The NCAA tournament is about basketball but also so much more: the fans, bands, cheerleaders, etc. The East Regional is taking place in Washington, DC this weekend and we could not be more excited to be there in person! HoopsHD is all over it and covering all of the angles so you can look forward to a cascade of coverage in the days ahead. Jon Teitel continues our coverage with a photo essay recap of the Sweet 16 opener featuring the Tigers vs. the Spartans (all of the photos below were taken by HoopsHD, but since the NCAA was kind enough to award us a credential…and to cover our butts, we will extend the courtesy for everything to both the NCAA and CBS Sports just in case).
The practices/press conferences were nice but the games themselves brought out the heavy hitters, including ESPN’s Marty Smith:
John Thompson as color analyst for Westwood One, who caught up with Washington Post columnist John Feinstein:
JT3 made his triumphant return to Capital 1 Arena:
Steve Lavin headlined the March Madness Live VR app crew:
CBS brought out the “A” team including Bill Raftery:
Grant Hill:
and Tracy Wolfson:
Hello Friends!
Nice seats for me, eh?
LSU did some pregame stretching:
The Tigers all seemed ready to pounce including Naz Reid/Ja’Vonte Smart/Emmitt Williams/Skylar Mays:
Michigan State huddled up in anticipation of the big game:
The Spartans all seemed ready to follow the lead of Big 10 POY Cassius Winston:
The refs are ready:
The fans of both teams are pumped:
Both sets of cheerleaders are poised:
Here we go:
The Tigers tried to keep it close in the 1st half thanks to Tremont Waters, who had an old-fashioned 3-PT play to start the half and a long-range 3 to end the half but Sparty was still up double-digits at halftime thanks to 1 youngster and 1 veteran. Winston made a trio of threes that forced the defense to focus on him, which freed up FR SF Aaron Henry to do a little bit of everything (a jumper on the 1st possession of the game, a BLK on a layup attempt by Smart, a nice AST to Xavier Tillman for a layup, a REB/putback, a pull-up layup, and a super-high floater that somehow bounced in). Michigan State would not be denied thanks to a 21-10 REB advantage that gave them a 40-28 scoring advantage at halftime. The mascots were both running around trying to get their fans excited:
The best part of halftime was when they put the Auburn-UNC game on the Jumbotron. As the Tigers built a 41-39 halftime lead, all of the Duke and Virginia Tech fans in DC started cheering loudly in the hopes that their ACC rival would fall. Waters almost single-handedly got LSU back into the game with a 3 to start the 2nd half followed by a STL/breakaway layup but even with SR PF Kavell Bigby-Williams securing a bunch of rebounds/dunks it was just not enough. SR PF Kenny Goins knocked down a pair of threes to key an 11-0 run and force Coach Tony Benford to call a timeout, FR SF Gabe Brown finished with a career-high 15 PTS in 16 minutes off the bench (after only scoring 11 total PTS in the past 2 months!) and Henry set a pair of career-highs with 20 PTS/6 AST. The only scare came with 7 minutes left when Reid hit JR PF Nick Ward hard on his left hand and was called for a flagrant 1. Ward appeared to be in a lot of pain both on the court and on the bench, but after jogging to the locker room he returned to the bench a few minutes later during the under-4-minute timeout:
Michigan State pulled away to win 80-63 as their fans went wild after the buzzer:
Right after the game both Winston and Coach Tom Izzo came by to chat with the radio guys in the front row:
There were only a handful of reporters outside the victors’ locker room waiting for the team to drop by after its big win:
Goins had a poor shooting night (2-10 FG) but still made some big contributions with a game-high 11 REB/2 STL:
SO PF Xavier Tillman made a name for himself as 2019 Big 10 6th Man of the Year but due to Ward’s ongoing recovery from a left hand injury he got to start in the frontcourt and had a pretty solid performance with 12 PTS/8 REB/2 BLK:
Ward had his hand on ice after the game but the win seemed to put him in a good mood:
Brown was the X-factor, as evident by the swarm of camera crews surrounding him at his locker:
That’s all for now, check back later for continuing coverage.