NCAA basketball schedule and results: No. 2 Virginia hangs on for win against NC State

Bill Walton’s announcing style is wonderful and unique, characterized by obscure references and wild tangents on whatever it is he is thinking about. Wednesday night was perhaps his masterpiece, as the child of the 60’s and 70’s spent over three minutes during a reasonably close UCLA-USC affair to discuss Bob Dylan’s life and career.

It wasn’t like Walton did this off the cuff. The ESPN crew had prepared graphics:

Bill Walton was on the call for Oregon-USC. And whenever Oregon junior Dwayne Benjamin did something, he didn’t call him Dwayne Benjamin; he called him “Snoop Dogg.”

It’s in part because Walton thinks Benjamin looks like Snoop, but given the opportunity to explain himself, Walton said he also thinks the two have similar demeanors. It makes the broadcast kinda awkward -- Walton refers to Benjamin as “Snoop Dogg” during live play, and his play-by-play guy needs to remind the viewer who he’s talking about.

After 30 minutes of the game, it looked like another Kentucky rout was underway. Then something strange happened: LSU kept stringing together baskets, and Kentucky couldn’t hit a shot.

LSU went on a 21-2 run midway through the second half to take a six-point lead at one point. Martin and Mickey were both incredible for the Tigers, combining for 37 points. Hornsby added 17 points for LSU in the loss.

First this finish of an and-one alley-oop in transition:

We should also all take a moment to thank LSU’s Keith Hornsby for completely eating it.

He’s Mega(phone) Man!

This worked, too, except Kentucky rebounded the miss and Willie Cauley-Stein slammed it the heck into the basket.

Virginia Tech’s Ahmed Hill tried to draw a charge on this Chris Bolden dunk. Instead:

Hill was inside the restricted area, so even getting drilled in the head was committing a foul.

Do two Big 12 teams ranked in the top 25 play each other every night? It sure seems like it. Oklahoma State and Baylor have the floor on Monday, with the Bears ranked No. 16 and the Cowboys ranked No. 21.

Far be it for us to act like expects, but scoring points on yourself doesn’t seem like a great idea in a conference as tough as the Big 12. Take notes, Oklahoma State.

A week after slipping to No. 3 following its first loss of the season, Virginia impressed voters enough with big wins over fellow top 15 foes North Carolina and Louisville to climb back into the spot directly behind Kentucky in the new Associated Press Top 25 poll.

Once-beaten Gonzaga, which had replaced the Cavaliers in the second spot last week, fell back to No. 3. Duke and Wisconsin rounded out the top five for a third consecutive week.