You know how it feels when something so stressful, so tense, so traumatic happens that all the blood rushes from your extremities to your vital organs? That’s exactly what happened to me this afternoon in the closing seconds of Tennessee vs. Butler. After Tennessee’s J.P. Prince made the Boneheaded Play Of The Day by switching pivot feet with 4 seconds to play, Butler’s A.J. Graves couldn’t get a decent shot at the end of regulation. As great as this game was, it has to make one wonder why two teams who both spent time in the top 10 during the regular season and who both had 30 wins on the season were playing each other in the second round. One possible, and dare I say probable, explanation is that Duke was favored and Butler was hosed by the selection committee. What if Butler gets Duke’s 2 seed in the West? Does Butler beat West Virginia and march on to a possible Final Four appearance? Maybe, and maybe not, but that seems a lot more just for a team of Butler’s accomplishments than being punished for its success by being dumped in a region with two teams that have been ranked #1 nationally, and as a 7 seed, no less. Butler deserved a 2 or 3, Duke deserved a 4 or 5, and…
Georgetown Deserves A Big Fat Goose Egg. I’ve said repeatedly, among friends, that Georgetown simply does not know how to properly utilize Hibbert, and today proved my point. Hibbert fouled out with 6 points. 6 points and 5 fouls for the guy who should be the best and biggest thing to hit the Big East since the Great Orang-u-tan himself, Patrick Ewing. They didn’t show much of this game to us here in Indiana today, but if I were to make a guess, I would guess that Hibbert wasted his time setting up high on offense instead of on the block, shooting turnaround jumpers, or worse, three pointers, and compounded his ineffectiveness by picking up cheap frustration fouls, thus riding the pine more than he played. If you saw the game, tell me if I’m close. Speaking of Georgetown players from the past…
I thought I was watching Allen Iverson as I caught whatever glimpses CBS would give me of Davidson’s Stephen Curry dropping 30 big ones on the Hoyas. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s 70 points in two tournament games for this kid. I’m very anxious to see what he can do against Wisconsin’s beat-on-you-until-you-surrender style defense.
While we’re talking about overrated teams, does anyone besides me believe that Memphis’ sheer ineptitude from the free throw line essentially guarantees that they will not run the table? Remember hack-a-Shaq? With Memphis, you can hack-a-just-about-anyone. This is the biggest, meanest, most explosive collection of bricklayers ever assembled. The trouble they had with Mississippi State is very telling, and I think Michigan State can grind it out with them and bring their run-and-gun offense to a standstill. In March Madness, you have to close out games at the line. Memphis cannot do this. It was during this game that I heard a great quip from one of my favorite color commentators, Bill Raftery. Speaking of a player’s free throw percentage, he said, “Anything under 50 and you’re not picking the team in the summer.”
13 Not So Lucky In The Second Round. Neither of the 13 seeds were able to get over the hump against their 12 seeded opponents. San Diego was actually within striking distance with under 5 minutes to go, but Siena was never really competitive. Guess we’ll be Si-en-ya next year (and a groan escapes from the crowd).
Re-pick Round Reminder
Before we got on to the round 2 awards, I want to remind you that we are entering the re-pick phase of the contest. Everyone’s picks will be password protected again until Thursday at 6:00 PM EDT. From now until then, you are free to change any of your picks for the remaining 15 games if you wish. The complete, detailed instructions for entering your re-picks can be found here, but let me give you a summary.
- Go to your contestant picks page. The easiest way to do this is to go to the Contestant Picks list and use the search tool to find your picks quickly.
- Enter your password.
- Understand what you are looking at. Please do not email me saying “Hey, I didn’t pick that team!” Yes, I know. Any pick that you had wrong in rounds 1 and 2 will show up red in your grid, but the actual winner will be filled in for you. This is so that you can pick any of the remaining 16 teams to win any of the remaining games that you wish.
- Make your changes and click submit. You can make changes as often as you like up until the deadline.
- Good piece of advice #1: You should definitely change your picks for any game that shows up as red in your grid for any of the remaining rounds (3, 4, 5, and 6). It is foolish to leave a pick unchanged when you selected a team that has already lost. Pick a different team and give yourself a chance to score some points.
- Good piece of advice #2: Remember that if you change a pick for a team that is still alive, your new pick is worth fewer points if you win it than your original pick. This is my favorite part of the contest, because it is the most sadistic. If you have a team picked that you are now doubting as a winner, and you don’t change it because you want to keep the chance of scoring more points, and they lose, you will hate yourself for not changing the pick. On the other hand, if you change the pick, and your original choice wins, you will hate yourself. I love this game. 🙂
Enough of the technicalities. It’s time for…
The Round 2 Awards
The Baker’s Dozen award, sponsored by Krispy Kreme, goes to the four contestants who picked 13 of the Sweet 16 correctly, which is the most anyone got correct in our contest: Mason Ables, Brad Schafer, Robert Tipton, and Nicki Austin.
The Mary Poppins Practically Perfect In Every Way award goes to those fine contestants who managed to pick all 12 games in any one region correctly. There were no such winners this year in either the wild, wild West or Midwest, but for the relatively easy East we had: Bryson Davis, Caleb Davis, Dave Wilson, David Kincheloe, EJ Carroll, Ruth Allender, Scott Bateson, Steve Blevins, Steve Glassley, TJ Niksich, and Tom Kline. For the almost-as-easy South, we had: Amanda Barton, Bill DeWandeler, Ethan Ables, Jim Buchanan, Sam Glassley, and Tony Caraway.
The Who Invented This Stupid Scoring System? award goes to Brooks Targgart, who has the best win-loss record in our contest at 39-9, but is in 39th place and a full 40 points behind the leader.
The This Scoring System Is The Best Thing Since Guitar Hero Came Out award goes to Josh Christopherson, the highest-ranking contestant (13th) with more losses than wins.
The Donald Trump Would Fire You award goes to the two contestants whose position dropped the most in round 2. John Foster dropped from 226 to 409, and Emma Dean plummeted from 24 to 143.
The Rumors Of My Bankruptcy Are Greatly Exaggerated award, sponsored by Bear Sterns, goes to the two contestants whose position rose the most in round 2. Chris Deaver climbed from 323 to 88, and Michael Hoback clawed his way from 145 into the top 25 at position 22.
The It’s Obviously Personal award goes to Rebecca Davis, who is using her alias to announce to all that I’m BEATING MY BOSS, Pastor Jason!!!!! There goes your raise this year.
The Kind Words Are Appreciated, But It Won’t Get You Any More Points goes to my beloved aunt, Patty Brown. Thanks for the props, Patty!
The Quick, Somebody Crash His Hard Drive award goes to my good friend, Trevis Litherland, who makes his picks yearly using a computational algorithm he developed years ago and tweaked along the way. Trevis’s formula is in second place, 10 points behind the leader.
The You Beginner Luck award, given in honor of the late Noriyuki “Pat” Morita, goes to contest rookie Robert “Smoke” Tipton, the current contest leader with 106 points. When I made the call for contest rookies to identify themselves, Robert sent me this comment. “Interesting concept…I haven’t figured out exactly how different my strategy should be…I just picked a bunch of upsets, figuring the few that hit would outscore the favorites trudging onward.” That’s what you figured, huh? Well, bless your little heart. If I had known it was that simple all these years, I would have won my own contest by now. Yes, I’m bitter. 🙂
That’s it for this week, hoops fanatics. Thanks for hanging with me, and thanks especially for all the kind emails you’ve been sending. I read them all. Don’t forget to do your re-picks this week, and may the best contestant prevail.
Jeff, Suffering From Insomnia and Hoops Overload
1) I had essentially finished typing this post over
the better part of 40 minutes when my system crashed,
and I lost the whole thing. You have gotten your
wish, Jeff. I double-checked my code, and, yes,
my algorithm is really ticked off now too.
2) I am now writing this post in a text editor first,
and then pasting it over. Once burned…
3) An Easter Weekend Thought: The great thing about
using an algorithm to make my picks (whether or not
it works well from year to year) is that I can,
in principle, continue to play even after I’m dead.
I’ll just make a provision in my will, and have
someone enter its picks for me. If a few others did
the same, we could even fight it out as Dead vs.
Living. I’m not intending on checking out until,
say, 2050 or so, but it’s still an interesting
thought. Shades of Frank Tipler and Teilhard
de Chardin.
4) Mr. Smoke clearly inhaled. Must be good stuff,
duuuuude. (RHIT connection: “Dude” commercials;
Speed 3, ’89-’90. Anyone else see it?)
5) In related news, 2008 marks the first year in
which a nationally-televised commercial employed
the technical term “dilweed.” (sp?)
6) I have achieved a Zen-like state of acceptance
of annoying commercials as the price I must pay
for not having cable. Can you say “I just want
a-la-carte cable!”? Maybe by 2050.
7) B.S. apparently need not even act to be in
character on that CBS sitcom.
8) Do you think any of the classy guys calling the
games actually WATCH any of the CBS sitcoms that
they have to plug for?
9) I too stand in awe of Memphis’ inability at the
line. Sunday’s game was unnecessarily interesting.
(By the way, did you ever notice that anyone can
SHOOT 100% from the line? It’s MAKING the shots
that requires practice.) Watching Memphis, I recalled
teaching my Taiwanese-born wife (great new prez
over there, by the way) how to say “Shoot, man,
what a brick!” shortly after we met.
10) 13 of Sagarin’s pre-tourney Top 20 have made
it into the Sweet 16, including 11 of his Top 13.
11) Here is how the championship probabilities of
the Sweet 16 have changed from pre-Tourney to the
current standings (i.e., the end of round two):
Kansas: 19.42% -> 22.34%
UNC: 20.74% -> 21.46%
UCLA: 16.52% -> 20.94%
Memphis: 16.77% -> 14.67%
Wisconsin: 4.08% -> 6.15%
Tennessee: 3.66% -> 3.02%
Stanford: 1.43% -> 2.41%
Texas: 2.24% -> 2.22%
Xavier: 0.72% -> 1.56%
West Virginia: 0.17% -> 1.44%
Lousiville: 0.78% -> 1.22%
Washington St.: 0.70% -> 1.15%
Michigan St.: 0.34% -> 0.83%
Davidson: 0.05% -> 0.50%
Western Kentucky: ** -> 0.07%
Villanova: ** -> 0.03%
I know: too many sig figs. Round them yourselves.
12) Davidson has roughly the same number of students
as Rose-Hulman: 1700.
13) Cats rule, Jeff. My wife over-rules, however,
so we don’t have any.
14) It’s oddly nice not to have to worry about Tech
this year; we weren’t even on the bubble. (We were
too busy proving that a sphere is a minimal surface.)
that is, without a doubt, the best singularly best reply to commentary in the history of this inanity. very nicely done. in order:
1) Jesus saves. you should, too. it’s a windows world…
2) amen – long live EDT
3) an immortality algorithm. (in best Darth Vader) impressive …
4) *cough*
5) hollywood has been stealing my slang for years; this one took ’em 30+.
6) AMEN, and AMEN
7) pains me to share initials with both a steaming mound AND a skank. 🙁
8) no
9) RE: “brick” … {HORSE LAFF}
10) i can see it now – UCF: Sagarin vs. Litherland
11) the only truly sigfig is the 0 in the L column at the end of all this
12) i’ll wager RHIT has a higher cumulative IQ tho 😉
13) we had 27 cats at one point. don’t ask …
14) as an OSU fan, noted and understood. also the line item that prompted this reply. {bwahahahahahaha}
-the lesser BS
As unfortunate as the initials BS must be, if you were around last
year’s contet you would be aware of the Daihatsu Trevis, a 3-cylinder
980cc head-turner that’s “more than a car — it’s fashion on wheels.”
I obtain only marginal solace from the existence of the Acura TL.
As for my crash — it wasn’t even Windows, but on a SunRay here at
usually very reliable math department network.. Spooky. Maybe I
should include a Darth Vader voice effect in the algorithm. I’ve tried
to introduce the slang phrase “The torque is strong with this one”,
but no one gets it.
27 cats? Why, that’s a “purr-fect” cube. Jeff will probably ban
me for that pun.
Finally, as for the cumulative IQ, maybe, but as I’ll be applying for some
jobs at schools in the Southeast this fall, I won’t say anything negative
about Davidson. And in any case, the Rose-Hulman basketball chants of
“That’s all right, that’s OK, you’re gonna work for us someday!”
at the end of losing efforts to the likes of DePauw University seem
to have been less than universally true.
— keeping it real (unlike the complex analysts of the world)