First Weekend Recap

OK, so I have egg on my face. At least I can take some comfort in the fact that I did pick the VCU and Winthrop upsets, and I was right when I said the Nevada-Creighton game would be the best game of the first round, which it was since it was the only OT game that round. And my Salukis are still alive, so I really don't give a fuck if all my other predictions are wrong.

Well, maybe I wish one prediction would have come true: I wish Kansas would have fallen to Kentucky. Now SIU has to play the Jayhawks, and that makes me nervous. Not that my opinion of Bill Self's coaching abilities, or lack thereof, has changed. I just fear that he has recruited such a great squad that even he can't fuck this one up. I hope I am wrong though. Hopefully SIU's defense fucks with Self's head so bad that he has a nervous breakdown. I don't see it happening though.

All I heard today was how the committee got it right this time: no double digit seeds in the Sweet 16, and the sum of all the seeds left is 51, which is the lowest it has been since 1995 when it was also 51 (the lowest it can be is 40, the lowest it has ever been is 50 in 1989, and the average is around 70). Well, I heard about that, and the fact that Illinois choked. Yeah, they blew a double digit lead, but I wouldn't say that they choked as bad as Wisconsin, who was ranked #1 just 3 weeks ago and got bounced yesterday by UNLV. And they looked like absolute dogshit in their first round game.

I also was wrong about Memphis. I still don't understand why they got the seeding they did with the conference they play in, but they beat Nevada, who I thought would run away and hide from Memphis. They're good, but I don't see them going to the Final Four. I've been wrong before though.


Then there's Texas. I drank the Longhorn Kool-Aid, had them in my Final Four. It was nice to hear Kevin Durant after the game say that he regrets not playing harder this whole season. Now, he did have 30 points in their loss, but for him to say that is just stupid. To hear the oafs at the Boo-Yah Network try to defend his remarks and say that he "didn't mean it that way" was even more ridiculous. He meant it, and I think Greg Oden should be thanking him now, because I think that may be in the back of the minds of whatever team holds the #1 pick this year and they will probably opt for Oden.

Speaking of the neaderthal looking phenom who dons a Buckeyes uniform, I only heard a few people actually mention what my buddies and I were saying at the end of regulation of the OSU-Xavier game: The Muskateers got fucked. Yeah, they missed the free throw to seal the game. And yeah, they should have fouled rather than let OSU shoot that 3 to tie it, but if Oden's final foul was not flagrant then I don't know what is. He came up and shoved the guy. Xavier should have gotten the ball after the missed free throw. Although I have OSU in the final game in my bracket, or what's left of my bracket, I wanted to see the upset. After all, thats the charm of March Madness.

Had OSU lost, the Big Ten would have 0 teams in the Sweet Sixteen. As it stands they have one out of 6 that entered the tournament. Same with the ACC. Same amount of bids as the Valley. Same as the Mountain West. Same as the Horizon League. Just more support for an argument that more mid-major teams should be let in with at large bids instead of rewarding the lower teams of the so called power conferences.