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NCAA Tournament Bracket Buster: Northern Iowa Shocks #1 Kansas 1

Posted on March 20, 2010 by Dean Hybl
Northern Iowa v Kansas

Northern Iowa harassed top seeded Kansas throughout their improbable victory over the Jayhawks.

If you had any doubt that there really was no “great” team in college basketball this season, Northern Iowa’s shocking 69-67 victory over number one Kansas in the second round of the NCAA Tournament should confirm the fact.

While it isn’t the greatest upset in tournament history based on seeding, it is definitely notable simply because Kansas was the prohibitive favorite to cut down the nets in Indianapolis (40 percent of participants in ESPN’s Bracket Challenge picked the Jayhawks to win the title).

The last time the overall number one seed lost in the second round of the tournament was in 2004 when Kentucky lost to Alabama-Birmingham in the second round. Interestingly, that year was very similar to 2010 in that there were a number of very good teams, but no team considered to be great. Of the four number one seeds in that tournament (Kentucky, Duke, St. Joseph’s and Stanford), Duke was the only one to reach the Final Four and they lost in the semifinals to eventual champion Connecticut. Read the rest of this entry →

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      Rusty Staub

      The Sports Then and Now Vintage Athlete of the Month is a former major league baseball player who came into the game as a teenager and stayed until he was in his 40s. In between, Rusty Staub put up a solid career that was primarily spent on expansion or rebuilding teams.

      Originally signed by the Colt .45s at age 17, he made his major league debut as a 19-year old rookie and became only the second player in the modern era to play in more than 150 games as a teenager.

      Though he hit only .224 splitting time between first base and rightfield, Staub did start building a foundation that would turn him into an All-Star by 1967 when he finished fifth in the league with a .333 batting average.

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