Numbers game

92-0 is the record of No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament. We still await the ultimate upset. Though Jackson State put a fright into Florida fans for a good part of the first half Friday, the Gators pulled away to keep the record spotless for top seeds in first-round games. Since the NCAA Tournament went to its current 64-team bracket in 1985, top seeds are 92-0 against No. 16 seeds. That's 23 years, and counting.

That's why they're higher seeds

Higher seeds did better this year in the first round than last year. Last year's higher seeds went 23-9. This year's went 27-5. In the 16 day games Thursday and Friday, the better-seeded teams went a mighty 15-1.

Player of the day

With Ralston Valley High School graduate Nick Fazekas sitting much of Nevada's game with foul trouble - he wound up fouling out with 3 minutes left in overtime of the Reno school's win against Creighton - somebody had to step forward in a big way for the Wolf Pack. That somebody was Marcelus Kemp. The athletic junior swingman was the difference-maker, scoring 27 points and pulling down 12 rebounds in one of the day's tightest, most riveting games.

Back to being big

The Big Ten had a rough time in the tournament last year, its six teams finishing 3-3 in the first round and no Big Ten team advancing to the Sweet 16. The conference's honchos feel a lot better now. Big Ten teams went 5-1 in this year's first round, the only loss by No. 12 seed Illinois in the final seconds against Virginia Tech. With five candidates still alive, including No. 1 seed Ohio State and No. 2 Wisconsin, it's hard to imagine the Big Ten being shut out of the Sweet 16 this time around.

Get a new alarm clock

Heavy favorites Wisconsin and Oregon survived early scares. In their quests to become giant killers, Texas A&M-Corpus- Christi ran out to a 10-0 lead against the Badgers, and Miami (Ohio) burst out to a 9-0 lead against the Ducks. But both higher-seeded teams settled down to win in the end. The Corpus Christi school, nicknamed the Islanders, would have been only the fourth team to win an NCAA game as a No. 15 seed.

They don't need no stinking slipper

Midwest No. 11 seed Winthrop, which plays in the Big South Conference and hails from Rock Hill, S.C., finally broke through with an NCAA Tournament win, beating Notre Dame after losing in the first round in all six previous NCAA appearances. But the Eagles are well past the Cinderella stage. Last year, as a No. 15 seed, they extended Tennessee before losing by only two. Two years ago, Winthrop was a No. 14 seed and threw an early scare at Gonzaga before falling by 10. Don't be surprised if bigger-name schools are beating down the door of ninth-year Winthrop coach Gregg Marshall in the coming weeks.

A nice start

Despite Wisconsin's come-from-behind win, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi distinguished itself in the school's first NCAA Tournament game since coach Ronnie Arrow started the program from scratch in 1999. TAMU-CC - now there's an acronym for you - led Wisconsin much of the way before Badgers seniors Alando Tucker and Kammron Taylor saved the Badgers' bacon. Or should we say cheese?

The big dogs didn't eat

Not that it messed up many office-pool brackets, but Albany's first-round blowout loss to Virginia had to bum out anyone who loves great nicknames. Albany is known as the Great Danes. The final score was 84-57. This is what's called kicking a dog when it's down.

The voice of experience

UNLV's Lon Kruger is the fifth coach in major-college history to take four schools to the NCAA Tournament. In past jobs, Kruger coached Kansas State, Illinois and Florida to the NCAAs.

Survive, advance, cash in

Thanks to the NCAA's multiyear, multibillion- dollar contract with CBS, the organization doles out big money to NCAA Tournament teams and their conferences.

For each game a school plays in this year's tournament, the school's conference gets a monetary "unit" of $176,864 each year for the next six years. That adds up to $1,061,184 during a six-year period for each game a team plays in this year's tournament, and each conference distributes the revenue to its member schools the way it sees fit. Usually, the participating school gets a bit more than its conference mates, and the conference office itself keeps some.

So when a team such as Nevada from the Western Athletic Conference wins an NCAA game, as it did Friday against Creighton in overtime, that million-dollar-plus number raked in by the conference and its schools is doubled. Just for that win - since Nevada now will play a second-round game - the WAC member schools will share an extra $1,061,184 during the next six years.

If Nevada wins again Sunday against Memphis, the WAC will collect another $1,061,184.

A conference whose team makes the Final Four gets five such "units." That means conference officials are big fans of their teams in the NCAAs for more than just reasons of pride and sentiment.

"For a conference like the Big 12 or the ACC, they put so many teams in the field every year that one team winning any one game isn't such a big deal," said Jeff Hurd, the senior associate commissioner of the Littleton-based WAC. "But for the WACs of the world, it's very important, because we don't generate the kinds of revenues the bigger conferences do."

After Nevada's win made his league and its schools $1,061,184 richer, Hurd and his WAC mates were guaranteed at least another million because of WAC member New Mexico State's Friday night first-round meeting with Texas.

Lefty Driesell

(Davidson, Maryland, James Madison, Georgia State)

Jim Harrick (Pepperdine, UCLA, Rhode Island, Georgia)

Rick Pitino (Boston University, Providence, Kentucky, Louisville)

Eddie Sutton (Creighton, Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma State).

Puttin' up the points

Tennessee tied an NCAA Tournament first-round record with 121 points in a 78-rpm, 121-86 win Friday against Long Beach State. But the Volunteers still fell well short of Loyola Marymount's tournament record of 149 points against Michigan in a second-round game in 1990. Here are the top eight scoring performances by a team in NCAA play:

Points Team, Year Opponent (points) Round

149 Loyola Marymount, 1990 Michigan (115) Second

131 Nevada-Las Vegas, 1990 Loyola Marymount (101) Regional final

127 St. Joseph's, 1961 Utah (120) National third place

124 Oklahoma, 1989 Louisiana Tech (81) Second

123 North Carolina, 1988 Loyola Marymount (97) Second

121 Tennessee, 2007 Long Beach State (86) First

121 Nevada-Las Vegas, 1977 San Francisco (95) First

121 Iowa, 1970 Notre Dame (106) Regional third place

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