This Saturday in Durham, North Carolina, 9,314 of the luckiest people entered Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium to get to witness the final regular season game for the winningest coach in NCAA Men’s Division I history. Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski was looking to end his 42 years, 1,196 victories and 5 national championships with one more home victory against arch-rival North Carolina. And there were stretches where it looked like a day of celebration would end perfectly, such as when the Blue Devils scored 14 straight points to come back and take a 9 point lead in the first half. They kept holding onto that lead until it was 61-56 with 10 ½ minutes left in the game. But the Tar Heels would not quit. North Carolina would outscore the Blue Devils by 18 points in that final 10 ½ minutes, and ruined Coach K’s final regular season ending. An amazing book of history now only has the couple of pages reserved for Coach K’s final ACC Championship and NCAA Championship wait to be written.
And after that amazing game, ESPN didn’t change over to another ACC, Big 10, Big 12 or SEC game that was waiting to start. It wasn’t that none of those major conferences were playing, but they had reserved the spot after that heavyweight fight for the Ohio Valley, where Murray State played Morehead State. Murray State managed to win their 30th game of the season, holding off the Eagles for a 71-67 victory. And while many might have been wondering why ESPN would be highlighting a game from the Ohio Valley Conference, the Murray State Racers were celebrating because they were the first team to earn their place in the 2022 NCAA Men’s Championship!!!! Which can mean only 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. But we all know how this craziness ends – with a thorough stomping!!!! So, without any more delays, the 2022 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.
This year should be a fun year. Just a couple of weekends ago, a record 7 of the Top 10 teams all lost on the same day for the first time in history. It should be a wide-open field where there are a large number of teams with the talent to win it all.
On Monday, March 14th, I am excited to be joining two long-time supporters of the Stomp the Lunatic contest, Kevin Flippen and Paul Gilman, who run a podcast about sports. The podcast is called Bumper Night, a spin off to their wildly popular Stories from the Center of the Universe podcast on YouTube. So, join us at 8 pm EST as we will talk about the bracket and who we think will win it all. Thanks so much to Kevin and Paul for letting me join them and rant about my favorite sport for an evening.
Once the committee has announced the 68 teams next Sunday (March 13th), 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.
If you have any questions, feel free to send me an e-mail at 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!!!!!!!!!!!!!