Immediate thoughts on Friday’s games

I’m going to start with the women’s side…Pat and others will fill in the men’s

First from the games I was at…Congrats to Baruch for getting the first NCAA Tourney win for the CUNYAC, a league that takes its fair share of knocks, and doing so on the road, showing nice poise after Mount St. Mary rallied from 17 down to take the lead.

Kudos also to Bridgewater for rallying from some early nerves, than battling back in OT to get a nice upset of Bates…and happy 21st birthday to 5-foot-4 point guard Katy Herr, who finished a hair shy of a triple-double.

I know they don’t hear it often, but my fellow broadcaster Paul and I thought both games were well reffed. Officials let the players decide the games at the end, which was fair both ways.

Medaille got rave reviews for its performance. No jitters for a VERY young team, going up against a W&J squad that started 5 seniors. The #25 ranking in this week’s poll appears legit.

It took all of about 5 minutes for Mary Washington to get back on track as the Eagles buried TCNJ early, taking out some frustration from last week’s defeat.

The NESCAC went 2-2…had figured on them getting 3 Opening Round wins, but Muhlenberg and Bridgewater were tough on neutral courts…UAA went 3-1…sets up a nice showdown Saturday for Bowdoin and Brandeis. Bowdoin has won 69 in a row at home. Brandeis has 30 straight non-league wins. Something has to give.

VERY tough way for NYU to go out, losing 5 straight to end the year after a promising beginning.

Based on reactions from a few I spoke to, one of the bigger upsets was Greensboro over Moravian. Greensboro’s 93 points were the high for the night. People in this part of the country (northeast) were also surprised that UW-Stout downed Concordia-Moorhead with ease.

Thumbs up as well to the NWC, which won 2 from the SCIAC. We’ll get an NWC title game rematch on Saturday (Puget-PLU) and an ASC pairing as well (Howard Payne-Hardin-Simmons). Hope-Capital and Messiah-Williams also figure to be games that are among the most worth checking out.