|
49 Games
Is there anything better for a sports fan than the first weekend of the NCAA basketball tournament?
No.
No, there's not.
Checking online for up-to-the-minute scores; taking a nice, long lunch at the sports bar with the 6,000 TVs; coming home Friday after work, throwing on the sweat pants, cracking open a cold one and hitting the recliner, knowing that you won't move except to sleep and pee until Sunday night; filling out five, six, seven teams at a time on your bracket, and realizing that unless you pick all of tomorrow's games right you're probably screwed in the office pool...
It doesn't get any better than those 49 games. Tuesday's play-in game, sixteen games each on Thursday and Friday, and the inevitable second round barn burners over the weekend.
This is what it was like for me.
6:15 pm, TUESDAY.
I just found out that Florida A&M beat Lehigh in the play in game, so I'm off to a flying start. I had Lehigh, knowing absolutely nothing about either team, other than the fact that FAMU had a losing record (and that about ten years ago their marching band was named the nation's best by Sports Illustrated, but that's neither here nor there, although of course any "best marching band" article that doesn't have every single band in the world tied for 4,525th place behind USC is obviously ridiculous).
I knew changing my strategy would bite me in the ass, and I did it anyway. When they started this play in game, I figured I'd always pick the 65th team, just for the heck of it. No reason, really; just a little quirk, like how I pick three out of the four 9 seeds to win in the first round ever year, just 'cause.
Anyway, I found out that Florida A&M was 14-16 this year. I couldn't pick a team with losing record, could I? The very idea!
And, they won. And, it wasn't even close.
I think I'm something like 1-4 or 1-3 picking the play in game since they started it. Luckily, it almost never factors into the office pool (which I won two years ago, by the way. Thanks, Maryland. That gourmet Mexican dinner we paid for with the winnings was delicious).
A quick thought about the play in game: I don't mind the idea, but I don't like that it pits two of the small, crappy conference champions against each other. I also don't like that the winner goes on to the certain death of a 16 seed (no 16 seed has ever won a game, at least not in the men's tournament. Harvard [Mulder family alma mater shout out!] won as a 16 in the women's tournament a few years ago). These two teams won their conference tournaments and secured a berth in the Big Dance, and one of them (Lehigh, this year) doesn't even really get to participate. They kind of do, but, not really. I mean, have you ever watched the play in game? I haven't. And I'm a big enough fan that I'm wasting four days writing an internet column about the tournament for no pay.
What I'd like to see, and what I think would get the play in game some big TV ratings (which is what this is all about, as we all know), is for the game to feature two bubble teams, battling for the last 11 seed (or 12 seed, or 10 seed; whichever is left after the tiny, crappy conference champions fill up the 16s, 15s, 14s and 13s). Wouldn't Tuesday's game have been better if it had featured, say, Richmond and BYU, battling over who would face Syracuse, or Wisconsin? Isn't that better than ultimately inconsequential matchup of two sacrificial lambs?
One man's opinion.
10:25 am, THURSDAY.
Well, I had a happy St. Patrick's Day. Which usually isn't a terrific recipe for a happy Day After St. Patrick's Day.
But I'm hanging in there.
I can't say the same for the teams I picked so far; Texas Tech is running away from UNC Charlotte, which is bad because I picked Charlotte and bad because I hate Bobby Knight (as much for the fact that I grew up rooting for a different Big 10 team as for his Bobby Knight-ness, which is hate-worthy enough.). And the winner gets St. Joseph's, who, let's be honest now, has to be the least imposing 1 seed in history. Texas Tech could really, really screw things up for me, and the tournament is barely an hour old.
And Manhattan's hanging in there with Florida; the Jaspers, along with Western Michigan over Vanderbilt, were the trendy first round upset pick I kept hearing about. I was brilliant enough to put Florida in the Elite Eight. I don't like to pick the trendy upsets, because if I'm hearing about them, as little attention as I pay to the buildup, then they really must be getting a lot of play. If I'm hearing it, so is the higher-ranked team, so they'll be less likely to take their first round game for granted if they know people are picking against them. It's like that thing, from science, where you can't observe something accurately, because by observing it, you change it. I'm sure it's actually called something, I just don't feel like looking it up.
But, that said, if a team's got enough bad hoodoo coming into the tournament that people are picking them to be upset in the first round, they're probably not that good a shot to get very far anyway. I probably should have put that together before now.
And I know I did pick Western Michigan over Vanderbilt, but I make my picks immediately after the tournament pairings are announced Sunday afternoon, then I don't change them. That's just the way I get down.
11:28 am, THURSDAY.
Well, we're off to a flying start. Manhattan and Texas Tech won, which screws up my bracket more than a little bit. I can only get seven of eight Elite Eight teams now. Not that I've ever gotten seven of eight Elite Eight teams anyway, but, it's nice when they at least survive the first morning of the tournament.
Not as bad as last year, though; I think two of my Final Four teams were done after the end of the first weekend.
One year, my champion lost in the first round (that was the year Steve Nash's 15 seeded Santa Clara beat Arizona). Brackets don't get much more busted than that.
11:57 am. THURSDAY.
I finally got one. Maryland survived UTEP. For a minute there it looked like I might go 0-64 (including the play in game) (but not counting the mezzanine).
Incidentally, I'm always wary of a good team from a major conference that's picked to do well and has to sweat out an early game, barely eeking out a win. Those guys usually go pretty far, it seems to me. Let's see what Maryland does.
2:40 pm, THURSDAY.
Yep, it's one of those tournaments. Even when I win, I lose.
Wake Forest beat Virginia Commonwealth by 79-78. I picked Wake Forest. That may sound like good news at first, but, since Florida lost to Manhattan, a VCU upset would have pretty much cleared out that side of the bracket (I doubt anyone in my office pool had either Manhattan or Virginia Commonwealth in the Sweet Sixteen), and I wouldn't have suffered too much damage.
Anyone else thinking that Vermont might be a nice 15 seed to pick if someone held a gun to your head and said that if you didn't pick a 15 seed, they'd kill you? Any 15 seed that has a player I've actually heard of (Taylor Coppenrath) is worth a look. I doubt they'll win, but, still.
5:43 pm, THURSDAY.
Vermont hung in there for a while, but it's not going to happen. And my actual upset pick, Princeton, is falling apart against Texas. Every instinct I've had has been completely wrong.
But we've got the late games, and tomorrow. Chin up!
See you then; I got a softball game. We win this, we're league champs.
9:30 am, FRIDAY.
We lost the softball game. I was playing catcher (I play a lot of catcher in playoff softball games), the tying run was on second with two outs, and we intentionally walked the winning run to get to the other team's biggest power hitter (a lefty, and our right fielder is defensively weak). Don't ask me, I'm not the manager.
So, the guy hits a grounder between first and second, both first and second baseman dive for it and smother it, but, since our pitcher has a bad wheel he's nowhere near first base to cover. The guy from second comes home; a good throw might have had him, but this throw bounces in the dirt in front of me.
Now, if there's one thing I really ought not to be called upon to do under pressure, it's handle a bad throw in the dirt. But I just thought, "keep it in front of me, keep it in front of me." As long as it hits me, I'll be okay.
Well, the throw hits me in the leg, either the shin or kneecap (all bone; the right fielder said he could hear the smack from way out there) and bounces about 20 feet, and I've got to chase after the ball, I can't get it in time, and the winning run scores.
So that sucked. And I don't even have a bitchin' welt on my leg to show for it. Not yet, anyway. I'll keep you up to date on the leg welt situation.
I don't really know what happened; when anything eventful unfolds around me and I'm in the field, I pretty much just go to my happy place. If I happen to make a play, it's pretty much just by chance. I started playing softball less than a year ago after a ten year absence, and I've actually gotten worse since I started back up.
Ah, but it's fun. I'll keep playing.
10-6 so far with the bracket; not stellar. The good thing about all the early round games breaking down to sixteen is that you can compare your record to that of an NFL team. Big fun.
3:03 pm, FRIDAY.
All of my upset picks have hung in for most (or, in Princeton's case, half) of the game, then petered out at the end. ALL of them. If just two of the seven or eight had won, I'd be golden.
But, still, I've only lost one Sweet Sixteen and one Elite Eight team.
It's just a little airborne, it's still good, it's still good.
5:18 pm, FRIDAY.
FAMU is only down 8 to Kentucky at the half. That would be fun. We all know it's not going to happen, but it would be fun. Especially since I don't have Kentucky in the Final Four, and lots of other people do.
5:30 pm, FRIDAY.
Richmond is up by 8 over Wisconsin. That would be great. All this talk about Pitt (a Final Four pick of mine) having to play Wisconsin in Milwaukee in the second round was making me nervous. Richmond could do me a favor here.
Of course, since I picked Wisconsin, they could do me an even bigger favor by beating Richmond and then losing to Pitt.
8:20 pm, FRIDAY.
So Richmond lost. Now I get to sweat the Wisconsin/Pitt thing until Sunday.
If Pitt even beats Central Florida. It's tied right now, but CBS is sticking with UAB/Washington. The Average Wright (a Pitt grad) must be going nuts. Unless he found a sports bar or somewhere to watch the game. I'm not remotely surprised that I don't know where he is or what his Pitt-watching plans are; the two of us have watched a number of Pittsburgh-related sporting events together and, with the exception of a fairly meaningless Vikings-Steelers regular season game a few years ago, the Pittsburgh team has lost all of them in rather gut-wrenching fashion.
Godspeed, Joe. I've got Pitt in the Final Four, so, if they lose this one, I'm upset too. Albeit on a microscopically smaller level.
9:35 pm, FRIDAY.
Alabama-Birmingham did it; I'm 0-4 in the 8/9 games. Never done that before.
Gabe Kennedy, one of the UAB players, had a pretty nasty case of vitiligo, that skin disease that Michael Jackson claims to have where black people (maybe not just black people, but you wouldn't really notice it on white people) get splotches of peach or pink skin that basically just get worse as they age, as I understand it. It's all over his face and body, and it's really, really prominent and noticable, and the announcers, Dick Enberg and Matt Goukas, decided they'd handle it by being dead quiet whenever the kid appeared onscreen. Obviously you can't mention it, but being completely silent is almost as rude. I don't know what they were afraid of; "And Gabe Kennedy connects with his second pink splotch -- FREE THROW! I meant to say 'free throw.'"
Come on, guys, you're professionals.
Great game, though. Both teams topped 100 in regulation. Too bad UAB runs into Kentucky right away. They're fun to watch.
12-4 today, a marked improvement. I could still technically pull off 15 of the Sweet Sixteen; let's hope for maybe 12 or 13, and we'll be in business.
12:54 pm, SATURDAY.
Seton Hall/Duke was a dog of a game, but now we've got Gonzaga, my pick to win it all, getting worked early on by 10 seed Nevada. Quite clearly, someone either on or very close to this officiating staff has money on Nevada to win this thing. But, there's 26 minutes to play, and I don't think Nevada will keep shooting 62% from the field. Not quite time to panic yet.
1:01 pm, SATURDAY.
Blake Stepp, Gonzaga's best player, just hit a three, got fouled, and hit the free throw. That cut the Nevada lead from 20 to 16 with 4:40 to play. That might be a key play if Gonzaga can make a run.
I find it amusing that Gonzaga refers to themselves as "the Zags" (even though their actual nickname in the Bulldogs), which is obviously an attempt to get people to pronounce the name of the school correctly; "gonn-ZAY-guh," as opposed to "gonn-ZAH-guh," which sounds like "gazonga," which means "boob."
2:25pm, SATURDAY.
Wow. Gonzaga lost by 19. I'm finished. Just like that.
Gonzaga's big man, Ronny Turiaf (I'm not sure that's how you spell it; I'd look it up to be sure, but he doesn't deserve it), got three fouls right away in the first half, then one right away in the second half, and sat out most of the game. That didn't help.
And I've never seen a big player play so badly for so long in a big game as Blake Stepp played today. I hope he played himself out of an NBA career today, the ass. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. That was just Nomar-esque.
To quote Kevin Costner from "Bull Durham:" "F--- this f---ing game." Enjoy the rest of the tournament; I don't care anymore.
5:05 pm, SATURDAY.
Stanford lost, so I'm not the only one who got totally ruined today. Now if Kentucky and Duke would only lose, I've probably got just as good a chance as anybody. And Syracuse, and St. Joseph's. And North Carolina and UConn and Oklahoma State and Pitt and Mississippi State. Then I'll be fine.
1:30 pm, SUNDAY.
Got a drunken Las Vegas phone call from my buddy Phil at about 7:45 last night; he just wanted to make sure I knew that Gonzaga (or, as he slurred, "Gonzalez") lost. You know what? Sports Illustrated picked them to reach the final game, so I'm not the only one.
I haven't watched any men's basketball today; I've been too involved in the Minnesota-UCLA women's game. Shut up, I know one of the Minnesota players. Shannon Bolden, incidentally just came up with a huge defensive rebound with under a minute to play, went to my church growing up. Actually, if I think about it, she'd probably have to rank just below major league 20-game winner Bill Gulickson and former Kansas State volleyball standout Dawn Cady on the list of top athletes that Marshall, Minnesota has ever produced (All Star catcher Greg Olson was born in Marshall, but moved when he was little).
I know this is why you come to me; lists of the top athletes to come out of my hometown. Steve Zahn is from there too. You know, that actor who always plays the weird guy.
1:40 pm, SUNDAY.
Minnesota ended up winning (and, therefore, UCLA ended up losing). Both good.
Hey, what was Xavier doing as a 10 seed? Nice job, guys.
Vandy/NC State is coming down to the wire; maybe now we'll get the first really good buzzer beater of the entire tournament (I guess Alabama kind of had one in the first round; I didn't really see it). I don't really remember a tournament with fewer big nailbiters coming down to the last shot. Maybe next weekend.
1:50 pm, SUNDAY.
See, there? Vanderbilt/NC State, NC State was down by two and didn't really even get a shot off. They kind of did, but, it was blocked and didn't come anywhere near the rim. Maybe it's just because I've done such a bad job picking the games, but, it seems like nothing good has happened yet.
1:52 pm, SUNDAY.
Wisconsin/Pitt coming up, from Milwaukee. Also coming up, the Joe Wright's first, second and third heart attacks.
1:53 pm, SUNDAY.
They're showing us Pacific vs. Kansas instead of Pitt vs. Wisconsin? Come ON! I guess it's a geography thing; but, Pacific is in Stockton! People in Stockton don't even care about Stockton!
4:30 pm, SUNDAY.
Goodness. That Kentucky-UAB game was the one we've been waiting for.
Now Duke and UConn just need to lose, and this whole thing is wide open. I might just have a chance.
I'm back, baby. I'm back!
|
