Sunday, March 23, 2008

The PYY Bracket Brag

The NCAA Tourney Bracket is forming up. The first weekend of the annual ritual known as March Madness is over. Usually by this time, my brackets are decimated by now. But for some reason (probably because there isn't a lot of money on this one), they aren't looking so bad.

I had 22 left in after the first round. After the second round finished up today, I have 10 left.

Duke got the boot already, Georgetown is gone. I didn't have Duke going past West Virginia, but had The Hoyas going up against Kansas in the Elite Eight.

My biggest disappointment was Pitt. I had them going to the EE. I watched them win a very physical game against Georgetown in the Big East Tourney and thought sure they'd get past a mediocre Big Ten team, in Michigan State. Georgia let me down too. Every year there's one team with double digit losses that gets on a run and does some major damage in brackets everywhere, I thought that because they got on such a run in the SEC Tourney, they'd be the one. I miscalculated.

How about that Western Kentucky team? They are the team that can do some damage. I thought Drake would be still be in it, but WKU took care of that part of the bracket. The real sticky situation was not picking Butler to win today. I wanted them to, but I have seen Tennessee beat Memphis in the regular season and I figured they'd have enough to send the Bulldogs back to Indy empty.

Louisville looked good against Oklahoma, as did North Carolina against an extremely out-manned Arkansas. Stanford hasn't disappointed me, nor has UCLA ( I still have both playing). I still have TX, KS, Louisville, TN, Memphis, NC, WI, UCLA, WV, and Stanford in it.

Of the teams that are still in it, there are several that can win this thing. The consensus is NC will win it all, at least with Vitale and Company it is. I am not so sure, I don't think the Tar Heels can handle UCLA's relentless defensive pressure (and I also think Kansas and Texas have a good shot at beating them too).

At this point, anything can still happen. The NCAA Tourney is a funny thing, you cannot always go with the conventional wisdom, when picking winners.


1 comment:

A.C. McCloud said...

Congrats, LA. But I gotcha beat by 1--still have 11 teams left, including my longshot pick Davidson. Picked them because they're unknown and how they played Duke and Carolina earlier. And if they can beat G-town, they can beat Wisc but the pressure will be much higher.

I didn't have W KY, what a great win. And I didn't W VA over Duke, or Washington State beating Notre Dame. And I had Nova going out in the first round to Clemson.

Predictions for next round--NC, TN, KS, DAVID, MEM, TX, UCLA, W VA.