Play-in payback

 Because I am a retired newspaper guy who is occasionally hijacked by his inner 8-year-old, I came up with the perfect headline for Miami (O.)'s ten-point win over SMU in Dayton last night.

"Nyah, Nyah, Nyah-Nyah Nyah" is what I would have stripped across the top of the game story. Editorial balance be hanged.

I would have done this because Miami caught a raft of grief from various shady network analysts (Come on down, Bruce Pearl!) and slide-rule dudes, who determined the 31-1 RedHawks were a fraud who had no business in the NCAA Tournament. The RedHawks' strength of schedule -- as determined either by Quad 1 wins or quad pulls, I can't remember which -- was down there with Popeye the Sailor Man, pre-spinach. Beat a lot of Dog's Breakfast States and Bricklayer A&Ms to pile up those 31 wins.

Me?

I thought that was a pile of its own, and not a fragrant one. I figured any MAC school that went 31-1 damn well deserved a role in the Big Show, on account of MAC schools have a long history of jumping up and whipping their betters in said Show.

The selection committee apparently agreed, although with some reluctance. Yeah, the bracketeers let Miami in, but only in the play-in games. To get in the actual tournament, the RedHawks would have to beat the Mustangs, who play in the hoity-toity ACC and thus were installed as 6.5-point favorites.

Well, nyah, nyah nyah-nyah -nyah. Miami won 89-79 and was rarely challenged, never trailing after going on a 14-2 run in the middle part of the second half. SMU led 49-48 at the beginning of that run; it was the only lead the Mustangs had in the second half.

The RedHawks rode 16 threes to the W, their most ever in an NCAA Tournament game. Their 89 points were the most a Miami team had scored in the Madness in 68 years. 

"The reason people love March Madness is they love to see quote, unquote, upsets," Miami coach Travis Steele said when it was done. "This wasn't an upset tonight, at all."

Indeed not. And speaking of non-upsets ...

Let's hear it out there for the Howard University Bison, who were not upset at all about winning THEIR play-in game Tuesday to advance to the first round of Da Tournament for the first time in school history.

I bring this up because occasionally my inner Civil War nerd wrestles the steering wheel away from my inner 8-year-old, and therefore I say, go, Howard. This is because Howard, a historically black research school, was founded in 1867 by Oliver Otis Howard, a Union general in the Civil War who lost an arm at Fair Oaks but went on to become one of his side's more competent combat generals. 

This is despite the fact he's been unfairly maligned for being asleep at the switch at Chancellorsville, when his Eleventh Corps crumbled before an overwhelming surprise flank attack by Stonewall Jackson. That no one else saw Jackson coming either seems not to have altered the Union Army's perception that the Eleventh Corps -- and thus Howard -- let them down.

Well, phooey on that. 16-seed Howard takes on 1-seed Michigan tonight in the first round of the Madness. I don't see any Joe Hooker or Ulysses S. Grant U.'s doing that, do you?

So there.