First Round: Wrap Up

Overall, not too bad a first round in the NCAA Tournament. Outside of Tampa, Florida, not too many upsets. Speaking of Tampa, what the hell were they putting in the water down there? Two 12s and two 13-seeds won. Let’s take a quick look at what I got right (not much) and what I got wrong (plenty).

AS for upsets, I called the Nova, Siena and Davidson. Overall I went 24-8 (putting me tied for 70th at The Big Lead bracket challenge), but overall I have two loses that have killed me. Obviously, I blew USC. I had them going to the Final Four, yet they couldn’t even get by Kansas State. I thought their amazing defense would be the ace up their sleeve. My bad.

I also missed badly on Indiana. I predicted they would take down the Tar Heels in the second round. I guess you can say I overlooked Arkansas. Sorry Razorbacks, the only thing keeping North Carolina out of the final four will be Tennessee (maybe).

Upset I should have saw coming? How about San Diego over Connecticut. The Huskies have lost their last two tournament games (over the last three years) to #11 George Mason and #13 San Diego State.

Is it my imagination but did UCLA have the best two days of any team in the tournament. Not only do they win, holding Mississippi Valley State to a pathetic 29 points, all four lower seeds in their half of the bracket lost. Of the four other teams still alive in their bracket, none are in the top 38 of the RPI.

Add in the fact that Duke isn’t scaring anyone right now, it appears that Xavier (who is lucky Georgia just ran out of gas) is their toughest possible test in the West Region.

Speaking of Duke, remember what I say the other day about Duke needing a little big of luck? So far they didn’t get any, as there were ZERO upsets in the Duke side of the bracket.

Here are my random musings:

– The game of the day: Western Kentucky taking down the Drake in overtime. The two teams took a record 70 three pointers, making a record 30 of them.

– Second best game: Duke over Belmont…not for Duke fans of course, but for the rest of the 95% who hate Duke.

– How does a player like Stephan Curry escape the ACC? Talk about a miss.

– Indiana, with Gordon gone, wins ten games next year, giving Illinois the last laugh.

– Next year, USC replaces OJ Mayo with…Lil’ Romeo. Good luck with that.

– Sorry Memphis & Texas, Pittsburgh is the cream of the crop in the South.

Taking a look at the big BCS conference, everyone had at least one loss, but the Pac Ten was by far the bottom of the barrel; managing only a .500 record in the first two round.

ACC : 3-1
Big East: 7-1
Big Ten: 3-1
SEC: 3-1
Pac Ten: 3-3
Big Twelve: 5-1

Let’s go ahead and scrap my earlier predictions…they mean nothing. They never happened. Move along people! Here are my quick predictions in Round Two:

EAST
North Carolina over Arkansas
Notre Dame over Washington State
Oklahoma over Louisville
Butler over Tennessee

MIDWEST
Kansas over UNLV
‘Nova over Siena
Wisconsin over Kansas State
Davidson over Georgetown

SOUTH
Memphis over Mississippi State
Pittsburgh over Michigan State
Marquette over Stanford
Texas over Miami

WEST
UCLA over Texas A&M
Western Kentucky over San Diego
Purdue over Xavier
Duke over West Virginia