NCAA Tournament Wcc

Third Update: ESPN is reporting that USC coach Tim Floyd will be Arizona's next coach. ESPN's radio affiliate in Phoenix reports that the Trojan coach and Arizona athletic director Jim Livengood are finalizing a deal and an announcement is expected Thursday. Floyd coached USC for four seasons, including three NCAA tournaments and proved to be a highly effective recruiter. The Tuscon Citizen is reporting that Floyd flew in to discuss the job, but citing an unnamed source, says it is unclear if the coach was offered the job or even visited the campus. The paper reports that no press conference is yet scheduled for Thursday.

Gonzaga was Cinderella once. It's been too good for too long to wear that particular dress now, but by late Friday night it was the closest thing this tournament had left. Once Louisville destroyed Arizona in the night's first game, the Zags, a four, were the highest seed left in the field.

And then they were promptly dismantled by a very healthy-looking Ty Lawson and North Carolina.

If Lawson's toe is all better and he can play like this, there may be nothing anybody can do. Remember back in the early part of this season, when North Carolina looked head-and-shoulders better than everybody else in the land? Yeah. That wasn't that long ago, and if you had to make a pick right now because your life depended on it, you'd take the Heels, wouldn't you?

Last night's action had one tight game, a blowout that tightened near the end, a walloping, and a game that never became a blowout though the outcome was never in doubt.

Tonight, Louisville takes on that, uh, Cinderella team from the desert in Arizona. Syracuse and Oklahoma should be a lot of fun in the early games. Later tonight Kansas and Michigan State looks like it should be gem. Also North Carolina gets Gonzaga, the original West Coast Cinderella that has not been that for some time.

Stop on by around 6:30 PM ET to talk about the action from yesterday and the games tonight. Plus, there is always the coaching carousel and what happens next at Kentucky.

North Carolina has been established as the tournament favorite by the odds makers. But before we blaze a path for them into the Final Four (or even the Elite Eight), perhaps we should take a quick trip down memory lane.

The Tar Heels and the Bulldogs have a fairly interesting history together. One that people are drawing on when looking at Friday's game.

Gonzaga and Western Kentucky are two programs outside of the power conferences that have had a profound influence on the NCAA tournament and college basketball.

Appropriately, and as it turned out dramatically, the two schools finally met.

The Zags have become one of the marquee mid-major programs, thanks in large part to their tournament success. Western Kentucky has been the launching pad for many coaches, including Gene Keady, Clem Haskins, and last year, Darrin Horn.

Ultimately, this showdown went to Gonzaga in the final seconds, but not without a bit of controversy.

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Among the big story lines from Sunday's filling out of the NCAA basketball tournament field, discussions of conferences who are "overrated" and "underrated" dominated the discussion. Specifically, fans of so-called mid-major teams cried foul, and the masses proclaimed the selection committee was biased in favor of the Big Ten and Pac-10 conferences.