Chapter 43: NCAA Tournament, as scheduled
Every year, "March Madness" will be a grand event for football fans across the United States.
"March Madness" is even more popular than the NBA.
Every basketball lover, more or less, can find his figure from "March Madness".
Every year in the Bald Eagle Kingdom, a gambling company will launch a "Crazy March" section!
Since "March Madness" is a single-elimination match system, each game is full of uncertainty, which reduces the possibility of human intervention.
And it is this relatively fair and suspenseful competition system that causes a large number of fans to choose to buy their favorite teams every year.
Of course, it is precisely because of this uncertainty that many people also draw water for this bamboo basket, all in vain!
…
On Friday, March 19th, the NCAA Tournament 64 into 32, as scheduled!
The Midwest and Eastern Divisions will start a 64-to-32 game on the 20th, while the Southern and Western Divisions will start a 64-to-32 game today.
USC also came to Minneapolis, Minnesota yesterday.
That’s right, USC’s game against the Robert Morris Colonials was in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the stadium chose the Hubert Humphrey Dome, not the home of the Timberwolves: Target Centerball museum.
This is the arena chosen by the NCAA committee to ensure the fairness of the team. They are not located in their respective home courts, which can guarantee relative fairness to a certain extent.
Lian Dao and DeMar, who came to Minnesota yesterday, did not go out to wander around, nor did they find a training hall for training.
There is no way, the winter in Minnesota is too long, it is already in late March, but it is still winter for Minnesota, the temperature outside can reach minus 5-6 degrees.
Lian Dao and Demar were really not in the mood to go out in this horrible weather, as for training.
In fact, there is not much need to cram. Their first task now is to adjust their bodies to the best condition and ensure adequate rest!
Today they got out of bed and turned on the TV,
DeMar suggested that he wanted to watch the University of Connecticut Huskies game, and Lian Dao had no objection. In fact, whether it was the No. 1 seeded UConn Huskies in the West or the No. 1 seed North Carolina Tar Heels in the South, it was fine for Lian Dao .
Because these two teams have reached the national semi-finals in history.
These two teams, no matter which one they are, as long as USC wants to reach the finals, they may eventually meet.
UConn is strong this year. Three of their five starters entered the NBA through the draft, and two of them joined the NBA briefly through free agency.
The players who joined the NBA through the draft are: A.J. Price; Hashim Thabeet; and Kemba Walker!
Among them, Hashim Thabeet will historically be selected by the Grizzlies, who hold the second pick in the first round this year, as the second pick!
And Kemba Walker will be selected by the Bobcats with the ninth position in the first round in the future, and will become the head point guard of the Bobcats' future reconstruction.
The University of Connecticut is also a top basketball school, and this university is one of the few public Ivy League schools.
Both academic sports are double top universities!
There have been many NBA stars in the team: Rudy Gay, Marcus Williams, Ben Gordon, and Emeka Okafor and so on.
They are all from the University of Connecticut.
Regardless of the tactical level of the coach or the talent of the players in this game, the University of Connecticut Huskies beat the Chattanooga Mocks completely.
So the probability of an upset in this game is almost zero, and the two of them are not here to see if the Chattanooga Morks can upset.
They were watching Hashim Thabeet and Kemba Walker.
Before the start of the game, that is, yesterday afternoon, the two of them prepared all kinds of food just to watch today's game.
Through the game, it was found that Hashim Thabeet's interior defense was quite good, but his offense was poor.
But with a height of 2.21 meters, he has a very prominent advantage in the interior, especially in rebounding. In the NCAA, it is almost like no one is in the land.
I saw that it was basically difficult for the Chattanooga Mox team to succeed in the layup under the defense of Hashim Thabeet.
But Lian Dao can still see that Hashim Thabeet is too thin. Most of his internal confrontations rely on flexibility and height advantages. Once he encounters a powerful center, he will struggle. .
And Kemba Walker showed offensive aggressiveness in his freshman season. It can be seen from his breakthrough Zhonglian rice that his explosive power is very strong.
Almost unstoppable when charged, a perfect combination of speed, footwork and aggression.
Can score anywhere on the court, can use retreat steps, change directions, and various fake moves to throw off defenders, create various shooting spaces for himself, and be full of creativity when holding the ball to break through. Has the ability to finish the score after physical confrontation, and can also adjust the shooting angle in the air to avoid the defender who comes to block the shot.
Pull-up layups and floating shots are his main scoring methods, but his outside shots are accurate.
The most important thing is that he has good passing and organizational skills.
Compared with Hashem Thabeet, Lian Dao is more worried about Kemba Walker.
Although Lian Dao was at a disadvantage in height against Hashim Thabeet, Lian Dao could definitely crush him in terms of strength.
But Kemba Walker, thinking of this, Lian Dao turned his attention to Demar, which made Demar very serious, and he watched every breakthrough of Kemba Walker on TV.
In terms of defense, DeMar is definitely not inferior to Kemba Walker, and may be better than him; but in terms of offensive diversity, DeMar has no three-pointers, and Kemba Walker has an advantage in this regard.
But DeMar is also better than Kemba Walker in breakthroughs and mid-range shots.
Thinking about it this way, the game is about to end. At 103:47, the University of Connecticut directly brought a massacre!
Lian Dao adjusted the remote control to the Southern Division. At this time, the 12th seed Western Kentucky Mountaintop team in the Southern Division played against the 5th seed Illinois State and the Illini Combat Team.
The 12th-seeded Western Kentucky Mountaintop team went on to defeat the 5th-seeded Illinois State and Illini Combat Team 84:71.
There was an upset on the first day of the NCAA, and the No. 12 seed counterattacked the No. 5 seed team.
Sure enough, for March Madness, only you can't think of it, and they can't do it!
Lian Dao and Demar looked at the score, and then they looked at each other.
They have a new understanding of "March Madness", and they also pay more attention to their mentality.
The next day, the whole team just got up in the morning and did some basic training to adjust their physical condition.
In the afternoon, the bus arrived at the entrance of the hotel, and they were going to take the bus to the Hubert Humphrey Arena.
The game started around 4pm and they arrived early to get used to the venue.
Although I arrived more than 2 hours earlier, there was already a sea of people outside the Hubert Humphrey Arena. They were all fans waiting in line to check in.
The Hubert Humphrey Dome can accommodate 50,000 to 60,000 people, but judging from the outside audience, it will definitely exceed the maximum capacity of the arena.
Some of their fans who have not bought tickets will choose to watch the broadcast on the big screen outside the arena.
Because in their view, this is also a kind of support for their favorite team.
Most of the crowd were USC fans. Lian Dao, who was sitting on the bus, seemed to be all red.
Some of these fans flew or drove from Southern California just to support their favorite teams.
The bus passed through the crowd, and people kept shouting the name of the USC basketball team.
There are also some fans shouting the names of players such as Lian Dao, DeMar and Gibson.
The fan atmosphere outside the Hubert Humphrey Dome also infected USC players.
Came to the locker room, Tim did nothing, just stretched out his hand.
All the team members put their hands up and shouted, "Trojans!"