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Defending Champ Florida Gets Top Billing
The Atlantic Coast Conference placed the most teams in the tournament with seven, while the Big East, Pac-10 and Big Ten had six each, the SEC five and the Big 12 four. No mid-major had more than two.
Old Dominion of the Colonial Athletic Conference did get an at-large bid, but Missouri State (0-5 against the top two teams in its league), Air Force (season-ending four-game losing streak) and, maybe most stunningly, Drexel (finished behind Old Dominion and Hofstra in the CAA), were left out.
  Ohio State players celebrate their Big Ten Tournament championship basketball game victory in Chicago, Sunday, March 11, 2007. Ohio State defeated Wisconsin 66-49. (AP Photo/Brian Kersey) (Brian Kersey - AP)   The Gators are too much to handle in an 84-75 victory over Ohio State for their second straight national championship. On Hoops: Florida is a team for the ages, because in winning back-to-back national titles they took a very good team's best shot and still came out victorious. The Buckeyes are setback by the Gators' three-point shooting every time they try to make a run. Greg Oden, the public introvert, and Joakim Noah, the unabashed extrovert, share a common desire to savor college. Select CompanyFlorida joined a small group who repeated as men's basketball champion:Oklahoma State 1945-46 Kentucky 1948-49 San Francisco 1955-56 Cincinnati 1961-62 UCLA 1964-65, 1967-73 Duke 1991-92 NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPFINAL FOURREGIONAL FINALSSouth West Midwest EastMULTIMEDIA Photos: Snapshots from the 2007 NCAA tournament. Video: Charting Texas freshman Kevin Durant's rapid rise to the top. Video: Post columnist Sally Jenkins talks about Durant. ON OUR SITETeam-by-Team Analysis:Coaching Tree: The Six Degrees of March's Mayhem (PDF) Flashback: A Quarter-Century Worth of Memories (PDF) TOURNEY TRACKER Share and compare your NCAA brackets. |
"It's very disappointing, not just that you didn't get in, but when you look at some of the teams that did," said coach Bruiser Flint of Drexel, which went 23-8 with 13 road wins.
Little guys weren't the only ones disappointed.
Kansas State looked safe in Bob Huggins' first year as coach but didn't make it. Neither did Florida State. And the biggest surprise of all might have been to bypass Syracuse, 22-10 and winner of seven of its last 10.
"I have no way of understanding why we're not in the tournament," coach Jim Boeheim said. "You look at the numbers and it's hard to believe. But it's done. There's no use in talking about it."
Other notables from Selection Sunday included:
_ Lute Olson of Arizona making his 23rd straight appearance in the tournament, tying the record held by Dean Smith at North Carolina.
_ Louisville getting a nice break, earning only a sixth seed, but having to travel only an hour down Interstate 64 to play in Lexington's Rupp Arena, home of rival Kentucky.
_ A very angry Niagara team, relegated to Tuesday night's play-in game against Florida A&M despite a 22-11 record that included an 11-game winning streak.
"Nothing makes sense to me," coach Joe Mihalich said. "Let me be diplomatic here _ I'm confused."
_ A first-round matchup between Marquette and Michigan State pitting former Spartans assistant Tom Crean against his old boss, Tom Izzo. A possible second-round matchup between Illinois coach Bruce Weber and his former assistant at Southern Illinois, Chris Lowery, who moved into Weber's spot a year after he left.
