Routs Return Early, But Cornell, Crawford Bring the Brilliance

The early window of today’s NCAA games didn’t even come close to matching Thursday’s games for drama and closeness. But between Cornell and Xavier’s Jordan Crawford, there was plenty to behold.

The Big Red got their first NCAA Tournament win ever by thumping Temple 78-65, and it didn’t even feel that close. Cornell, the best three-point shooting team in the country, actually shot under their season average from distance, making just nine of 23 triples, but a 18-of-25 performance on two-pointers and a 15-of-19 day at the foul line more than made up for it.

The team’s effective field goal percentage was 65.6%, which is almost as good as Ohio’s 70% in their Thursday night demolition of Georgetown in a vacuum. But Temple had the best eFG% allowed in the nation this year -- and Cornell shot better against the Owls at a neutral site than Kansas did on the road. Not a bad way to get the Ivy League’s first NCAA win since 1998, no?

If that’s the stathead’s takeaway, the layman’s probably has to do with Jordan Crawford propelling Xavier past Minnesota. Neither the Gophers (30.2%) nor the Musketeers (34.3%) shot well overall, but Crawford slashed and stroked his way to 28 points on 11-for-21 shooting, making five threes, and collected six assists and five rebounds, too. The only appropriate reaction is to pencil Xavier into the Final Four, and to vote Crawford ahead of LeBron James -- whom he “victimized” last summer -- for NBA MVP. (Seriously: Xavier is going to be trouble.)

Oh, and West Virginia fell behind 10-0 to Morgan State, then won by 27. If Thursday was for drama, Friday, at least early, seems like a day of dominance.

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