The brackets are up – I will send out an email reminder later tonight.

At this point, you are welcome to register and join the tournament – the entry form is ready to go!!!!!!!

So, do you research, make your picks and get ready to Stomp the Lunatic!!!!!

The Lunatic’s insane bracketology is posted. I am really not sure what the committee will do. My final 4 into the tournament were Syracuse, Utah State, Wichita State, and Mississippi. That left UCLA, Duke, Saint Louis and Colorado State as the first four out, and Memphis, Drake, Boise State, and North Carolina State as the next four out.

I ended up going with what everyone expects as the top seeds – Gonzaga, Baylor, Illinois and Michigan. I really wanted to move Illinois past Baylor if they win today – but considering Baylor beat the Illini earlier in the season and had a better profile coming in, I just can’t do it. The same thing goes for Alabama and Michigan. Michigan also struggled down the stretch – and Alabama won the SEC tournament against a really difficult conference. But once again, there was too much of a gap coming into Championship Week.

I am wildly curious what the committee does. There were so many places where teams only had 1-2 victories against other teams in the field, and with teams not playing each other, it was really hard to rank. I also made some decisions at the end that were more who I wanted to see make it (really nervous about my Wichita State pick as well as Mississippi). That probably means I will be wrong on some other team (sorry Utah State and Syracuse – you are the next likely candidates…..)

30 minutes until the Selection Show – going to enjoy the rest of the Big 10 championship and get ready for the madness to begin!!!! Feel free to check out the bracketology link to see the full bracket.

I am so disappointed. I figured I would listen to the Pac 12 game while I rank teams. Unfortunately for me, Bill Walton is one of the announcers.

At one point, when Oregon State got a defensive rebound on a missed shot, Walton screamed that the Beavers need to get a defensive rebound – they will never win the game without getting a defensive rebound. Of course, Oregon State was up 5 and had just got the defensive rebound…..All his partner, Dave Pasch, could say, was “Bill – they did just that – they got the rebound.”

Pasch mentioned that Oregon State needs to win the game to make it into the tournament – which Walton starts screaming “That is an incorrect statement! And then starts screaming “D! D! D! D! D! Defense!” – Oregon State’s NET ranking is 101. They are not even on the board of teams being considered. But somehow this idiot thinks that Oregon State is in. And how shouting D like a lunatic helps his argument is beyond me.

Every 3 or 4 minutes Walton mentions the “Conference of Champions”. Maybe mentioning a conference nickname once or twice – but he sounds ridiculous by using the term as often as he does.

He continues to berate his partner – instead of letting his partner do his job and call the game. Every time Pasch mentions that Oregon State continues to try to pull the upset to punch their ticket to the dance, Walton says “I am going to punch you if you keep saying that”

Walton just said that Oregon State was better and more deserving of the tournament than UCLA when ESPN displayed the possible Pac 12 teams in the tournament and complained why all these Big 10 teams keep getting ranked when they beat each other. Are we really comparing Ohio State, Iowa and Purdue to Oregon State and UCLA?

I felt bad for Dave Pasch – he keeps trying to get the broadcast back on track and Walton keeps saying bizarre things.

Well – regardless, congratulations to the Oregon State Beavers, who just upset Colorado by 2 points to earn the Pac 12 automatic bid.

I had thought that this isn’t going to be that hard after looking at the conferences, there were probably some mid-major schools that would get left out as always, but the teams at least made sense.

But Georgetown is destroying Creighton (lead 73-46) with less than a minute to play, and so in a very short period, there will be one last spot in the tournament (since Creighton will now need an at-large bid).

And there are still more threats. Oregon State plays Colorado tonight for the Pac 12 championship, and Cincinnati will be playing Houston tomorrow for the American championship.

My imaginary job as a bracketologist, just got tougher. And I still really haven’t analyzed anything – really enjoyed watching the Big 10 games earlier today and the games in the American conference also had close finishes – really feel bad for Wichita State and Memphis – Wichita State’s last second shot literally rattled around the basket before going out, while Memphis fell a couple points short of Houston for a second time in just a couple weeks. They both might sadly be on the outside-looking in side of the bubble (although I hope I am wrong). We’ll see in under 24 hours if they are in my picks. Of course, that is just the ramblings of the Lunatic – it only matters if the Selection Committee calls their name Sunday afternoon at 6 pm EST.

My wife is probably glad I am set up in my office. Analysis on my computer with the ACC championship on my iPad. That probably bodes poorly for my bracketology – might just keep watching the games….. Sadly, it is also Daylight Saving Time tonight, so I lose another hour of sleep. Preparing for a long (or short) night – at least I will have the ACC and Pac 12 championships to enjoy.

Ohio State loves the drama – they appear to like to get up double digits and then see if they can survive. Down 8 with 2 minutes to play, Michigan got the ball down to the Hunter Dickinson in the post, who missed his first layup but put it back in to cut the lead to 6. Then, Dickinson stole the ball in the backcourt and drove to the basket to cut the lead to 4.

Ohio State took the clock down to a minute but EJ Liddell turned it over on the driver. Michigan sets up their offense, and some great ball movement got Chaundee Brown open for a three-pointer to cut the lead to 1. Then, Michigan’s Mike Smith played great defense on CJ Walker who turned the ball over when he barely stepped out on the line under the basket.

So with 29 seconds left, Mike Smith dribbles the ball up the court, and stops around half-court. One of the announcers goes and says, “Juwaan is going for the win here”, as they continue to drain the clock. It was pretty clear this possession was going to end the game.

And after using great offense and ball movement to cut the double digit lead, the play that gets called out ends up being Mike Smith draining the clock to 5 seconds, little movement by anyone on the Wolverines, and everyone watching as Smith settles for a contested fade-away three-pointer that misses.

You have a full 30 seconds, you don’t run your offense, you decide to do stupid isolation NBA basketball, and jack up a three with a player in your face. Juwaan Howard deserves a lot of credit for leading the Wolverines to a great season so far – but he didn’t play for the win today. Not to take anything away from the Buckeyes who played hard for the victory, but Michigan’s end-game strategy certainly made it easier for them to hold on for the win.

So, I was getting in the car to pick up lunch from Chick-Fil-A, and made the realization that I could listen to basketball in my car by streaming to my phone (since the audio would bluetooth to my car’s radio). Of course, at noon, the only game on was the America East championship. Most rational people would probably say to themselves, “I know nothing about Hartford or UMass-Lowell, lets just listen to some music on the radio or my favorite songs on my phone.” That is not the Lunatic.

I said to myself, “Awesome – I can listen to the America East championship!!!!!” And then when Chick-Fil-A forgot the bag with all the fries for the meals, I thought “Cool – now I get to watch more of the game!” And then I realized, “I might have a problem of being obsessed about March Madness!”

So, when I got home, I updated the Schedule Excel document to have all the games through yesterday, and updated the viewing guide with times of all the weekend’s games. If I keep updating one of them, it will likely be the one on the bracketology page – after all, that was the point of that page. I still haven’t done much on it – so caught up with watching basketball that I keep forgetting that at some point this weekend, I need to come up with a bracket.

I also sadly just realized that I created the Bracketology blog and never sent out the link. Silly Lunatic. If you look at the links on the side, the 2021 Bracketology blog is now available.

Oh – and congratulations to Hartford for winning the America East conference championship – thanks to the Hawks for kicking off Championship Weekend!!!!

Still is everything and anything. With only 2 days left in the season, all the conference tournaments are either playing their semi-finals or championships on Saturday.

If you want a tournament to watch where you don’t have to turn your channel, the obvious choice is the Big 10 tournament. Your two semi-final games are #4 Michigan vs #9 Ohio State and #3 Illinois vs #5 Iowa. Three of the top 5 teams are playing tomorrow – and they are all in Indianapolis.

There is a surprising amount of bubble intrigue at the moment, and not for the reason you would think. At this point, almost everyone on the bubble has lost in their conference tournament. But with Georgetown playing for the Big East championship and Oregon State playing for the Pac 12 championship, there are certainly lots of teams who will be rooting for Creighton and the winner of tonight’s USC / Colorado semi-final. Those would definitely be bid thieves. Cincinnati has a chance to be a bid thief as well in the American – and quite honestly, with Wichita State and Memphis extremely close to the cut-line (if not already there), they likely would be considered a bid thief as well.

Stolen from the Bracketology page is our tracking the conference tournament champions table. This has either the team who has clinched the conference’s bid – or the remaining games for that conference. In 4 of the conferences playing on the west coast where you see three teams, those are the late semi-finals tonight – the single team is waiting to find out who they will be playing Saturday for the championship.

First, you get three teams that had to drop out of their conference championship games (that I heard about) due to a positive test for Covid-19. I posted about Virginia, and I imagine most of you saw the news come out about Kansas. But the third one, while going more unnoticed, is really sad. That is because the third was MEAC regular season champion North Carolina A&T. Virginia and Kansas were going to be in the tournament no matter what – but the Aggies only path to the dance was to win the MEAC conference tournament. It is sad to watch any team possibly have their season end this way – but it is slightly more painful to watch a mid-major regular season champion go down like this.

Then, my Boilermakers fell down to #9 Ohio State by 18 points, missed 10 free throws in regulation, and somehow, still came back to tie the Buckeyes in regulation. Just to get out-played in the overtime period and have their Big 10 tournament come to an end. They probably weren’t going to beat Michigan – but would have loved to get a chance to play another game at the court where most of the tournament is going to be played against one of the teams who many believe can win it all. That would have been great experience for my Boilermaker team filled with young players (they have had 4 different freshmen win Big 10 Freshman of the Week honors).

No shame to losing to the #9 team in the country in overtime. And the Boilers will hear their name called on Sunday. But still rough to watch them lose.

The ACC on Thursday stole the headlines before any game had been played as the news was released that someone on Duke tested positive for Covid-19, and the Blue Devils would have to withdraw from the tournament.

Sadly, the news on Friday morning was worse. This time, the team with a positive test was regular-season champion and 16th ranked in the AP Poll Virginia has to withdraw from the tournament.

The message was slightly different – on Thursday, the Duke AD said that the Blue Devils season was over. Today, they simply said that Virginia could not play today.

So, we don’t know if it is just one player or many, and how it will impact the rest of the team getting 7 negative tests before travelling to Indy. But at this point, we are no longer talking about a team that likely wasn’t going to make the tournament without a couple more wins. We are looking at team that very likely is going to be a top 4-6 seed.

Will enough players from Virginia be able to make the trip (the rules apparently say they only need 5)? Will the Cavaliers have their seed dropped if they can’t field a full team by the Selection Committee? Are they going to actually have to use the NCAA Contingency Plans? All of a sudden, the first team out is an even more critical position as the first possible replacement team – at first it sounded like just over-planning, but now it looks like a potentially real scenario.