It is amazing how much more parity there is every year...with a few exceptions, it seems like almost every game played yesterday was still a contest with under 5 to play...including 3 OT games and 6 double digit seeds advancing.

Look at Ohio yesterday...they were 7-9 in the MAC, seeded 9 in their tournament and had to survive 2 OT wins just to advance to the NCAA. And then they pretty much manhandle Georgetown. Parity brothers, parity!

And it goes back to what I was saying about not "looking down" on tournaments like the CIT. There are just more good teams out there than there used to be (especially now that there are 347 of them). Any team between 40-150 are relatively equal (in my opinion)...and no top 40 team is immune from upset...even Kansas had to work hard last night to beat Lehigh. Kentucky was the only team that really breezed yesterday.


Look at the final 8 of the CIT, check out the win totals (I added their RPI's):

101 Appalachian State (23-10) @ 67 Marshall (24-9)

81 Fairfield (23-10) @ 66 Creighton (17-15)

78 Louisiana Tech (24-10) @ 98 Missouri State (21-12)

128 Pacific (21-11) @ 118 Northern Colorado (25-7)

That is a nice quality field...and these teams weren't even deemed to be in the "top 96".

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier --Colin Powell