Stanford is going back to the Women’s Final Four … and this time, they mean business.

Without former Player of the Year Candice Wiggins, Stanford needed one of its players to step up big time. Jayne Appel did more than “step up.” She dropped 46 points on Iowa St., to propel her team to St. Louis for another go at an NCAA Championship.

Jayne Appel dominated Iowa St. in the post on Monday night, scoring 46 points.

There was no stopping the 6-foot-4 junior, who is 20 pounds lighter than she was last season. Almost every time the ball came to Appel down in the  post, she made a basket. I can honestly say that she put on a post-player clinic that coaches around the country should study.

With her 46 points, Appel broke Wiggins’s NCAA Tournament single-game scoring record of 44 points. With a little over a minute left to play, Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer replaced the starters to finish out the game.

Had she kept playing, Appel might have broken the all time NCAA Tournament single-game scoring record.

Photo provided by Newscom

Two Big East teams are still kicking. Gus Johnson would still be yelling if he had been the play-by-play guy for the Nova-Pitt game. My National Champion pick (UNC) is still alive and well despite my utter lack of competence everywhere else on the bracket.

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Forget about Villanova’s impressive run to The Motor City—featuring a ‘why the heck did people pick this team to go to Detroit’ (when they were trailing American by double digits) and ‘this Scottie Reynolds is stinking up the joint’ comments from yours truly—Michigan State takes the cake here. Me hailing from Michigan, what a surprise, huh? Well, Tom Izzo and Co. deserve it. MSU is far from dominant, but they’re a fun team. Fun to watch interact with each other, fun to see plead with an irate Izzo, fun to watch on a fast break, fun to analyze which big man (there’s 5) Izzo will usher into the game, and extremely fun to witness pound a ‘powerful’ Big East team into the ground.  Jump on the MSU bandwagon now national media, yeah, own up.

Spartan Fever (Image:Newscom)

Player Most Instrumental To Team’s Success

Villanova- One guy has been playing way over his head. Senior guard/forward Dwayne Anderson. He’s scoring and rebounding over his season average. He does not want to play his last collegiate game.  Give me more Dwayne says.

North Carolina- Tywon Lawson is a top 5, top 10 draft pick?  Probably working himself into the former based on this three game tear where he’s shooting above 50% from inside and outside the long line, feeding and turning over the rock at a 10/1 ratio, and out potty mouthing Ari Gold. If I didn’t know any better I’d say Ty is healthy.

Connecticut- Lanky 6′9 Stanley Robinson sans the opening round game when he scored 24, has just been pretty good, nothing legendary, but he hasn’t needed to be. When Jerome Dyson went down with season ending injury, UConn needed someone to step up, play more minutes and be a threat to consistently score in double figures, and Craig Austrie sure wasn’t going to be that guy. Stanley Robinson is that X-factor guy.

Michigan State- The 6′10 Bosnian senior Goran Suton has been PUURRRE! the last two games, totaling 39 points (5-10 from deep), 19 rebounds, and 6 steals. Don’t know if he’ll be able to be so PUURRRE! against Mr. Thabeet, but if he is, MSU will be playing on Monday for the title.

Prediction For The Final Four

Ford Field will be a Green and White madplace for the Saturday 6:07 tip v. UConn and then for the Monday rematch with UNC.

Prepare.

Well, it’s looks as though we know where one of the Curry brothers is going to end up after this basketball season.

ESPN reported yesterday that Seth Curry’s father, former NBA great Dell Curry,  made it known Sunday night after a visit to Durham earlier in the day that Seth had been offered a scholarship by the Duke Blue Devils and accepted. Curry averaged 20.2 points a game for the Flames this past season, making a name for himself in his own right outside of the shadow of his brother, Stephen.

Because of the transfer rule in college basketball, Seth will sit out the 2009-10 season and be eligible for 2010-11 as a third-year sophomore.

Seth also told ESPN that the opportunity to continue his career at Duke, and get a Duke education were other major factors in the decision.

The media/television exposure could have also been a factor, hmmm?

Perhaps Coach K. will have an opportunity to get back  the Blue Devils back to the Final Four with Curry’s help.

Get to know Seth Curry:

CBS College Sports recently released their list for the top 50 sites on their network (.pdf file), based on page impressions, unique impressions, online store revenue, and All-Access subscriptions. I have to say that I was a little surprised at some of the schools listed in the top 10.

North Carolina tops the list for page impressions, followed by Alabama, Notre Dame, Florida State, and UCLA. The surprise to me was that Alabama was so high on the list. I would have expected USC (No. 8) or Miami (No. 11) to be ranked in the top five, ahead of the Crimson Tide.

Rounding out the top 10 were Arizona State (No. 6), Kansas (No. 7), Stanford (No. 9), Oklahoma (No. 10).

My personal favorite is Oklahoma’s site, which has a very clean look. However, these rankings were not based on look, but rather the fact of how many fans visit each Web site from April-June 2008.

Do you have a favorite collegiate Web site that didn’t make the top 10? Tell us about it.

In the end, the Cinderella team fell just short in the only close game of the final four. Interestingly, it wasn’t the one man on the one-man team who took the shot. Rather, Stephen Curry passed the ball to Jason Richards at the final seconds. He missed and Davidson fell just short, 57-59. And so, for the first time ever, all one seeds advanced to the final four. Now, the only trivial-absolute-everyone-knows left is that no sixteen seed has ever beaten a one seed.

In the day’s other game, Memphis defeated Texas soundly, 85-67.