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The seed differential in Saturday's second-round NCAA Tournament matchup was eight. The final scoring margin of the game contested by the Saint Mary's Gaels and the Villanova Willdcats was seven points.

Naturally, the No. 10 seed beat the No. 2 seed.

Naturally, the outcome wasn't all that surprising.

The calculus of competition can get very complicated this time of year. Even though Villanova brought a very high seed into the Dunkin' Donuts Center in Providence, R.I., the Wildcats were not looked upon as a convincing favorite against the second-place team in the West Coast Conference. When Saint Mary's center Omar Samhan destroyed the itsy-bitsy Richmond Spiders in Thursday's first round, and Villanova needed both overtime and a lot of generous officials' whistles to sneak past 15th-seeded Robert Morris in the opening round, the college hoops cognoscenti began to doubt the wisdom of taking the team with the smaller number in parentheses next to its place on a bracket sheet.

Villanova, after all, had lost five of eight contests heading into this game. Coach Jay Wright's team - a Final Four participant last season - had alarmingly lost the ability to defend and protect its defensive backboard. Syracuse torched Nova for 95 points and could have gone for 110 if it wanted to. Marquette - which has often struggled to score in 2010 - posted 80 points against the Wildcats in the quarterfinals of the Big East tournament in New York. The folks from Philadelphia simply lost steam and their freshness simply didn't hold up in the final leg of a long season. A back-loaded Big East schedule, in which the toughest games were saved for last, proved to be too much for Wright's roster. Nova's legs evaporated, and without the tough, lunch-pail defense of graduated senior Dante Cunningham - the man who kept the 2009 Final Four team together - the Wildcats were sitting ducks for the center who came at them, guns ablaze, on Saturday.

The 1970s band America wrote a song called "Sandman," just one of many different songs with the word "Sandman" that are being appropriated right now to fit the phonetically-similar name of Saint Mary's College center Omar Samhan. CBS's broadcast unit - in its Thursday broadcast of SMC's 80-71 win over seventh-seeded Richmond - decided to make life comfortable for its "old uncle" team of play-by-play man Verne Lundquist and beloved analyst Bill Raftery by playing the old 1950s version of "Mister Sandman" before a commercial break.

Other fans of the "Sandman" to "Samhan" musical mix tape have said that the song "Enter Sandman" should be changed to read "Enter Samhan." Yet, in the wake of Samhan's 32-point performance against Villanova, a dominating 13-of-16 shooting masterwork in which the Wildcats could never begin to stop coach Randy Bennett's prized pupil in the low post, the lyrics of America's anthem - if you know them - seem to be particularly maleable. Yes, if the group America ever did sing about college hoops, it would say this about Samhan's dominant performance in Providence:

"Ain't it foggy outside? / All the Cats have been grounded.

Gaels are ballin' inside / Big-time game they have found it.

Funny, they've been there / and now they're near...

A trip to the Final Four is much more clear.

I understand Randy Bennett is the man, 'cause he played his hand with the Samhan.

Omar in the post just turned Nova into toast, and the Gaels are in the Sweet 16, man!

Okay, is that cheesy? Sure. But it describes the situation to a tee. Saint Mary's is playing like a Final Four-caliber team, with a dominant big man who will distort the shape of opposing defenses and open up the perimeter for the likes of Matthew Dellavedova and especially Mickey McConnell, the young lad whose long banked-in three - a terrible shot that went in the bucket and broke a 65-all tie with 1:16 left - gave Saint Mary's a key lift and helped the Gaels reach the finish line first.

The song lyrics are also accurate in that they speak highly of Bennett, a coach who masterfully handled Samhan after the big guy picked up two fouls midway through the first half. Other more timid coaches would have kept their star on the bench in the first half, but Bennett came up with a virtuoso coaching performance by subbing Samhan in and out of the game to give his center a maximum of offensive possessions and a minimum of defensive possessions. Samhan stayed out of foul trouble throughout the rest of the contest, and his coach had a lot to do with that.

Pick your "Sandman" to "Samhan" song. Whatever it is, it will be sung this week as the Saint Mary's Gaels prepare for the Sweet 16 with their dominating center of attention.



By: Matt Zemek
BigEast-fans.com Staff Writer