“Never contend with a man who has nothing to lose.” – Baltasar Gracian
Do We Believe in Dayton Yet?
How many games will the Dayton Flyers have to win before we actually believe in them? The #11 seed Flyers had 11 different players score in their third consecutive win over a power conference team to reach the Elite Eight for the first time since I was still in junior high. While Stanford may not seem like much of an opponent as a #10 seed, many of us and the experts had high expectations for Ohio State and Syracuse, both victims of Dayton. And Stanford didn’t do much to earn its date with Dayton; they just defeated #2 Kansas is all. Dayton faces a mighty test in #1 Florida, but they might have a better chance than you think. Did you know that of the five times a #1 and a #11 have played in a regional final, the #11 has actually won 3 out of 5 times? Who knows? Come Monday Dayton might just be flying higher than ever.
Bumbling Baylor Unbearable Against Badgers
Badgers win big. Nothing to see here. Move along.
G8R H8Rs Will Have to W8 Til L8R
It wasn’t a good night for the bears, but UCLA kept this one more respectable than the Baylor Bears could manage. Still, Florida was never really in trouble. The Bruins shot just 16% from three point range, and the Gators dominated on the boards and on defense. It will be an interesting match up with Dayton, as they are athletic with good shooters, but it will be their toughest test of the tournament by far.
The Best For Last
By far the best game of this particular evening was Arizona’s hard earned victory over pesky San Diego State. Steve Fisher is a great coach who gets the most out of his players, and the Aztecs actually controlled this game until about 8 minutes left. That’s when Nick Johnson hit his 11th shot after missing the first 10, and Arizona tried to pull away. There were still some interesting scenarios toward the end that kept me watching, but nothing like the boneheaded giveaways we saw over the first weekend. The two top seeds that played tonight lived up to their seeding. I think the Arizona-Wisconsin game promises to be epic.
The Name Game Revisited
If you haven’t gone to the View & Search Contestant Picks page lately simply for the purpose of reading the aliases, you should. This is by far my favorite part of the contest, watching people chronicle the rise and fall of their fortunes in the 40 characters I give them for an alias. As the first weekend closed and the re-pick round got into full swing, I saw some real gems come across the wire.
- The Nostalgia award goes to Ken “Jeff’s minion since compilers ’91” Schmidt. Here’s hoping I wasn’t too harsh a task master.
- The Best Pun award goes to Spencer “I’m in a re-pickle” Hofer.
- The Eeyore Award For Blatant Negativity goes to Trevor “I Never Win This Stupid Thing” Norcross.
- The Best Commercial Tie In award goes to Matt “And bad mistakes…I’ve made a few…” Thurber. Matt may yet be singing “We Are The Champions” after all, as he currently sits in 39th place.
- The Sour Grapes award goes to Rob “My alias was vetoed by Jeff Obama” Fair. The rest of the story you don’t know is that his original alias didn’t make it through my diplomacy filter. And that’s all I have to say about that.
- The Tugging at My Heart Strings award goes to Matthew “Its hard to watch my son cry over a game” Hand. Wow. Poor little guy.
- The Looking On The Bright Side award goes to Doug “Repicks. How much worse can it get?” Goodwin. Not much. He’s in 720th.
- Finally, the I Can’t Believe I Missed It The First Time award goes to Jim “Want Some Kool-Aid” Jones. That’s just classic.
A Few Quick Shout Outs
Just a few quick shout outs tonight as I have a lot on my plate, and its mid-round.
- The I Told You So award goes to Matthew Hickey, the one person who picked all upsets in rounds one and two this year. As high as 10th at one point, Matthew is now in 556th.
- The Rising Star award goes to Todd Gross, who has climbed from the basement of 693rd all the way to 102nd. Bravo!
- The I Don’t Need No Stinking Re-picks award goes to Sammy Brauen who still had all of his winners for the last 15 games remaining in the tournament after the first two rounds. Sammy only had one loss tonight and is currently in 19th place.
- The Wishful Thinking award goes to Colman “Sparty, get me out of the basement!” Goodwin. Listen, coach Izzo is good, but he’s not THAT good. Colman is in dead last.
- The Back and Forth award goes to John Lederman and Genya “12th Man” Trisler who keep trading places in 1st and 2nd. John has the upper hand at the moment, but only by 3 points.
Actually, the standings at the top of the contest are tighter than I’ve seen them in years. The contest is still very much wide open. So keep watching, keep rooting, keep praying – whatever works for you, and we’ll have more news tomorrow night after the games.
Until then, minions,
The Wizard of Whiteland