By Tom Reck
The Tribune-Star
TERRE HAUTE
March 17, 2008 11:03 pm
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The NCAA men’s basketball field is set and the tourney could be one of the best in a long time.
If some team other than the No. 1 seeds — North Carolina, Memphis, UCLA and Kansas — wins, it will be a surprise. We’ll take Kansas.
In spite of some late conference tournament games — and surprise finalists — and more than a couple upset winners in league tournaments, the committee did a good job.
Three teams failing to make it with decent resumes were Illinois State of the Missouri Valley, Ohio State of the Big Ten and Dayton of the Atlantic 10.
It would be interesting to know which team got bumped by Georgia, the winner of the storm-delayed SEC championship game late Sunday.
Other surprise winners included Temple, San Diego and Western Kentucky. Other teams from their conferences got bids.
Illinois State probably was hurt by lack of quality wins, some “poor” defeats and losing to Drake three times including the 30-point blowout in the Valley championship game.
The Valley has a chance to do well in the NIT with Illinois State, Creighton and Southern Illinois all having first-round home games along with Ohio State and Minnesota.
Play begins tonight in the NIT.
Meanwhile, some of the first-round NCAA games that could be close and maybe produce surprise winners:
• Indiana-Arkansas: Arkansas made it to the final game of the SEC tourney while IU lost in the first Big Ten tourney game.
• Butler-South Alabama: Butler figured to be better than a No. 7 seed after being ranked most of the year while South Alabama has been ranked in recent polls.
• Vanderbilt-Siena: Vandy has not done so well on the road while Siena beat Stanford early in the season.
• Gonzaga-Davidson: Both teams have become regulars in NCAA tournaments.
• Drake-Western Kentucky: Both teams have an outstanding player. Drake is in the tourney for the first time since 1971 when it reached the Final Four.
Let it rip.
• • •
• Honors for Heidi — Martinsville standout Heidi Dahnke continues to rack up honors in Illinois girls basketball.
The senior is a first-team Class 1A all-state pick by The Chicago Sun-Times.
She averaged 18.7 points and 11 rebounds for the 25-3 Bluestreaks and will attend Illinois-Chicago.
Dahnke was a second-team choice on the single-class all-state team chosen by The Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette. Megan Murphy of Casey earned special mention on the newspaper’s honor squad.
Dahnke also was named player of the year by The Charleston Times-Courier. She and teammate Brittani Wolfe were on the paper’s all-area team.
Finally, Dahnke is on the ballot for Miss Basketball and has been invited to play in the North-South All-Star Game to be played June 21 at Illinois Wesleyan.
• • •
• Tom-Cattin’ It — Paris and Marshall hope to get a prep baseball game in today.
Creighton Tarr is the new coach at Paris. He played at Newton and formerly was an assistant at Olney.
• Rick Malone has been hired as football coach at Fountain Central for the second time in his career.
He guided FC to a state title in 1983 and has been in coaching 20 years.
He succeeds Curt Trout, the new coach at Hamilton Heights.
• Triton will play Indianapolis Lutheran for the Class A boys title this week in Indy.
Michael Chobanov is the principal at Triton. He held the same post earlier at Rosedale and Riverton-Parke.
Tom Reck may be contacted by telephone at (812) 232-3231, by email at treck@ma.rr.com or by mail at 4276 South 5th Street, Terre Haute, IN 47802.
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