Copout? Perhaps. But, like Georgetown, we're mailing it in. A countdown of the top 10 moments of the NCAA Tourney to date:
10. The classically unpredictable 8-9 game. UNLV had Kent State going all over the place in their first round game. The Running Rebels allowed only 10 first half points, while the Golden Flashes gift-wrapped the game by averaging a turnover a minute in the first half.
9. And Bob Knight had Pitt winning it all. Michigan State basketball apparently has risen back from the dead. The Spartans were national title favorites in the preseason, but lost that status somewhere around the time they lost 43-36 to Iowa. That would be the Iowa that went 13-19. Tom Izzo is truly a great coach because he fooled everyone.
8. The two almosts. Belmont nearly picking off Duke in the first round and UCLA barely getting past a pesky Texas A&M. The first was made that much sweeter when Duke actually did lose in the second round to a 6-foot-8 white guy with funny ears and a 5-foot-8 sixth-man guard.
7. The Lopez Brothers. The pair is establishing itself as the greatest set of twins in sports. Ever since Tiki Barber's retirement, the sporting world has been looking for its next set of brothers to pass the torch to, and the Lopez's are it. And did you know that their heroes are Walt Disney and Michael Jackson? What's not to love?
6. The, well, madness. Those three minutes when CBS didn't know whether to show the last two minutes of Davidson-Georgetown or the last 45 seconds of Tennessee-Butler in OT. The result was a disorienting mishmash of the two, separated by nifty transition graphics and confused apologies from Greg Gumbel.
5. Britney's comeback. CBS continually plugged Britney Spears' upcoming cameo appearance on "How I Met Your Mother." Talk about heaving a half-court shot at the buzzer...when you're down by 45.
4. Comeback kids. Villanova shocked ACC tournament runners up Clemson in the first round by making up an 18 point deficit. The Wildcats have been making the king of upsets since the days of Ed Pinckney and were rewarded with an easy path to the Sweet 16 versus Siena.
3. The busted brackets. The annual collective groan from people's brackets being destroyed. Everyone who was watching the craziness in Tampa, where two 13 and two 12 seeds won in the first round, realized their bracket was screwed. One 5-12 is normal, but Friday was crazy.
2. He pronounces it Steph-an. Watching Davidson's Stephen Curry play out of his mind, almost singlehandedly willing his Wildcats into the Sweet 16. It was almost worth the 78 "Davidson topples Goliath" headlines we had to read the next day.
1. The buzzer-beaters. Western Kentucky's Ty Rogers and San Diego's De'Jon Jackson more than made up for the dullfest that was Day 1 of the tournament. Rogers drilled a 26-footer to lift his Hilltoppers over the summit, dispatching mid-major upstart Drake and Jackson's jumper with 1.2 ticks ended a season of mediocrity from fourth-seeded UConn.
