Everything Is Bigger In Texas

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“I’d rather be a fencepost in Texas than the king of Tennessee.”

Chris Wall

Day One Provides Upsets, Firsts, and a Little Shakespeare

The return of March Madness did not disappoint in the madness department on day one as we saw six upsets in sixteen games, five double digit seed winners, four losses for the birds, three overtime finishes, two B1G losses, and a partridge in a pear tree. Here are a few thoughts and observations from today’s action in no particular order.

  • Wisconsin’s starting line up is older than the starting lineup of the Chicago Bulls. I’m not entirely certain what conclusion we should draw from that factoid, but I found it interesting nonetheless.
  • A B1G Letdown – It was a tough day (or two if you count yesterday’s First Four) for the Big Ten, with both Ohio State and Purdue losing in shocking upsets. Oral Roberts University became just the ninth 15 seed to win a game in tournament history, and North Texas won their first ever NCAA tournament game. Toss in Michigan State’s disappointing loss to UCLA on Thursday in the First Four, and you have three B1G losses all in overtime. But the news wasn’t all bad for the Big Ten. Rutgers got their first tournament win since 1983. Illinois clobbered Drexel by almost 30 points, and Wisconsin handed UNC coach Roy Williams his first ever loss in the first round of the tournament.
  • It was Sandy the Squirrel day today in March Madness as teams from the state of Texas completed a clean sweep, going 4-0. “You messed with the bull, Spongebob. Now here come the horns!” (If you haven’t seen that episode of Spongebob, I highly recommend it.) The aforementioned North Texas along with Texas Tech, Houston, and Baylor all won today. Throw in Texas Southern’s win from the First Four on Thursday, and you have a perfect 5-0 record for teams from the Lone Star State.
  • “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” Hamlet, act 2, scene 2. A large contributor to Purdue’s undoing was one Javion Hamlet, whose 24 points, 12 rebounds, and 5 assists were enough to lift North Texas to victory. Seventy-six contestants felt the sting of losing a Final Four team with this one, but that’s nothing compared to the 216 minions who had Ohio State in the Final Four.
  • How do you spell Oklahoma? Apparently I don’t know, because I misspelled it not once, but twice on the contest bracket. Many thanks to alert minion Richard Schrimpf for pointing out the mistake. I also realized I had the South and East region labels reversed on the bracket. I fixed that, too. I’m blaming these brain lapses on COVID.
  • Apparently there is a relatively new “no flopping” rule in men’s college basketball, which seems to have been introduced in the 2019-2020 season. If the officials deem that a player feigns excessive contact in order to draw a foul, i.e., flops, the team can be assessed a class B technical foul after one warning. (A class B technical carries only a single free throw as a penalty.) This is a rule I would like to see implemented in the NBA, but I suppose they handled it by issuing flopping fines. In any event, I’m a fan of this rule and think it should be applied more broadly to other sports. Take soccer, for example, where flopping and faking injury seem almost compulsory, or the phantom “I got a cramp in me hammy” time outs garnered by NFL defensive linemen when they are getting run over by a hurry up offense. C’mon, man. Get rid of all that garbage and just play ball.
  • San Diego State felt the Orange Crush. Like so many before them, they were befuddled by the 2-3 zone, managing only 18 points in the first half. That’s 18 points total for the team in 20 minutes of play. They played them basically even in the second half, but by then it was too late. Coach’s son Buddy Boeheim dropped a 30 burger on the Aztecs in this one.
  • COVID strikes again, as Georgia Tech star player Moses Wright was eliminated from competition eligibility due to contact tracing issues. No doubt this changed the complexion of that game, and it’s pure speculation as to whether they would have won the game had Moses been able to play. In any case, I doubt we’ve seen the last of this sort of thing. I’m especially curious as to how being in quarantine for the past 10 days will affect defending national champion Virginia, whose entire team has not practiced for nearly two weeks.

Day One Awards

Having exhausted all available inspiration for the day, and having reached the literal point of exhaustion, I leave you with today’s awards.

  • The You Got Your Money’s Worth award goes to Mark “GotABetterQuarterThisYear” Knutsen. Hold on to that quarter. Your coin flipping has earned you a tie for seventh so far.
  • The Breaking From Tradition award goes to Matthew Hickey for modifying his usual all-upsets bracket by picking Purdue to go all the way. You should have stuck with the upset on that one.
  • The Enjoy It While It Lasts award goes to Paul Smith and his not-so-RandomGuesses. Clearly Paul took a modified all-upsets approach, which is good enough for a tie for second after day one. Perhaps this is the well-worn strategy of picking all the upsets and then re-picking the likely winners during the re-pick phase. I’ve never seen that work, but there’s a first time for everything.
  • The Practically Perfect award goes to 15th place contestant Chris Sivits who only missed two games and got all four games in the Midwest region correct. Chris will receive a copy of Mary Poppins on VHS, autographed by Dick Van Dyke.
  • The Pole Position award, given in honor of the Indy 500, goes to current contest leader Grant Miller. Grant is ahead only by a nose due to the tie breaking rules, but is alone in first for now regardless. Grant will receive an autographed photo of A.J. Foyt.

Alright, minions, time for the Wizard to get some sleep and recharge for Saturday’s action. The Best Alias awards will be coming soon, so stay tuned.

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