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Wednesday, March 15
Expect the favorites to march on

By Rick Morrissey
Special to ESPN.com

Michigan State has been waiting for this for a year. Everything else in between -- the hype, the conference title, the conference tournament title -- has been nice but mostly disposable wrapping paper.

What the top-seeded Spartans want, what they've been shooting for since last season, is a national championship. Coach Tom Izzo knows it would be insincere to say anything else after going to the Final Four last season and falling short. This time, the Spartans want it all.

Game of the region

No. 8 Utah vs. No. 9 Saint Louis, Thursday at 10:10 p.m. ET
None of the teams with ambitions wants to be an eighth or ninth seed. That's normally when teams of similar abilities match up, and it always means a second-round game against the top seed.

But Utah coach Rick Majerus had to be pleased that Saint Louis won the Conference USA tournament and received an automatic bid. The Billikens have a nice player in Justin Love but not the type of talent that can do serious damage in the bracket.

Majerus needs his big man, Hanno Möttölä, to block out the pain from thumb and elbow injuries. If he does, the Utes could beat Saint Louis. If he doesn't, the Billikens might live for another day -- though that other day will include Michigan State.

To get it, they'll have to navigate through some very rough waters, but then again, they've made it through an arduous schedule already, so what's a few more games? They found their sea legs a long time ago.

The Spartans take on Valparaiso first, then meet Utah or St. Louis in the second. (Valpo fans: That's not looking ahead. Them's just the facts). Michigan State not only is talented, it almost always is well-prepared, and whomever finds themselves on the court with the Spartans won't be taken lightly.

The reason for that, perhaps more than Izzo, is Mateen Cleaves. The senior point guard has a way of making his teammates follow, and he almost always knows where he's going. But what Spartan-philes need to watch in the early rounds is how well Cleaves shoots. It could be the key indicator of whether Michigan State will be able to reach its goal of a national championship.

Cleaves has a picture-perfect shooting motion, as long as that picture is a Picasso. Arms and hands aren't where they're supposed to be when Cleaves shoots, and the result is that your guess is as good as his. If he's on, the Spartans are almost impossible to beat.

If he's off early in the tournament, it could bode poorly for Michigan State.

If all goes as planned, and it rarely does, sixth-seeded UCLA should meet No. 3 Maryland in the second round of the tougher bracket of the two Midwest brackets. JaRon Rush is back, and he makes the Bruins a much different team, a much better team. Here's guessing they're going to find themselves at the right time.

It's not too late.

Searching for Cinderella
We're searching and searching here, and frankly, it's like trying to find some rough among the diamonds. But here goes: Iona. Yep, the school where the legend of Jimmy Valvano began.

One of Valvano's former players, Jeff Ruland, is coaching the Gaels now, and he has the distinction of being on the last Iona team to win an NCAA Tournament game. That was 20 years ago.

Why might it happen again? Iona is hot, having won 14 of its last 15 games and taking the championship of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. But that success more or less came in the vacuum of a poor conference, and now the Gaels have to take on third-seeded Maryland.

With Terence Morris, Juan Dixon and Lonny Baxter, Maryland has more talent than Iona can ever dream of, but the Gaels have Tariq Kirksay (19 points, 9.3 rebounds) and center Nakiea Miller (13.8, 7.9), whoever they are.

Hey, why not?

Don't believe the hype
Of course, you probably stopped believing the hype about Syracuse a while ago, but the Orangemen always make for interesting viewing, in the way that natural disasters make for interesting viewing from the comfort of your living room.

You might remember fourth-seeded Syracuse. Won 19 straight games to open the season. Filled up on a cream-puff schedule. Had seniors who seemed to show that you didn't need NBA-bound freshmen and sophomores to have a good team. Oh, well.

The Orangemen fell to earth and left a crater. They come into the tournament losers of their last regular season game (to UConn) and Big East tournament game (to Georgetown), not the best way to make an entrance.

The pinnacle for coach Jim Boeheim was a trip to the championship game in 1996, but other than that, he has manned the ship as group after group of talented players have failed to meet expectations. Aside from that runner-up season, Syracuse is 6-6 in the tournament in the 1990s.

On a roll
UCLA can break hearts -- its fans' and its opponents'. You never know which.

The Bruins lost six of seven games in February but were struggling without Rush. Rush is back after serving a suspension for accepting improper benefits from an AAU coach. He is such a talent that UCLA could do major damage in the Midwest.

This is a team, though, that needs to have its head on straight to advance, and coach Steve Lavin has not always done a good job of performing that particular surgery. But the Bruins still have Jason Kapono, center Dan Gadzuric and point guard Earl Watson. And Rush, who gives UCLA a huge dose of athleticism that other teams will have a hard time matching. Ask Stanford, which was No. 1 in the nation before losing to the Bruins recently.

Watch out for a showdown between No. 6 seed UCLA and No. 2 Iowa State in the regional in Auburn Hills, Mich.

On life support
Auburn did surprisingly well in the Southeastern Conference tournament without star Chris Porter, but don't be fooled. The Tigers will miss Porter as much as Cincinnati will miss Kenyon Martin.

Porter committed the cardinal sin of college basketball (non-gambling category): He accepted money from an agent. Because of it, the NCAA refused to rescind his suspension, and the Tigers are left a shell of what they once were. Sure, they still have Doc Robinson and Mamadou N'diaye, but don't be surprised if Creighton wins the first-round matchup between the two schools. The Blue Jays hit 41.8 percent of their 3-point attempts, second best in the nation, thanks mostly to the shooting of guards Ryan Sears and Ben Walker.

Cliff Ellis has watched his team go from being proclaimed the best team in the nation by Sports Illustrated before the season to being gutted by scandal. Porter is $2,500 richer, and Auburn is paying for it in a very painful way. Ain't big-time basketball fun?

Hot hand
Who else but Marcus Fizer? Iowa State's star has averaged 30.3 points the past eight games, and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.

NBA scouts love his aggressiveness, but they also love the way he has gotten better as the season has progressed. He seems to have his best games against the best teams, so the NCAA Tournament would seem to be tailor-made for him.

What makes Fizer that much more impressive is that everyone knows he's getting the ball, everyone knows that beating the Cyclones means stopping Fizer -- and yet few people have been able to do anything about it. He's a stark contrast to some of the better players in the nation -- DePaul's Quentin Richardson comes to mind -- who disappear for stretches during games and during seasons.

Stop Fizer if you can. Good luck.

Hero in waiting
A lot has been made of Fizer, and for good reason. He is, in the best sense of the term, a monster. Few teams have been able to handle him on the boards.

Let's assume for a second that Michigan State and Iowa State will, indeed, meet in the Midwest final. There's a decent chance that the Spartans, with Morris Peterson and Andre Hutson inside, will be able to hold their own against Fizer. Which leads us to ...

Iowa State point guard Jamaal Tinsley. Cleaves gets most of the attention when it comes to the nation's top point guards, and Tinsley largely has been ignored. That could be because he's a junior-college transfer. But Tinsley is a big talent who has been a huge reason Iowa State has turned into the surprise of the college basketball season.

Heading into the tournament, he has 214 assists and 140 turnovers. He's averaging 10.2 points and 5.1 rebounds. Not bad for a 6-foot-2 guard.

Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Tribune is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.


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