Swamigp’s Weblog

March Madness has officially begun with a flurry of exciting games out of the gate. Stanford’s Lopez twins, Brook and Robin Lopez,  and their role players proved to be too much with a 77-53 rout over the Cornell Big Red. Reserve guard Kenny Brown led the Cardinal charge by pouring in 18 points  for a Stanford team that took a comfortable 21 point lead, 28-17, into the half. Robin Lopez had a dominating game posting 14 points, 4 rebounds and 5 blocks as Stanford’s defense held  Cornell to only 30 percent shooting for the game. Taj Finger had 10 points and 8 rebounds to pace the Cardinal behind Brown and Lopez to the easy victory. Stanford took advantage of Cornell’s poor shooting right out of the start to jump out to an early 27-15 lead they would never relinquish. Stanford moves on to play Marquette in the second round of the Tournament.

Xavier, my final four pick out of of the West Region, escaped with a victory over upset-minded Georgia to advance to the second round. Down by 9 at halftime, 35-26, to a surprising Georgia team, Xavier turned on the burners in the second half, wearing down Georgia to come all the way back for the victory. Derrick Brown posted 19 points to go with 11 rebounds, and Josh Duncan chipped in 20 for the balanced Musketeers to help pull of a 73-61 victory over the Bulldogs of Georgia. Georgia showed the effects of being warn down from their impressive run to win the SEC tournament (having to win 3 games in 2 days to advance to the NCAA Tournament) by being outscored by 21 in the second half to lose by double digits.  Down 41-30 early in the second half, Xavier went on a 22-8 run to rally to take the lead on Dante Jackson’s lone points of the game. Georgia wouldn’t take the lead back, but made it close, closing the gap to 3 points, 64-61 with 1:24 left. Xavier, though wasn’t phased by Georgia’s rally, ending the game on a 9-0 run, all on free throws to come out with a victory.

The #2 seeded Duke Blue Devils escaped a scare from #15 seeded Belmont thanks to Gerald Henderson’s layup with 13 seconds to go to win 71-70. Belmont played the game tough, and give them all the credit in the world, but couldn’t stop the Blue Devils from overtaking them in the final minute. Henderson’s game winning layup gave him a game high 21 points to go with 7 rebounds as Duke will advance to the second round, moving on to face the Purdue Boilermakers.

Belmont was leading the game 70-69 on two free throws by Justin Hare to take the lead with just over a minute to go. They kept their lead, and had a chance to increase their lead but an errant shot by Alex Renfroe with 20 seconds left gave the Blue Devils one last chance. Gerald Henderson blew by defenders on his way to the hoop to score the winning bucket. Belmont had a chance with 4 seconds left, but an inbounds pass was lobbed right to Duke’s DeMarcus Nelson to end the Cinderella’s dream. Once fouled, DeMarcus Nelson missed the free throw with 2 seconds left to give Belmont one last desperation heave, but ti was just off to send Belmont’s dreams of an upset aside as Duke prevailed. Renfroe led the Bruins with 15 points and Will Peeples and Matt Dolson both posted 14 points for the Sun Belt Conference winners.