San Jose embraces the madness

By Sandeep Chandok:

March Madness is well underway and this evening the madness will tip off in San Jose.

The SAP Center in downtown San Jose will host the West Regional of the men’s NCAA basketball tournament — more commonly known as the Sweet 16 and the Elite Eight.

Today’s games will mark the first time in four years since the NCAA Tournament was last held in the Bay Area. In the previous instance, the first two rounds were played in the same venue as this year’s although it was HP Pavilion in 2013.

“We’re excited to be here in San Jose,” said Arizona head coach Sean Miller. “We had a practice earlier today at Aaron Gordon’s high school.”

Gordon, who currently plays for the Orlando Magic in the NBA, is a San Jose native who played at Archbishop Mitty High School and for Miller at Arizona.

The No. 2 Wildcats are set to face No. 11 Xavier University, the lowest seed left of the 16 remaining schools. This is the second Sweet 16 meeting for the schools in three years. Arizona won that game 68-60 before losing to Wisconsin in the Elite Eight.

“How this happened twice in the last three years is amazing to me,” Miller said. “If it happened in the NCAA tournament, I think that’s improbable enough, but to be here in the Sweet 16, round two — I wish it was different.”

Xavier is being referred to by many media outlets as this year’s “Cinderella” team. This label is typically given to a lowly-seeded team that makes it deeper into the tournament than was projected by way of beating higher-seeded teams.

“I don’t feel like we’re an underdog,” said Xavier head coach Chris Mack. “You’re only an underdog if you feel like you’re the lesser team and I don’t feel that way about our guys.”

The Musketeers knocked off No. 6 seed University of Maryland in the opening round and No. 3 seed Florida State University in the second round to advance to the West Regional so it would behoove the Wildcats to take this Xavier team lightly.

“Our guys have earned the right to be here in San Jose to play for an opportunity to get to the Elite Eight,” Mack said.

Prior to the Arizona-Xavier rematch is a top-five clash between top-seeded Gonzaga University and No. 4 West Virginia University.

Despite being a No. 1 seed, Gonzaga is often not recognized by basketball analysts as a powerhouse team because it plays in the West Coast Conference and not in one of the power-five conferences (Pac-12, ACC, Big-12, Big 10, SEC).

Regardless of what analysts say, West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins respects the Bulldogs’ program and history.

“They know the tradition,” Huggins said. “They’ve got everything that you need to have to have a great program.”

West Virginia is a scrappy defensive team that applies pressure 94 feet of the way. It gets up into the grill of those with the ball and crashes the boards hard as it is 19th in the country in total rebounds per game.

Gonzaga head coach Mark Few is certainly aware of the Mountaineers’ top-tier traps in its full-court press and said planning for it is unthinkable.

“It’s impossible to simulate the intensity, the physicality, just the relentlessness that West Virginia brings,” Few said.

Unfortunately for the Mountaineers, Gonzaga rebounds better than they do and comes in 12 spots higher on that same rebounding list and ranks second in defensive rebounds per game as well.

“They’ve got great size inside,” Huggins said. “Not just size [though], but they’re good and they limit you to one shot.”

The winner of the West Virginia and Gonzaga game will play the winner of Arizona and Xavier game on Saturday for a spot in the Final Four.

This year’s Final Four is in Phoenix, Ariz. which could give the Wildcats a home-court advantage should they make it that far.

Although the four teams in the West bracket feature different playing styles, they all share one goal: a chance to cut the nets after the final buzzer of the NCAA Tournament.

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