Congratulations to our Standard Pool champion – Lauren Martin.   Lauren ran away with the pool as she got 3 of the Final 4 correct in UNC, Gonzaga and Oregon, but also correctly forecasted that UNC would beat Gonzaga in the championship game.   Ashley Peterson finished second, just 70 points behind, and Jessica Atkinson finished in 3rd, just 110 points behind.

The Lunatic then has to give a special call out to those who were tied for 4th.  That is because I know that my mother-in-law, Kate Yost, is thrilled to death that her Tar Heels won and helped her bracket get into 4th place.    She ended up tied with David Zimmerman, who was my roommate in college at Purdue.   As I was getting stomped, it was enjoyable for me to see my mother-in-law and one of my close friends do so well in the pool.    And they were not the only ones who did well – my wonderful wife, Elizabeth, also finished tied for 10th.   That is a fitting prize for the wonderful woman who puts up with my madness every March – oh who am I kidding, she puts up with my madness all year round.  Not sure how I got so lucky.

In the Upset Pool, Greg Williams was the big winner as he picked UNC to win the championship.   It was those 6 points that allowed Greg to sneak out the championship over our Round 4 leader Kyle Kelly by a single point.   Both Greg and Kyle managed to get to the top of the board by picking 11 seed Xavier to the Elite 8, but in the end, it was picking a #1 seed that led Greg to the championship.   This really was one of the closest upset pools that I remember, because Earl McKnight came 1 point short of catching Kyle as well thanks to the Tar Heels victory in his third place finish.

In the Second Chance Pool, Tony Bisese correctly picked UNC to beat Gonzaga and win by 40 points.    He was closely followed by a 4-way tie for 2nd place – congrats to Jack White, Kelly McDowell, John Howarth, and Andrea Zimmerman (yes, Dave’s wife also managed to make it into the prize list).

The Lunatic managed to quietly sneak up the standings a little bit with his sane picks, since they had picked North Carolina to win the championship as well.   But unlike his mother-in-law and wife, that pick was only good enough to move up to a tie for 68th place.   That also put the Lunatic behind his 10 year old son Charlie (tie for 30th) and his 7 year old daughter Katie (tie for 53rd).    So while not as big of a stomping as it looked like when he was buried on the standings page somewhere in the 100s, if we include the tie-breaker, 69 of you Stomped the Lunatic!!!!   So that is still a pretty good stomping.

Congratulations below to all of our Stomp the Lunatic winners!!!!!

STANDARD POOL

1) Lauren Martin – 1300

2) Ashley Peterson – 1230 (FUN)

3) Jessica Atkinson – 1190

4th Tie) Kate Yost and David Zimmerman – 1180

6) Joel Lander – 1170

7) William England – 1150

8) Earl McKnight – 1120

9) KJ Martin – 1110

10th Tie) Rohit Kapoor #1, Rohit Kapoor #2, Elizabeth Hodgson and Kevin Flippen – 1100

LAST) Joe Chapman – 380

UPSET POOL

1) Greg Williams – 246

2) Kyle Kelly – 245

3) Earl McKnight – 244

4th Tie) Mark Schumaker and John Howarth – 239

SECOND CHANCE POOL

1) Tony Bisese – 840

2nd Tie) Jack White, Kelly McDowell, John Howarth, and Andrea Zimmerman – 800

 

Congratulations again to Lauren Martin – our 2017 Standard Pool champion, Greg Williams – our 2017 Upset Pool champion, and Tony Bisese – our 2017 Second Chance champion!!!!   And of course, congratulations again to the North Carolina Tar Heels – our 2017 National Champions!!!

What a great game!!!!!    Both teams point guards had amazing games.   All second half, Joel Berry II kept hitting big shots for North Carolina to keep the game close as he scored 22 points.  But it was Nigel Williams-Goss who brought Gonzaga back when UNC had built a small lead, including a great drive on Justin Jackson with 2 1/2 minutes to give the Bulldogs a 63-62 lead.

Justin Jackson, who struggled from the field during the game, drove to the hoop and got fouled by Williams-Goss and hit one of his free throws to tie the game.    This led to the Gonzaga point guard driving again on Jackson and hitting another big basket.   But the lead was short lived as Theo Pinson had a nice pass to a cutting Jackson, who hit the layup in the paint and got fouled again.   Jackson hit the free throw to give the Tar Heels a 66-65 lead – a lead that they would not give up.

Sadly, on the next possession, Williams-Goss got tangled up with Pinson and injured his ankle.   While he stayed in the game, you have to wonder how much that impacted his play in the final minute.    Williams-Goss tried to drive on Pinson, but missed his fade-away jumper as Pinson did a great job of not leaving his feet so Williams-Goss could draw the foul and forced a tough shot.

Then, in another fitting way to end, UNC let some time come off the clock, but because of some great defense by Gonzaga, Berry had to force up a three-pointer that missed.   And the ball fell into Kennedy Meeks hands.  He actually lost it for a minute, but was able to fall on it and get a jump ball called – giving the Tar Heels a chance to run more clock.    With the time running down on the shot clock, Isaiah Hicks drove to the basket and the senior made a huge basket to make it 68-65.

After a time-out, Williams-Goss tried to drive to the basket and Kennedy Meeks blocked his runner, with the defensive rebound going to Berry.   Berry quickly outlet the ball to a streaking Justin Jackson who dunked the ball to give the Tar Heels a commanding lead.   As Gonzaga tried to rush the ball desparately up the court, Meeks stepped up again and stole the ball.   Fittingly, he got the ball into his point guard’s hands.   And Berry, the Final Four MVP who kept the Tar Heels in this game, scored the final point of the Tar Heels 9-2 run on the free throw line.

All tournament, it had been the Tar Heels finding a second gear in the final four minutes.   Whether it be going on late game runs like they did against Arkansas and Kentucky, or whether it was coming up with big offensive rebounds as they did against Oregon, North Carolina found a way to get their redemption from last year.  Maybe it was also fitting that UNC coach Roy Williams managed to win his 3rd national championship in his 100th NCAA Tournament game.

You have to give so much credit to Gonzaga – they fought hard and had such an amazing season – it is hard to go 37-2 in college basketball.   But tonight, the Tar Heels had just too many weapons, and they managed in the second half to find the right hot hand at just the right time.  Congratulations to the North Carolina Tar Heels – they are the 2017 NCAA Basketball Champions!!!!!

Joel Berry II looks like he stripped the ball from Przemek Karnowski and there is lots of contact on the way down.   Initially, they called the foul on Berry (although replay looks like he got it clean).   But Berry was on the ground for a while from the hit by the big 7 footer (which was not intentional, just two players going for the ball).   Then, they went to the replay and called a flagrant one on Karnowski for hitting Berry in the head (totally by accident) as they both fell to the floor.

How can you call a flagrant one when you didn’t even initially call the foul on the player?   Of course, since the replay looked like Berry got the ball cleanly, maybe the foul should have been on Karnowski.   And Berry was kind enough to miss both free throws.   But that becomes the 4th on Karnowski.   And as I type this, Zach Collins just fouled out on a push-off for a defensive rebound.

If they keep calling this so tight, there will be no one left to play.

Josh Perkins has been on fire – leading all scorers with 13 points.   Perkins had some timely three pointers to give Gonzaga the lead, while Joel Berry II hit a few shots when UNC desparately needed it to stay in the game.   The junior point guard has led the Tar Heels with 9 points.

Neither team has been shooting well from the field, and each team’s talented big men have made it crazy hard to score points in the paint.   The difference so far has been that Gonzaga has been able to hit 5 of 9 of their three point shots, while North Carolina is 2 for 13 (including Justin Jackson being 0-6 from three).

I am sure that if you told Roy Williams that they were going to only shoot 30% in the first half, they were going to get out-rebounded by 1, and yet they are going to be only down by 3 points, he would take it.    Right now, it has been the outside shooters and defensive rebounding for Gonzaga that has been the difference.   They need to keep that up for 20 more minutes to bring home the school’s first ever national championship.

Kennedy Meeks and Justin Jackson put the Tar Heels on their shoulders tonight as Meeks scored 25 points and pulled down 14 rebounds while Jackson added 22 points, including some key three pointers from the corner to extend the Tar Heels’ lead.   But there was no quit in the Ducks, and it got exciting.

First, Jordan Bell hit a layup to cut the lead to 75-71 with just 1:18 left in the game.  Theo Pinson drove hard to the basket off a rebound, drew a foul and hit both free throws to extend the lead to 6.    Then, Bell pulled down a big offensive rebound and kicked the ball out to Tyler Dorsey, who cut the lead to 3 with a three-pointer with 46 seconds left.

So, the Ducks decide to play defense – and they do a great job, forcing a missed drive by Pinson.   Jordan Bell fell to the ground in getting the rebound and realizing the Ducks had no time-outs somehow managed to get the ball to a teammate as the Tar Heels tried to swarm him to get a jump ball.   But when UNC closed in on the three-point line, Oregon decided to cut the lead as Dylan Ennis found Keith Smith under the basket for an easy layup to make it a 1 point game with just 6 seconds left.

But that decision meant now the Ducks had to foul.    They forced the ball in Kennedy Meeks hands – and while Meeks had been dominating in the lane, he is not the best free throw shooter.   Add the pressure of a chance to play for the National Championship, and amazingly, Meeks missed both free throws.   But somehow, Theo Pinson slapped the ball out and into the hands of Joel Berry II.

Berry is an 80% free throw shooter, and so normally the guy you want having the ball.   But Berry had been fighting an ankle injury all night and had shot horribly from the field.   And even if Berry makes the free throws, there is still 4 seconds for Oregon to have a chance to tie the game.   But Berry misses the first free throw short, and the suspense in the arena continued to build.   No one would expect that Berry’s second free throw would be off the back of the rim, but somehow, Kennedy Meeks stepped in, jumped over everyone to get the rebound, and quickly kicked the ball back outside so that the Tar Heels could run out the rest of the clock.

That’s right, the Tar Heels missed 4 free throws in the last 6 seconds of the game, and yet Oregon never got the ball to try to take the game winning shot.    Tar Heels fans can now exhale and breathe again.   Your team hung on for a 77-76 victory and will be playing for the National Championship.

So, we have mid-major West Coast Conference champion Gonzaga in their first ever Final Four trying to show that they are no longer Cinderella as they were in the late 90s – they are now a national program to be dealt with.    And we have power 6 Atlantic Coast Conference champion North Carolina in their 20th Final Four (the most by any program) chasing after their 6th national championship (7th if you count the one from 1924 before the NCAA Tournament existed).   They were 4 seconds away from forcing overtime last year, and now, they have a chance at redemption to claim the championship that eluded them.     Should be a great championship game on Monday night!!!!!

The Ducks stormed out early and built an 8 point lead as Dylan Ennis hit two big three pointers to get the score to 30-22.   But Justin Jackson and Kennedy Meeks led the Tar Heels on a 17-6 run to end the half and give the Tar Heels a 39-36 lead.

Pretty exciting night of basketball so far – one more half to go!!!!

Well that was thrilling.   Gonzaga looked like they had the game well under control with 62-48 lead with about 12 minutes to play.   But then the Gamecocks came charging back.   The next five minutes watched South Carolina outscore the Bulldogs 19-3.  First, Duane Notice hit a three, then some free throws by Chris Silva, then a basket by PJ Dozier, then a big three by Sindarius Thornwell, and they were on a huge roll.

But Gonzaga didn’t panic.   Zach Collins hit a three pointer, and Przemek Karnowski made a monster dunk and another layup and the Zags were back up 5.  The last couple minutes were very exciting as South Carolina would miss a shot, but get an offfensive rebound, but then Gonzaga would hold on defense to cause another missed shot.   With Gonzaga holding a three point lead, South Carolina managed to stop Nigel Williams-Goss from scoring and somehow didn’t get called for a foul on the rebound – it was actually funny, they went to the replay to make sure it was off Gonzaga, and you could see the South Carolina player slap the Bulldog’s arm and hold him back as he tried to save the ball from going out.   But the replay clearly showed the ball was off Gonzaga – which is all you can use the replay for.   South Carolina brought the ball up the court, but struggled to get off a shot – then with the clock down to 3 seconds, Gonzaga intentionally fouled to make sure they couldn’t tie the game.

Thornwell hit the first free throw to make it a two point game, and intentionally missed the second free throw, and backup freshman forward Killian Tillie pulled down the rebound and got fouled.  And with everything on the line, the freshman – who before this moment had no shots and only one rebound – calmly hit both free throws to ice the game.

It was a great effort by South Carolina, but in the end, their effort to be the first team to come back from half time deficits four times in the tournament.   They simply didn’t have an answer for the drives from Niles Williams-Goss, who had 23 points and 6 assists, and the inside game from Gonzaga’s two seven footers as Karnowski had 13 points, and Zach Collins had 14 points, 13 rebounds and 6 blocks from coming off the bench.   And so the Zags hung on for a 77-73 victory and are our first semi-finals winner.

Now, the mid-major West Coast Conference champion will wait to see if they will be playing the major conference ACC champion North Carolina or the major conference Pac 12 co-champion Oregon.    Most of the year as Gonzaga has gone on their streak of being undefeated for the season, you would hear the comments about how the Zags wouldn’t be able to have that record if they were in a major conference.   Well, they now have knocked off Northwestern, West Virginia, Xavier and South Carolina.   And they will get to have the opportunity to make the biggest statement of all – by winning the National Championship.    Congratulations to the Gonzaga Bulldogs on their first Final Four victory in school history!!!!

 

The offenses from both teams were on from the start of this game.  I also think the game has gotten pretty physical, but I think one of the moments that should have gotten called has propelled the Bulldogs to their lead.   Przemek Karnowski, the Zags big center who had been making lots of good plays in the lane, went up for a layup and got blocked by Chris Silva.   While the block of the ball was clean, Silva’s hand followed through to slap Karnowski across the face and knocking him down to the ground – while the contact on the shot was clean, I didn’t think you were allowed to follow through to cause that type of contact.   With the big guy lying on the ground in pain, South Carolina quickly went down the court and hit Justin McKie for a three-pointer to tie the game at 31.

And while Gonzaga lost their center for the last 5 minutes of the half, Gonzaga was sparked by this.   The Zags started to get more physical themselves – including a brutal screen that took out a South Carolina defender.   Zach Collins took over inside with a layup, a couple of rebounds, and a block.  And Nigel Williams-Goss was incredible.  Williams-Goss was unstoppable when he drove to the basket, and then kicked the ball out to Jordan Matthews on the wing for a three pointer that stretched the lead to 45-36.   The Bulldogs almost added 3 more to their 14-5 run, but Silas Melson’s three-pointer was still in his hand when the buzzer went off.

It is probably not helping that South Carolina’s star player Sindarius Thornwell has struggled in the first half – it was very unfortunate timing that he has been fighting the flu all week, but he looks a little lethargic in only getting 5 points.

This is not unfamiliar territory for the Gamecocks.   They have been down at half time in 3 of their 4 tournament games, including down 7 to both Duke and Florida.   We will see if they can come back one more time.

The Lunatic’s Handicapping has been a complete disaster.   After finally beating some of the bracketologists on who the Selection Committee would pick, he was feeling like he was in for a good year of picking the games.   Then, the last few weeks was a simple reminder of why I don’t go to Vegas Sportsbooks any more.

Despite a winning record against the over-unders, the Lunatic found himself down an imaginary 119 dollars.  And that was good compared to how he did against the spread – where he was down 210.    If you basically took any team the Lunatic didn’t, you would have done pretty well.

In the Elite 8, I picked Xavier to keep the game close against Gonzaga (it was not), and the other three favorites to cover small spreads.   Both Kansas and Florida lost, and UNC’s exciting 2 point victory wasn’t enough to cover the 2.5 spread.

This exercise is always a reminder to me of how hard this is.  The team that Vegas favored (minus their two games that were pick’em games) went 45-17 in the tournament so far.   But only 28 of those 45 teams covered the spread.   So, you have to figure out which lines are too many points.

I broke the games into three groups to see where I went wrong.   Games with lines <= 4 points (basically, a game that should could down to last couple of possessions), lines from 4.5 – 9.5, and double digit games.    I am going to leave the 2 pick’em games out – ironically, though, I got both those games right.

On Double Digits games, all 17 times the favorite won.   But only 9 covered the double digit spread.  I foolishly only picked 4 underdogs to keep the game close – and went 2-2 in those.  Which means I went 6-7 in the other games.  But this shows how hard it can be.   Obviously, most of us would have picked the favorite to win these games – but it isn’t enough to pick who wins, they need to also cover.

On middle games, the Vegas favorite won 15 of 21 times.   But the Vegas favorite covered only 9.5 times.   So, you would have been better off picking the underdog all the time.    Of course, the Lunatic didn’t do that.  I picked the underdog only 9 times – sadly 6 of those times, the favorite covered.   So, this is definitely where things went wrong for me.    I only won 6.5 games of this group.    The 9 times I thought the underdog would keep it close, I only was right 3 times.  And of the 12 times I picked the favorite, 5 of them were upset, and 3 others didn’t cover the spread.

So, with the close games, it makes sense this is where the upsets happened.   The Vegas Favorite went 13-11 in these games.  Interestingly,  2 of those 13 didn’t cover the spread, despite the spread being less than 4 points (of course, I picked the favorite in both of those games).   I picked the underdog to win 13 of these games and went 6-6-1.   That means for the 11 favorites I picked, I went 6-5 on the winner, but because I was unlucky enough to pick the only 2 winners in this group not to cover, my favorites fall to 5-7.

So, I did pretty poorly, all around – but 14 of my losses were times that I knew the winner – I picked the favorite to win and they did – they just didn’t cover the spread.   Add into it the 10% the house takes for each victory, and it you can see how easy it is to lose quickly.   If you also include the Lunatic curse of any team I lock loses (I went 3-10 on the games I locked), and that means lots of money for the sportsbook.

Thus, I have decided it would be horrible to allow the Lunatic curse to decide any of the remaining games – I can’t get to a winning record anyways.   So, Lunatic handicapping is over for the tournament.     If you need a gambling report, here is the information to know.

Gonzaga is a 6.5 point favorite against South Carolina in the first game.   According to covers.com, 54% of the public are picking the underdog Gamecocks, but of the 29 covers.com experts, 21 of them support the Bulldogs.   The experts and public are in more agreement on the over/under – with both leaning towards the teams to score more than the 137.5 O/U line.

North Carolina is a 4.5 point favorite against Oregon in the second game.   Once again, the public and experts disagree on the spread – 52% of the public have the Ducks, 57% of the experts have the Tar Heels.    The public loves the over of 153 in this game – in fact, they like it so much that the O/U has moved up 4.5 points from when the line opened.  The experts also say take the over, but they are more split (56%).

So, there you have it – no picks from the Lunatic – who obviously doesn’t know what he is doing.   The Vegas lines and the covers.com experts think we will have a Gonzaga / UNC championship game – while the public at least like Oregon and South Carolina to keep the games close if not pull the upset.    But as the women’s tournament reminded us – you might be able to use stats to figure out who will likely win the game, but there is a reason we play the games.   The only thing that you can truly know is that by the end of the night, we will have two well-deserving teams who won their right to play for the championship on the court.    Who could ask for more than that?

Enjoy tonight’s games – they should be fantastic!!!!