8B - The Michigan Daily - SportsMonday - March 17, 2003 MickzkanDaily cor/Pizza House Challenge NCAA MEN'S DASK E TBALL TOU RNAM E NT First Round March 20-21 Second Round March 22-23 Regionals March 27, 29 Regionals March 28, 30 Second Round March 22-23 First Round March 20-21 1 Kentucky 16 IUPUI 8 Oregon 9 Utah 5 Wisconsin 12 Weber State 4 Dayton 13 Tulsa 6 Missouri I Pick the most winners and receive a party with 10 pizzas from Pizza House .. .. a man Sout Midwest 11 Southern Illinoi 3 . M a rq u ette .. .n 14 Holy Cross 7 Indiana 10 Alabama 2 Pittsburgh 15 Wagner 1 Arizona 16 Vermont 8 Cincinnati 9 Gonzaga 5 Notre Dame 12 Wisc.-Milwauke 4 Illinois 1-3 West. Kentuck 6 Creighton 11 Cent. Michigan 3 Duke 14 Colorado State 7 Memphis 10 Arizona State 2 Kansas 15 Utah State s e .- ~ West ------------------------- - New oreec*f Texas 1 TX So.JUNC- Ash. 16 Louisana State 8 47Purdue 9 Briham Youn 12 Stanford 4 :..an Dieo 13 h Maryland UNC- Wilmington 11 =TroyState 1 Michigan State 7 Colorado 10 Florida 2 Sam Houston 15 Oklahoma 1 ....:..California 8 NrhCarolina St. 9 Mississippi State 5 Louisville4 4ustinPeay 13 Oklahoma State 6 Syracuse 3 Manhattan 14 i St. Joseph 7 Aburn 10 Wake Forest 2 East Tennesse St. 15 oi H#W otLq4t4f s W0OCZOO@4OCOOo0.40,C00,0,Coc0wn4co~I~4r&nyow4C5C* East D 'r " sk , cE' To be eligible for the Pizza House prize, you must bring in your completed bracket to The Michigan Daily (420 Maynard St.) before the tournament begins Thursday morning. :' x" , .. . g g L . a Your Name Total Points in Championship game E-mail Phone The first round games are worth one point, two in the second round, then three, four, five and six for the other rounds Illini end Buckeyes' NCAA tourney hopes NCAA needs major geography lesson CHICAGO (AP) - Illinois got everything it wanted out of the Big Ten tournament. Except, maybe, a better seed in the NCAA tournament. Still irked at finishing second in the regular season, Illinois won the Big Ten tournament with an easy 72-59 victory over weary Ohio State yesterday. But that apparently wasn't enough to impress the NCAA selection committee, which seeded the Illini fourth in the West, perhaps the toughest region. "I think when you first see it, you say, 'Oh, gee, I thought we could have been a three,' " Illinois coach Bill Self said. "I'm not going to say it didn't mean anything to win the tournament, it means a lot. That's a championship we wanted, it was a goal and we got it. "I don't know if we helped our- selves seedingwise, but we helped ourselves from a confidence stand- point." In winning for the eighth time in nine games, the Illini (24-6) proved that not only are they the Big Ten's best team, they're its deepest. Illinois' two best players - Big Ten player of the year Brian Cook and freshman guard Dee Brown - had off days, but it hardly mattered as the rest of the Illini picked up the slack. Roger Powell scored 16 points, and Sean Harrington had 12, all from 3-point range. James Augus- tine, who struggled the past few games, had a monster day with 12 points and 10 rebounds. Cook still finished with 15 points, but he was a dismal 4-of- 16. Brown had only four points, and had four turnovers to go with his five assists. "Everybody played collectively well, and we had to have a great team effort," Powell said. "That's what we need to win games like this. Hopefully we can carry this into the tournament - the big tour- nament." Ohio State (17-14) was playing its fourth game in as many days, and its fatigue showed. The Buck- eyes had trouble finishing their shots, going 20-of-55 (36 percent) from the field, and they were no match for the Illini inside. If not for yet another big effort by Brent Darby, who finished with 27 points and six assists, the game would have been a total rout. "I got a little winded out there," Darby said. "But when you play a team like Illinois, that's going to happen." The Buckeyes had won their first three games by a total of 11 points, and they had little left to challenge Illinois. Powell and Harrington beat Ohio State from the perimeter, while Augustine took care of busi- ness inside. In addition to outrebounding Ohio State 39-36, Illinois outscored the Buckeyes 34-18 in the paint and had a 16-4 edge on second-chance points. "I think we can be a really dan- gerous team," Cook said. "We did- AP PHOTO Illinois forward Brian Cook led his team to the Big Ten Tournament crown yesterday in Chicago. The senior scored 15 points in the Illini's 72-59 win over Ohio State. n't play as well as we wanted today, but everybody picked each other up and that's the mark of a great team." Illinois held the Buckeyes with- out a field goal for almost seven minutes midway through the first half while it ripped off an 11-3 run. Powell started it with a driving layup, and Cook capped it by mak- ing a free throw after a technical foul to give Illinois a 33-20 lead, its largest of the half. The Buckeyes pulled within 36- 25 at halftime, but Illinois came out gunning to start the second. Cook scored on a putback and then hit a 3-pointer, and Powell added a hook shot to give the Illini a 43-27 lead with 17:56 still to play. Illinois wasn't done with its daz- zling displays, either. After Darby made two free throws, the Illini ran off seven points in just 49 seconds to go up 52-30 with 15:56 to play. "There's a lot of answers on that team," Ohio State coach Jim O'Brien said. "They put five guys out on the court that have to be defended at all times." But Ohio State has an impressive player of its own, and Darby gave the Illini one last challenge. Trail- ing by 16, Darby made three straight 3-pointers to pull Ohio State within 60-51 with 7:02 to play. After a timeout to regroup, Augustine made two free throws and Harrington drilled a 3-pointer to put Ohio State away for good. When the buzzer sounded, the Illini threw their arms into the air and quickly put on their Big Ten championship hats and T-shirts. Wisconsin may have won the regu- lar-season title, but Illinois was the Big Ten's best team when it counted. "Wisconsin won something we thought we should have had and we couldn't get that back," Self said. Fans of (revenue-generating) college athletics expect shenanigans from the BCS and the college bowl system. Teams being pushed out of major bowls by a random number generator pos- sessed by the NCAA is to be expected within the world of college football. That is part of what makes the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament pure to fans. The selection process is based on a meritocracy (for the most part), and each team is given a fair chance at winning the tournament. But somehow, over the past two years, the NCAA has managed to allow the cess and idiocy from the BCS to spill into the selection process. In an effort to limit the amount teams have to travel after Sept. 11, the NCAA decided to keep teams closer to home. But-in doing so, it rearranged the selection and site assignment process more than a PicassoA painting. The NCAA mixed and matched sites, placing Spokane, , Wash. in both the South and Midwest brackets. It is not clear exactly how far Spokane is from either the South or the Midwest, but the log- ging town in eastern Washington is as close to the two as Bogota, Columbia. What makes this an even more fla- grant error is that of the eight teams playing in Spokane, 12th-seeded Weber State (which is located in Ogden, Utah - due east of the Great Salt Lake) is the closest university to Spokane. The 700- mile separation between Ogden and Spokane should give Weber State the home court advantage over Big Ten champion Wisconsin. And in a further effortato limit the amount of money teams need to spend on traveling, the NCAA placed No. 5 Connecticut in Spokane (which is a meager 44-hour drive across 13 states from Storrs) instead of Boston - is a two-hour drive in rush-hour traffic. But who can blame the NCAA for such a mistake because, according to it, Boston is now in the East and Midwest - which surely has John Adams spinning in his grave. The NCAA also went and placed Indianapolis in the West bracket. The last time Indianapolis was considered to be in the West was when Henry Clay was still trying to decide who went where. Such geographic errors should be no more acceptable for the NCAA than for an eighth-grader. As for neutral sites, the NCAA missed the mark on that one, too. No. 1 seed Texas, which has arguably the best guard in the nation in T.J. Ford, will play in San Antonio if it makes it into the Sweet 16. That should allow it to march through the South Regional - which already appears to be the weak- est region - like General Sherman on his march to the sea. In the East Regional, top-seeded Oklahoma gets to play its first two games in Oklahoma City, which is no different than the Brazilian National Soccer Team playing in San Paulo. But the tables will be turned on it when it travels up to Albany, N.Y. the following weekend, where Syracuse and Carmello Anthony will be waiting for them like an angry Tony Soprano. And as if none of these mistakes were egregious enough, the NCAA also placed Brigham Young University in a bracket that would have them play in the Elite Eight on Sunday. But school rules dictate that the teams not play games on Cendv Q tot.er.rli im frvn A 0 U U 0l HEALTHY, MEDICATION-FREE VOLUNTEERS, AnFS 1Ag-45 I RK' A look at the