Sully's Court

Final second-round thoughts:

North Carolina looked awesome. In a chat last week I said they were the most vulnerable No. 1 seed. Now I'm not so sure. Ty Lawson looks fully recovered from his injury and that makes a big difference.

Can I take it back that I said Washington State has lost its mojo? The Cougars totally controlled Notre Dame. The key, I think, is guard Derrick Low, the one with the Samurai haircut. When he's playing well, they're really good and he was really good against ND.

Louisville looked awesome too with two easy victories. I guess I'm still a doubter that this team can keep it up.

Tennessee looked shaky at times especially at the end of regulation against Butler. There was a definite lack of leadership but they survived. It's clear Tennessee-Butler should not have been a second-round game, these teams are too good to meet that early. It was the first second-round meeting between 30-win teams (Of course, it's easier to win 30 these days because teams play more games). Butler was definitely a Sweet 16 caliber team or more.

Kansas was workman-like in winning two games. UNLV gave them a tussle for a while but the Jayhawks are in good shape in this region because of upsets. They should make the Final Four.

Villanova has benefitted from the luck of the draw. The Wildcats should go home happy next week and get ready for a big season in 2008-09.

Wisconsin rarely looks great because the Badgers' talent level is less than that of other teams, but they were good enough to win two games. Yet based on how they played this weekend, they will be facing a challenge.

Davidson is for real. The Wildcats played a tough out-of-conference schedule, which helped them, but the problem is they lost all the games. That's not true anymore. Stephen Curry is an All-American.

Memphis has been criticized for playing in Conference USA (as if that's the school's fault) but Coach Cal loaded up his out-of-conference schedule and it's paid off. The Tigers met the challenge of Mississippi State like a seasoned, tournament-toughened team.

Michigan State is coached by Tom Izzo so the Spartans always make the Sweet 16. They beat Pittsburgh with hard-nosed, fundamental play. Heck, Raymar Morgan, their star small forward, was practically invisible. The Michigan State big guys are all solid and tough. Freshman guard Kalin Lucas is a jet and a future star.

Stanford won a tremendous game over Marquette and I think it's safe to say that no one has two big guys playing together as good as the Cardinal's twin 7-footers, Brook and Robin Lopez.

Texas looked great all weekend until the last 10 minutes against Miami when the Longhorns seemed to fall asleep. The game was over and the Longhorns just let Miami make it look respectable. They can't do that against a better team, however.

UCLA didn't play well against Texas A&M and could have lost but they didn't. Mostly because of star freshman Kevin Love, who was tremendous at crunch time. What a tough-minded team. They should be in the Final Four.

Western Kentucky is really kind of lucky. In the first round, they won on a 35-footer, then they get San Diego instead of UConn. Just happy to be in the Sweet 16.

About 10 minutes into its second game of the tournament, Xavier finally kicked into gear. The Muskies really took it to Purdue and that kind of effort will get them further into the tournament.

You could see it coming after the first round, West Virginia was going to beat Duke and it did. Bench play was the difference, with sub guard Joe Mazzulla playing a spectacular game.