For those of you losing perspective, basketball is a whole different animal than football considering match-ups and margin of error. I think if our players hadn't had so many soul crushing close ACC losses, had a little more momentum as a result, or been in a different league, that we probably would have gotten a bid, and won a game or two in the tournament. Usc has been playing well in the tournament this year, and I wasn't even aware until the first round, that they hadn't had a tournament win since 1973. However they also haven't had too many players overly hyped enough to leave in the last several seasons, and have some depth as a result this year. One also has to take in account that the SEC is not the deepest basketball league in the country, and many of the juggernaut programs in the tournament (like Villanova in the East region who lost by one basket) got knocked out early. Usc needed to get by Duke in Greenville, and props to them, they got it done.
Not knocking on Usc, quite the contrary, their defense has been impressive. And their younger players have been playing better on offense as the season has continued, and they have been riding that momentum since their big win in the second round. I'm just reminding some of you naysayers that our basketball program has been more competitive than you are giving them credit for, and they do call it March Madness for a reason. We'll just have to continue to step it up if we want to climb higher on that ACC ladder.