What A Marathon
Upsets. Buzzer beaters. Near-misses. Overtime. Double overtime. Whatever excitement the tournament has lacked the last two years, the resulting vacuum created a maelstrom of frenzied basketball madness today. In case you were in a coma, today we had:
- Seven games (almost half of the total playerd) won by the lower seeded team, five of them by a double-digit seed (a 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14)
- In the remaining games, the underdog was sufficiently competitive to give the favorite, and those of us who picked them, severe heart palpitations.
- Three games went into overtime, one of them double overtime.
- Two games won by legitimate buzzer beaters.
Those of you who picked lots of upsets today came out smelling like roses, but more on that in a minute.
Game Time Observations
Have you ever tried to watch four basketball games simultaneously? I did all day today. It is a daunting task, especially when all of them are close. All the games are streamed for free at NCAA.com. So, I would rotate through the three games not currently being carried by the local CBS affiliate. It’s a good thing, too, because Can’t Broadcast Sports kept switching the games at the most inopportune times this evening, but I digress.
Anyway, what I ended up doing is just jotting down thoughts that seemed relevant or entertaining at the time to provide fodder for tonight’s commentary. Now that it is nearly 1:30 AM, looking at my notes is like trying to decipher those things you write down after immediately waking from a dream in which you had some epiphany, wrote it down, and went back to sleep. In the morning, it makes no sense. For your amusement, then, what follows are my collection of thoughts stream-of-consciousness style.
- Butler has a player named Vanzant. I wonder if they play "Sweet Home Alabama" in the locker room.
- Ohio’s Amon Bassett is from Terre Haute, IN, the city (I use the term loosely) that gave me my college degree and my wife.
- Lehigh has a player named Buchberger (pronounced "Buck-Burger"). Oh the abuse that kid must have taken in middle school.
- Do referees call traveling any more? At times I wondered if I was watching basketball or hopscotch. I thought multiple steps with nary a ball hitting the hardwood was strictly the domain of the NBA. And while we’re talking about officiating…
- I absolutely HATE NBA-style foul calling. I am talking about the calls where the referee waits to see if the shooter makes the basket before blowing the whistle. Come on, man. It’s either a foul or not. Let us at least try to preserve the integrity of the game at this level. The NBA is already more like Professional Wrestling than basketball.
- The Montana coach is 6′ 10".
- The Big East is now 1-3. The Big 12 is 3-1.
- If I had known Steve Fisher of Fab Five Fame was the coach of San Diego State, I never would have picked them.
- The Choke Artist award, sponsored by Spike Lee and the New York Knicks, goes to Texas’ J’Covan Brown, a 90% free throw shooter who missed two crucial free throws in overtime. Texas lost by one point.
Contestant Awards
Before I get to the awards, I would like to observe that among the top 10 in our contest are three children, one teenager, and five females.
- After six contestants went 8-0 before the evening session, no one finished the day perfect. In fact, I am not certain if anyone has ever finished the first day a perfect 16-0. Nevertheless, three contestants came close, earning them the Top Prognosticator award for day one: Cason Diulio, Neal Cunningham, and Wayne Murray.
- On the other hand, the Likely To Suffer The Same Fate As His Alias award goes to Remmy "Stegasaurus" Davidson who won just four games today.
- The You Definitely Got Skillz award goes to my sweet 7-year-old Ashlyn Little, who absolutely DID make her own picks and sits in sole possession of 3rd place.
- The Are You Sure You Didn’t Mean The Whining Bracket? award goes to RJ "The (Wynn)ing Bracket" Wynn. I have it from a reliable source that RJ was insisting this evening that I had rigged the contest scoring somehow with a programming trick.
- The Upset Stomach award, brought to you by annual sponsor Pepto Bismol, goes to Margaret Dean, who picked exactly seven games correct – all seven of the upsets. For those of you keeping score at home, yes, that means she picked 16 upsets for today. This approach has earned Margaret 7th place…for now.
- The Holy Mistaken Identities Batman award goes to Joe Jenkins (both of them) and Ralph Forey (both of them). My contest has grown to the point where my laziness as a developer has caught up with me. I now have people entering the contest who have the same first and last names, most notably, the aforementioned father-son combinations. Unfortunately, if one enters exactly the same first and last name, case included, as a previous entry, it blows up my code and generates what amounts to an empty entry. Joe Jr. caught this mistake and entered a second time with a differentiated name. Ralph Sr. did not. Sorry, Ralph. I owe you one.
- The I Hate This Stupid Scoring System award goes to Philip Furnish and Pete Merten, each of whom have won 13 out of 16 games, but are not even in the top 100.
- The I Love This Awesome Scoring System award goes to Kyle Klinker, who has won only 9 games, but sits in 5th place.
- The Best Change Of Alias award goes to Ryan Helton, who updated his alias today to "Start Scrolling Down". I love it!
And finally, the Day One Champion award goes to Leon "Burning Yellow Sphere" Sinoff and Lewis Schafer who sit atop our leader board in a tie. Day two will tell if they can remain there.
And with that, I collapse exhausted into my recliner, awaiting another day of madness.