Last night, while there were important games in major conferences, the two most important games were playing in Las Vegas and Nashville. First, in the Mountain West Championship out in Vegas, #5 ranked San Diego State jumped out to a 16 point lead against Utah State. But Utah State kept chipping at the lead, tied the game late, and then watched as their leader, Sam Merrill drilled a well-contested three pointer with 2.5 seconds left to win the game 59-56. Then, in Nashville, top seeded Belmont won in the last seconds as Adam Kunkel made a great pass to Tyler Scanlon on a beautiful back-door cut to get the winning layup. Those victories mean Utah State and Belmont are the first two teams to earn their invitation to the 2020 NCAA Tournament! Also, when we are noticing buzzer beaters in the Mountain West and Ohio Valley Conferences, it can only mean one thing – IT MUST BE MARCH!!!!

And if it is March, it can only mean one more thing – it must be time to STOMP THE LUNATIC!!!!!!!

That’s right – the Lunatic is back for another month of sleep deprivation, looking through stat sheets in a foolish attempt to show he can predict college basketball games. And I am sure that this will end in the way it always ends, in a horrible beating. We all know better – he is no real threat – his kids will likely have better picks by picking schools that their grandparents attended. But while we all know this will end in a thorough stomping, we will all get to enjoy the entertaining ranting and raving of our favorite sleep-deprived lunatic!!!

So, without any more delays, the 2020 Stomp the Lunatic contest is officially announced!!!!!!!

The most important part is ready – the website is up and ready to go for another year of bracket picks.   As always, the website will have all of the pages that make the Stomp the Lunatic great – whether it be NCAA results so the statisticians can build predictive models, poorly done bracketology that will show the Lunatic is simply a crazy basketball fan, cheat sheets once the brackets are released for those of us who don’t want to do hours of analysis, and of course, everyone’s favorite rants about the games.  

Once the committee has announced the 68 teams next Sunday, I will update the site to have the entry form. If you don’t remember the rules (or this email has been forwarded to you), there is a link on the site. As we did last year, we will not pick the 4 play-in games. So, all entries are needed by Thursday, March 19th by the time the first games start (typically Noon).

If you have any questions, feel free to send me an e-mail (thomas@tehodgson.com), just realize I only check at night when I get home from work!!!!!!!!!!!!! Also, if you don’t want to get further e-mails about this, please let me know, and I will do my best to remove you from the distribution list – although remember as mentioned up above, organized e-mail lists are not one of my strengths.

So, do your research, get ready for the Madness to begin, and good luck to everyone in STOMPING THE LUNATIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!