In the Celtics Wire’s Missing March Madness, we’re looking back at the games of current Boston Celtics when they were making waves in the NCAA Tournament on the day their games occurred.
With a dozen players on the roster with at least some collegiate postseason experience, we’ll have a good amount of games to look back on to help us fill the void, and for March 18th in particular, we have four such games.
Two of the games were in the round of 64, and two the round of 32. The players who played in the Big Dance on this date are shooting guard Jaylen Brown, forward Gordon Hayward, center Robert Williams III and guard Carsen Edwards.
Brown’s 2016 NCAA experience was a short one, though no fault of his own.
His Cal-Berkeley Golden Bears were not especially well-constructed to take advantage of his skillset, and it hurt his stock a bit as a result.
Cal-Berkeley stumbled out of the gate, falling in the first round to a motivated Hawaii 77-66, with the future Celtics star managing just 4 points and 2 rebounds in the loss.
Hayward, on the other hand, launched a deep run with his Butler recording a 77-59 beatdown of the University of Texas El Paso Miners in 2010.
Hayward logged 13 points, 4 rebounds and 4 assists in the win.
Then, we had the games beginning in the round of 32, starting with a certain hyper-athletic rim-runner’s win that sent him to the Sweet Sixteen in 2018.
Timelord’s Aggies of Texas A&M had a huge win over North Carolina in the second round, with Williams’ 8 points, 13 boards and 2 blocks helping to secure the 86-65 blowout.
Finally, in 2017 Carsen Edward’s Boilermakers advanced to face Iowa State in the second round, where Purdue defeated the Cyclones 80-76.
The Texan sharpshooter was still a reserve that season, but managed to put up 9 points on 3-of-6 shooting off the bench.
As the date progresses, so will our Celtics’ runs into the tournament, so keep an eye out for increasing stakes and bigger games as the month gets close to April.
We may not have the actual NCAA tournament to watch, but we’ll do our best to fill the basketball void we’re feeling at all levels from a uniquely Celtics point of view.
Be well, all.
[lawrence-related id=31057,31034,31025,31000]