An Unnecessarily Exhaustive Guide To The 2010/11 NCAA Tournament, Part 2: Eastern Region

March 16th, 2011

There is no better event in the American sports calendar than the NCAA Tournament. None. Zilch. Zero. And it’s not even especially close. All the games running concurrently, and the one game knockout format, make for captivating evenings of hours and hours of entertainment. This is particularly true of the first round, where action jumps from game to game, and Greg Gumbel struggles to keep up with all the information he’s getting in his ear. It’s like the FA Cup, except it’s better. Much, much better. And I like the FA Cup. Since this post is long enough already, the intro ends here, and there follows a preview (often in the form of a recap) of all 68 of the teams taking part in this, the 2011 NCAA Tournament. In this post: the 18 teams in the Eastern region. Use the following links to skip to relevant parts. Alabama State – Clemson – George Mason – Georgia – Indiana State – Kentucky – Long Island – Marquette – North Carolina – Ohio State – Princeton – Syracuse – Texas-San Antonio – UAB – Villanova – Washington – West Virginia – Xavier No name in the tournament this season competes with this one. Alabama State Alabama State won the SWAC with the conference’s best defence, using a very long rotation (that shortened towards the end of the season) built around aggressive, undersized forwards, such as preseason DPOY pick Chris Duncan. They led the conference in field goal percentage defence (40.3%) and blocks, while also dominating the glass on most nights. Unfortunately, they can struggle greatly on offence, ranking 317th in the nation in points per game (61.3) and with their leading three point shooter, 6’4 junior Ivory White, hitting a team high 36 threes but on 117 attempts (31%). The team […]