a tussle versus Bucknell especially given UConn's five games in five days Big East Tournament.
In the later games, Michigan St shows up in the tournament having been denied the full UNC 2010 experience of going to the NIT. The Spartans have 14 losses which makes me think 2010 UNC would have had a shot of making it into this field. Tom Izzo is just glad he is not the #10 seed in the East. Cincinnati-Missouri is another game between two tempo extremes. Cinncy is 285th in tempo, Missouri is 13th.
The afternoon sessions had some really close games and upsets. With these kinds of seed pairings the evening could be more of the same.