Stomp The Lunatic

It is a tradition here at the Stomp the Lunatic blog, including a sad year when I was so sleep-deprived that I accidentally copied an old version. But since it is already 9:15 pm on the Wednesday before the Sweet 16, it is time.

Here are the top 10 reasons to do the Second Chance Pool!!!!!

• 10) Your chances for a perfect bracket disappeared after the first game when Creighton upset Louisville, and so you want a second chance to achieve perfection.
• 9) After laughing at the media pundits who picked a Final 4 of all #1 seeds, you are starting to realize that might be a really good choice in a year where the chalk keeps winning
• 8) You were so excited about the SEC semi-finals that you decided the Final 4 should be a repeat of it – just with the teams switched up as Florida would have to first play Auburn and Tennessee would have to play Alabama.
• 7) After all the favorites winning in the first two rounds, you know that March will strike back this weekend with massive chaos leading to #6 Ole Miss, #10 Arkansas, #6 BYU and #4 Purdue upsetting the favorites to head to San Antonio.
• 6) Because no one does a Pop Culture Jeopardy Pool – and then you realize why after binging the entire series of 40 shows at once.
• 5) Realizing that 18 of the 20 last national champions have had blue in their logos, you are sure that Michigan, Florida, Duke and Kentucky are guaranteed to play each other for the title.
• 4) You are losing to your daughter who has picked teams based on schools her family members went to and what mascot she likes the best, and so you want a chance to redeem yourself.
• 3) Knowing that Ole Miss, Tennessee, Duke and Maryland are the only 4 schools with both their men’s and women’s teams making the Sweet 16, it seems like fate that you could pick those 4 schools to the Final Four.
• 2) It is another – and more importantly, it is the last chance in 2025 to Stomp the Lunatic!!!
• 1) It is absolutely FREE!!!!

That’s right – your entry fee already covers your Second Chance Pool entry – and so there is absolutely no good reason not to do the Second Chance Pool. You even have all Thursday afternoon to do them since the games don’t start until 7:09 pm EST. And with the Lunatic going with his heart of picking three Big 10 schools to join Duke in the Final Four, it should be incredibly easy this year to thoroughly stomp him.

Everyone deserves a second chance – but you still have to take that second chance to win! Good luck to everyone in Stomping the Lunatic (a second time)!

And uses it in order to tell a different story. I struggled with how I should make my picks. Should I go with my heart? Should I go with my statistical model? Should I use the KenPom philosophy (basically take a more sophisticated statistical model)? Should I go with the team closest to where the game was being played? There were so many silly ways to pick the teams, and I wanted to avoid going simply with the teams I think will win, where I would end up with 4 #1 seeds advancing to the Final Four.

Then, I saw a story about how much the transfer window is changing the game. It had a graphic that showed the school that each of the 5 starters started at for each team in the Sweet 16. Here are the numbers:

• Auburn – 1
• Michigan – 0 (although ironically, they had 2 from Texas Tech and 1 from their opponent Auburn)
• Ole Miss – 1
• Michigan State -4
• Florida – 1
• Maryland – 2
• Texas Tech – 1 (yes, that is right that Michigan has more of its freshman than they did)
• Arkansas – 1 (not surprising that Calapari had to reload through the transfer portal)
• Duke – 4
• Arizona – 0 (is it a shock that one of the schools in the FBI recruiting scandal has moved to living off the transfer window)
• BYU – 3 (impressive since they lost their coach to Kentucky)
• Alabama – 1
• Houston – 3
• Purdue – 5 (go Boilers!!!)
• Kentucky – 0 (not surprising since they lost their coach to Arkansas)
• Tennessee – 2

Of all 16 teams, the only one that had all 5 of their starters be players they recruited from high school was my Boilermakers. I have always known that Matt Painter was an incredible coach, and always did a great job of developing players, but it surprised me that of all these teams, only Painter has recruited (and maybe more importantly, kept) his star players.

It makes me sad that only 5 of the 16 schools recruited at least 3 of their starters. But it proved the original author’s point that teams are now building through the transfer portal.

Since that makes me sad, and it would make me so very happy if this outcome happened, I decided that I would pick my teams for my second chance bracket based on who has developed its talent from the start. If there was a tie, I would pick who I want to see win.

In the South, Auburn sneaks past Michigan, and Michigan State beats Ole Miss, with the Spartans advancing to the Final Four.

In the West, Maryland upsets Florida (with only 2 starters), Texas Tech takes out Arkansas (with a tie, I go back to who I want – which will not be the remaining 8-10 SEC team). And then Maryland advances (with the smallest number).

In the East, Duke takes out Arizona and BYU (who beat Alabama) to go to San Antonio.

And of course, in the Midwest, Purdue beats Houston (despite Houston having 3 starters) and Tennessee gets their revenge against Kentucky – who swept the Volunteers in the regular season (because it is hard to beat a well-coached team three times in a season). And then my Boilers advance.

In the Final 4, my Boilers will upset both Duke and Michigan State to win the NCAA Championship to end the 25 year drought for the Big 10 (although I guess Maryland won in 2002 when they were still part of the ACC).

Here is the picture of my picks.

I know that this is a crazy pick. But this would make me so happy, and as I say in my handicapping page, when in doubt, never bet against the team you want to see win. So Go Boilers!!!!!

Good luck to everyone in beating the Lunatic for a second time.

In honor of the NIT’s quarterfinals starting tonight, it seems appropriate to talk about the complete mess that has been the NIT.

So many forces are trying to destroy this famous tournament – it is hard to believe that in 1970, Marquette turned down a bid in the NCAA tournament to play in the NIT. Into the early-1950s, the NIT was actually considered a more prestigious tournament to play. Now, it is an after-thought that continues to get watered down.

It is bad enough that teams are allowed to turn down the NIT bid. The following teams turned down a bid to the NIT

• Florida State
• LSU
• Nevada
• Northwestern
• Pittsburgh
• Providence
• South Carolina
• UNLV

Teams that turned down the NIT and the Crown Tournament – I know Indiana, WV, and Ohio State were contractually obligated to turn down the NIT once turning down the Crown – not sure about the other schools.

• Indiana
• West Virginia
• Ohio State
• Rutgers
• Kansas State
• Penn State
• Wake Forest
• TCU

The NIT also lost the following teams to the Crown Tournament when spots opened thanks to teams dropping out

• Boise State
• Butler
• Georgetown
• Villanova

So, basically, we have gone from the NIT being the 32 best teams that did not make the NCAA Tournament from also losing 20 of the top remaining teams.

It is amazing that in its inaugural season, thanks to offering 500,000 in NIL to the top 4 teams. Thanks to what appears to be a better incentive to the players as well as the contractual arrangements for the Big East, Big 10 and Big 12 with FOX, the brand new tournament starting next Monday ended up with more power conference teams than the NIT.

Here is the full field of the Crown Tournament

• Big 12 – Arizona State, Cincinnati, Colorado, UCF, Utah
• Big 10 – Nebraska, USC
• Big East – Butler, DePaul, Georgetown, Villanova
• Mt West – Boise State,
• Atlantic 10 – George Washington
• WCC – Oregon State, Washington State
• American – Tulane

The Power Conference schools that accepted a bid to the NIT

• ACC – SMU, Stanford, Georgia Tech
• Big 12 – Oklahoma State

What is worse about this – in 2024, the NIT changed their selection rules to guarantee selections from the power conferences as well as ensuring they would host a game in the first round. It used to be that if you won your regular season conference championship, you were guaranteed a spot in the NIT if you lost in the conference tournament – but because the power conferences wanted more of the money, they got the rules changed. Of course, then teams started declining the bids. Basically, the power conferences wanted the money from the NIT, but the power conference teams didn’t want to waste their time to play in it.

This created a ridiculous chaotic tournament that led to more disaster. Because remember there is also the CBI and CIT. Well, there was a CIT – there was supposed to be a CIT tournament this year, but no scheduled games happened. So you have to assume that they could not get enough interest to play.

With so many teams dropping out, they started talking to their alternates – one of those was one of the regular season champions from the Sun Belt, South Alabama, who no longer had an automatic bid to guarantee spots to the conferences that all declined invitations to the NIT.

But they also had earlier invited UC Riverside – who had already committed to the CBI. When UC Riverside made the decision to cancel their CBI commitment and play in the NIT, it took the last spot that South Alabama thought they had and already had told their players they were accepted. So, the NIT had to come back and take away the invitation to South Alabama.

The Sun Belt said in a statement, “As the top remaining at-large team not selected to the original field, South Alabama was prematurely contacted by the NIT on Sunday as a potential replacement team to fill out the 32 team bracket. With all 32 teams accepting their NIT invitations, this opportunity did not materialize. We regret the emotional impact this chain of events had on South Alabama’s student-athletes and want to congratulate Sun Belt Coach of the Year Richie Riley and his team on a historic season, including a Sun Belt regular-season co-championship.”

That was nice of the Sun Belt to try to say, but it isn’t true. South Alabama wasn’t the top remaining team – they were the 21st. What’s worse is that they wanted to play in it, but because of the complaining from conferences whose teams constantly decline the bid, the rules were changed to take away their automatic bid. In 2023, it would not have been a question – South Alabama as the 1 seed in the Sun Belt tournament would have been guaranteed a spot.

What used to be a prestigious tournament is now a joke. With the Crown poaching schools from them, and them poaching schools from the CBI and CIT, and everyone making tournament invitations at the same time, Sunday night turned into a ridiculous mess where a team thought they were invited to play and then found out as they started to celebrate that their season was now officially over. And then one of the tournaments just gave up trying to put up an event.

What is worse is that this is supposed to be a multi-billion dollar business. If this article that I am reading is correct, men’s basketball teams starting this year will receive 24% of the media rights deal for March Madness – roughly $8.8 billion over 8 years. And that is just the NCAA Tournament. I am sure ESPN is paying media rights to host the NIT, and I know that FOX is spending some money to be able to show some basketball next week with the Crown Tournament.

I guess ESPN and FOX don’t care as long as they have games to televise. But it seems ridiculous that one business would make an agreement to have their organizations participate, and then have 16 of their organizations decline and not participate.

It shouldn’t be this hard. This is a business. It should be this simple.

• The contracts dictate who gets to choose first. It is fine if the Big 10 wants to go to the Crown and the ACC wants to go to the NIT, but there should be some type of order.
• Once the guaranteed teams get in, the tournaments get to pick in order who they want. I would give the NIT the first pick, then the Crown, then the CBI, then the CIT.
• Any regular-season conference champion is guaranteed a spot in one of the tournaments. It is ridiculous that South Alabama won their conference, wanted to play in the NIT and eventually did not get to play.
• There is no choice – the schools are contractually obligated to play if they are invited.
• If you decline, you will automatically not be allowed to play in the following 2 post-seasons (including the NCAA Tournament).

People say you can’t make the players play in a tournament if they don’t want to. And I fully 100% disagree. I was sympathetic when the players were only getting their scholarships – while I felt that not being $40K in debt was a pretty nice payment, I understand that the university was getting millions for their efforts.

But I have no more sympathy in the age of NIL. These athletes are being paid. While it is all speculated, it is believed that Mackenzie Mgbako, and Oumar Ballo both made $1 million in NIL deals for Indiana. Not only are they being paid to play basketball, they are being paid extremely well to play basketball. So, you can not tell me that they have the right after taking that money to decide playing in the NIT or Crown Tournament isn’t worth their time.

Everyone keeps reminding me that college basketball is a business. I don’t know of any business that makes contracts and then allows their employees to not meet those contracts. They might be disappointed to not playing in the NCAA Tournament, but if someone is paying the university to play a few more games through an already negotiated contract, they are obligated to play.

Remember the Crown tournament is offering $300K to the winner – if that is split evenly across the team, it probably means each player is going to get $25K for playing 4 basketball games. It is such a bad look for the schools that turned down a bid to the Crown tournament to say that money isn’t worth playing.

As I rant, with about 15 seconds in a tie game, Chattanooga’s Honor Huff passed the ball to Trey Bonham in the corner who drills a three-pointer to lead Chattanooga (26-9) to a 67-65 victory over Bradley (28-8) as the Braves’ desperation full court shot off a missed free throw hits the backboard and drops to the ground. North Texas (26-8) are playing Oklahoma State (17-17) in the late game (the only power conference team left). Tomorrow, Kent State (24-11) plays Loyola-Chicago (24-11) and UC-Irvine (30-6) plays UAB (24-12).

Anyways, nothing is likely to happen. At some point, with 350+ teams in Division I, you have to figure that the 4 tournaments can find 64 teams to participate. Thus, no one will care. I just think it is a shame. I loved the NIT – it was an opportunity to watch some really good basketball teams play. The 8 teams that are playing in the quarterfinals won 70.8% of their games this year – that is pretty good. But everything leading up to this has been kind of a mess this year – and that is disappointing. Since that is more likely to continue than be fixed.

It is really tough to mess up Selection Sunday. The NCAA selection process makes sure they can not. The process is a series of votes from the committee where they first pick their top remaining teams to see who they will rank next, and then each person votes on those teams. It avoids a situation like what the Lunatic would want where he loves the mid-major teams and so he would rank them all better if he could. But in the committee room, all 12 of them have to do that – one person’s vote can certainly give a team a chance but the others have to agree.

If anything, I have to thank the committee. They gave my Boilermakers a 4 seed (ranked 14th on their curve) and then sent them to the Indianapolis regional. I could not have asked for more. If the Lunatic thinks about this, he realizes how wrong this is. They ranked us ahead of Maryland and Michigan thanks to our non-conference schedule, which was generous based on our February swoon.

I love the fact that they learned a little from last year. Watching the Big East and ACC get so few teams seemed unfair – and it looked like it could have happened again. But the committee basically said that they were going to take two 13-7 teams from the power conferences before looking at the 10-10 teams from the Big 10 and Big 12.

My only real criticism is that they took 14 SEC schools. They could have left out Oklahoma and Texas (the two teams that went 6-12 in the SEC) and included West Virginia and Indiana (the 10-10 teams from the Big 10 and Big 12). Or maybe even they consider SMU or Villanova.

You could try to make the argument that with 7 teams in the Sweet 16, the SEC deserved 14 teams. But that simply isn’t true. 5 of those teams were top 3 seeds – they were supposed to advance. Just because a league has 5 of the best 12 schools in the country doesn’t mean that we have to invite the entire conference to play in the tournament.

The only thing that actually made this possible was the fact that the bid stealers never showed up. Teams like VCU, Memphis, Drake and UC San Diego all won their conference tournaments. And the power conferences were won by ranked teams. This let the committee go deeper than they normally do.

But to be fair, the SEC got 14 teams in based on the statistics that the committee was using. It raises a question of whether those statistics are the correct ones to use, but it was still accurate based on those numbers.

The NET looks at performance and margin of victory – which is a change from the old RPI. But it is important to realize that the change played a role in 14 teams making it. The RPI for Oklahoma was 61st, Arkansas was 65th, and Texas was 88th. That is correct, if we were still using RPI, Texas would have been the team with the worst ever RPI to get an at-large bid. Or more realistically, the committee would have picked someone else.

I do like to look at the teams that we didn’t match on my bracketology. Remember that is not necessarily my ranking – but where I thought the committee would rank them. But that method can’t help but have some of my bias in it.

Teams I missed by more than 1 seed.

• Louisville (Lunatic – 4, NCAA – 8) – everyone called this out and everyone missed this. With Creighton beating them, you could believe that they were not worthy of a better bid. But would the Cardinals have beat a team like UC-San Diego if they got placed as a 5 seed like they probably should have been.
• Oklahoma (Lunatic – 11, NCAA – 9) – and the Sooners lost to Connecticut (also a little unfair since maybe the Huskies should have been better than an 8 seed).

Teams that I thought were 1 seed better than the committee (went 8-5, committee expectations said they should have been 4-6)

• Maryland – they dominated Grand Canyon and then escaped against Colorado State.
• Clemson – whoops, I totally got that one wrong.
• BYU – OK – I redeemed myself. The Cougars look really good getting to the Sweet 16.
• Creighton – They went and beat Louisville, the team I thought was also mis-seeded.
• New Mexico – They had a big upset over Marquette and played well against Michigan State.
• North Carolina – About where they should have been. They won the play-in game only to lose to Ole Miss. I consider this says I was right, they were probably better than being in the play-in game, but not better enough to be considered a favorite in a 1st round game.
• Colorado State – Was 1 shot away from being the only 12 seed this year to make the Sweet 16.

Teams the Committee Seeded Better (They went 9-6, Lunatic seed expectations would be 10-7):

• Wisconsin – They probably wish that they had been a 4 seed and didn’t draw BYU.
• Purdue – They made the Sweet 16 against High Point and McNeese
• Arizona – They made the Sweet 16 against Akron and Oregon
• Memphis – They got upset by Colorado State
• Oregon – They did what was expected – beat Liberty but lost to Arizona
• Ole Miss – They made the Sweet 16 impressively against Iowa State.
• Kansas – They got upset by Arkansas.
• Mississippi State – They got upset by Baylor
• Drake – They had a nice victory over Missouri before losing to Texas Tech.

So, not sure what to make about that. Basically the teams that I thought were better than what they seeded then won more than what their seed expectation is. And the teams that I thought should have been seeded worse still did a little better than my seed expectations would have them. Although that is a mixed result.

While Purdue, Arizona and Ole Miss made the Sweet 16 when they were not expected, Memphis, Kansas and Wisconsin lost before they were supposed to.

I guess that is a long and complicated way of coming to the conclusion that the Selection Committee got it right. The teams they put in the top 8 basically won their games. We could argue if they got the last 4-5 teams right, but truthfully, those teams wouldn’t have likely won either. So, I have to say, the selection committee did pretty good.

This might have been the best bracketology that I have ever done. Of the media members that I compare against, I finished 2nd – only behind FOX Sports’ Mike Decourcy. I also finished in the top 25% of the bracket matrix, which for me is crazy good – normally I would be in the last third.

I got 1 more team that ESPN’s Joe Lunardi and 2 more than CBS’s Jerry Palm – and I even seeded more teams right than both of them (which I think is the first time that has happened).

So – congratulations to the Lunatic Selection Committee for being close to the real Selection Committee.

So, I have so much to blog about. So much to rant about. We will see how far I get before I remember that I have to handicap 8 Sweet 16 games and make my second chance picks.

But before I get into the things I left out last week while I was ranting about North Carolina and West Virginia, let me start with something that annoyed me today. The main article on ESPN for college basketball was titled “Reranking the remaining 16 teams”

I opened the article almost knowing that I was going to be angry from it. I have seen a few of these through the day, and knowing how the ESPN article pushed my buttons, I decided not to let any of the others draw me in.

I get that the media has four days to fill before the games start up on Thursday. But this is such a lazy article. Either you give a ridiculous ranking thaakes you sound stupid and that you don’t know anything about basketball, or you basically give the rankings the way they already are, with a couple of changes that were obviously your original disagreements with the selection committee. Just say that you disagree with committee.

Charlie was telling me on another one of these that the author put Purdue as 15th, and Arkansas as 14th. That is my point – so because Arkansas beats St. John’s, they move from 37th on the selection curve pass the team that was 14th (OK – I don’t know what the Selection Committee was thinking when the 6th place team in the Big 10 was 14th – but that still doesn’t mean that the team going 8-10 and tied for 10th in the SEC passes them.

So, lets see what the geniuses from ESPN came up.

• 1) Duke (2) – All the polls had the Blue Devils as 1st – only the Selection Committee had Auburn there. So, this is simply stating what everyone already believes.
• 2) Florida (4) – Lets remember that the polls had the Gators as the top SEC team.
• 3) Houston (3) – The Cougars stay where they are
• 4) Auburn (1) – The Tigers fall down to where they sit in the polls. As far as the bracket would be concerned, it is irrelevant – all of the #1 seeds are still #1 seeds
• 5) Tennessee (5) – No movement
• 6) Alabama (6) – No movement
• 7) Michigan State (7) – No movement – All the 2 seeds are still 2 seeds
• 8) Kentucky (11) – One of the 3 seeds had to move up – and they have to make some changes. Of course, is it a surprise that ESPN would jump the 3 seed from the conference they have more of a TV contract with.
• 9) Texas Tech (9) – 3 seed is still a 3 seed. Shocker.
• 10) BYU (21) – The Cougars did look great against Wisconsin
• 11) Michigan (17) – A chance to remind everyone that the 2nd place team in the Big 10 that then went and won the conference tournament was probably not seeded correctly.
• 12) Maryland (15) – This could have been a chance to make a switch between them and Arizona – since beating Colorado State by 1 is certainly not as impressive as beating Oregon by 4. But they choose to keep the order.
• 13) Arizona (16) – No real movement – the only 4 seed who stayed at a 4 seed, so they could move Michigan and BYU up.
• 14) Ole Miss (24) – The Rebels 13 point victory over Iowa State was impressive, so I understand the desire to move them up. So, they go from the 2nd worse team to make it to the 3rd worse team to make it.
• 15) Purdue (14) – This has to be because the Selection Committee lost their mind when they ranked my Boilers 14th. I don’t know how you ding them for winning by double digits against High Point and McNeese State in games that were never close. Sure – they had probably the easiest path to the Sweet 16, but it is not their fault Clemson lost.
• 16) Arkansas (37) – at least ESPN didn’t go crazy and put the 8-10 SEC team past all the other teams that made it. They are the only double digit seed left.

So, to summarize, all the 1 seeds are still 1 seeds, all the 2 seeds (and a 3 seed to replace St. John’s) are still 2 seeds, the remaining 3 seed, the two Big 10 seeds that should have been ranked ahead of Purdue to begin with move to 3 seeds – and then one of the Big 12 teams since they are having a great tournament, and then everyone else is a 4 seed.

As I said, a pointless article. You either sound like an idiot by saying Arkansas should move from a 10 seed to a 3 seed just to be provocative. Or you basically leave the order alone and state the committee did it right the first time – which is basically what ESPN did.

At the end of the day, there is nothing that the top 7 teams did last weekend to make us believe that they are not still the top 7 teams. We could make some arguments on some of the other teams (I really was impressed with BYU and Kentucky – guess so was ESPN). 13 of the top 17 teams won – not sure why that should make me believe that their order has changed.

Well, the upsets never really materialized. #6 Ole Miss did run away from #3 Iowa State, which turned into the only upset of the day. That is because #2 Michigan State quickly erased the 2 point half-time lead and eliminated the final non-power conference school from the tournament, beating New Mexico.

The Oregon / Arizona game was wild. Arizona quickly erased a 15 point Duck lead in the first half to take a 4 point halftime lead. They extended their lead to double digits in the second half. Then, the Ducks came back to cut the lead to 2 with about 4 minutes to play, just to have Caleb Love drill two three-pointers.

The next run was owned by Oregon, as they went on an 8-3 run finalized by Nate Bittle hitting a shot in the lane with about 49 seconds. Then, Arizona got the ball into Jaden Bradley who got immediately trapped in the corner. He tried to throw the ball over the trap and the ball got blocked right back into him and out of bounds for a turnover. But the Ducks could not capitalize on it – first they did a ridiculous pass all the way to the other side of the court that almost got stolen by Love. Then, TJ Bamba missed a drive to the basket.

Arizona’s Jaden Bradley hit 1 of 2 free throws to extend the lead, but Oregon’s Jackson Shelsted drove to the basket to cut the lead to 1 with about 10 seconds left. This is when something happened that I hate.

Arizona couldn’t get the ball in so they called their last time out. When they returned, they still had trouble getting it in, finally getting it to Anthony Dell’Orso. I had to watch it again (and time it). The time on my stopwatch was 5.5 seconds. It should have been a 5 second violation and a turnover giving Oregon the ball. Instead, the 89% free throw shooter calmly hit both free throws. Arizona would ice the game from the free throw line and send the Ducks home, leaving us with only the Ole Miss upset tonight.

The chalk has been amazing this tournament. The only non-protected (top 4) seeds that made the Sweet 16 are #5 Michigan and #6 Ole Miss in the South, #6 BYU in the East, and #10 Arkansas in the West.

As for our leaders, our Standard Pool leader is Ashley Peterson, who got 14 of the 16 Sweet 16 games correct to finish at 560 points. Debbe Evans and Scott Grimes are just 30 points behind in 2nd place at 530 points. Joseph Laucius, Daniel Kaufmann, James Franklin and Jerry Caldwell are only 40 points behind Ashley in a tie for 4th.

In the Upset Pool, Ashley also leads with 233 points. Scott Grimes is in 2nd with 209 points, Jerry Caldwell is 3rd with 201 points, Stacie Gilmore is 4th with 200 points, and Debbe Evans is 5th with 199 points.

The Lunatic spent some time this afternoon lurking in the top 10 this afternoon, but fell to 18th after the Arizona victory over his upset pick of Oregon. Still, the Lunatic is staying in striking distance.

To be honest, I imagine that a lot of you are still in striking distance with 12 of the 16 protected seeds advancing to the Sweet 16. Unless you went really crazy with your champion, you still probably have the chance to pick the final NCAA champion which is worth a lot of points.

But if you are not, don’t despair. That’s because there is always a second chance. The second chance bracket is ready to go – simply pick the final 15 games by logging in and entering a pick by the time Thursday’s games start around 7 pm.

Good luck to everyone in Stomping the Lunatic!!!

Have to give some props to the local Richmond Spiders women’s basketball team. Richmond finished the season 27-6 and got an 8 seed in the women’s NCAA tournament. And they started the tournament in style.

On Friday, Richmond played the ACC’s Georgia Tech, jumped out to a 19-7 lead in the first quarter, and never looked back beating the Yellow Jackets 74-49 for Richmond’s first ever women’s NCAA Tournament victory.

Their second-round game has just tipped off against #1 seed UCLA, whose only 2 losses were to cross-town rivals USC. It certainly will be a difficult feat to beat the #1 team in the country at historic Pauley Pavilion. But if the men’s tournament isn’t going to give us an upset, maybe the women’s tournament can let our Spiders rock the field by taking out the Bruins. GO SPIDERS!!!!

It has been a boring day so far from those who are rooting for upsets. Kentucky beat Illinois by 9 after leading by double digits for a large portion of the game. Alabama won by 14 points against St. Mary’s in a game that really never felt like it was in doubt.

I was trying not to jinx it by not talking about it. But as all these games were going, I noticed that Colorado State was up on Maryland by 7 points at halftime. Maryland did come back out hot to start the half and took the lead without 14 minutes, but the Rams were not done – they would regain the lead quickly.

With 5 minutes left, Colorado State had rebuilt the lead to 5, but the Terrapins would go on a 9-0 run over the next 2 1/2 minutes, and I thought to myself that might be it. But the Rams continued to fight. With a little less than a minute left, Jalen Lake hit a jumper to tie the game at 68.

Selton Miguel would miss a three-pointer for the Terrapins, but Julian Reese got the rebound and was fouled. Reese hit both free throws to give Maryland the lead. Colorado State got the ball down the court, but Maryland was playing great defense and the Rams looked out of control, so the coach called a time-out.

And what a fantastic call by the coach Niko Medved. Colorado State gets the ball in Nique Clifford who dribbles down the baseline and then throws a cross-court pass to a wide open Jalen Lake who calmly drills a three-pointer with 6 seconds. The Rams have retaken the lead 71-70.

Maryland quickly takes the ball up the court and calls time-out as they cross the half-court line with about 3 seconds left in the game. Sometimes, the best play to call is get the ball into the hands of your best player and let him be a star.

That is exactly what Terrapins coach Kevin Willard called up. Maryland set some picks in the lane to let freshman center Derik Queen get the ball at the top of the key, Queen drove the left side of the lane, and shot a floating shot that hit high off the backboard and softly into the basket as the buzzer was sounding to give Maryland a 72-71 victory.

Charlie then noticed to make it worse that Purdue transfer Ethan Morton was the man guarding him. Morton was a defensive specialist at Purdue so I was sad to see him leave, but I suspect he wasn’t going to get a lot of playing time with the current line-up. He actually played pretty good defense – he used his body to force Queen to outside the lane, continued to have good positioning as Queen drove towards the basket, and had a hand in Queen’s face when he shot the fade-away floater.

But at the end of the day, Queen is 6’10” and Ethan Morton is 6’7″. And those three inches were the difference between Morton’s extended hand getting a hand on the ball as it left Queen’s hands.

And in the cruelest way possible, the clock struck midnight on the last 12 seed left in the tournament. Since it didn’t help Colorado State, I will mention that #6 seed Ole Miss is up big against Iowa State 63-42, #10 New Mexico is leading #2 Michigan State by 2 at halftime, and #5 Oregon has jumped out to a 13-4 lead over Arizona for an early start. Maybe we can still see at least one upset before the night is done.

Well, this afternoon, in a search for exercise, I asked Charlie if he wanted to play some HORSE. After all, Duke was crushing Baylor, so I figured I wouldn’t miss anything.

When we were done with our games, he said, “So am I going to make it into blog for beating you badly.” And I said, only if we tell everything that happened. Apparently getting into the blog is more important, so he agreed.

Anyways, I started off strong, getting Charlie all the way to H-O-R-S. But Charlie fought back, and got four straight letters on me to tie the game. Finally, I hit a shot that he couldn’t, and I won the first game of HORSE. Normally, this is where things fall apart for me.

But, I managed to keep things going. In another close game where we were both hitting some pretty deep three-pointers and both were at S, Charlie says lets try something close – lets try a reverse layup. So, he starts from the right side of the basket, jumps under the basket, and the rim gets in the way for a miss. I told him he did it on the wrong side, he should have started from the left so that he could still go up with his right hand.

So, I said, lets try it. I start from the left (slowly since I am old), but my body somehow remembered how to jump to the right side and hit the layup. Charlie sadly missed both tries and I stole another victory of HORSE.

He said, “Oh no! That can’t be! And I said, do you want to play a game that you can beat me at – lets do 1v1.” He reluctantly agreed – he is a good kid and didn’t want to see me hurt myself. I even jumped out to an early lead – I hit a layup that he tipped that surprised him. He asked how did you hit that. I told him that when you are 5’7″, you learn creative ways of hitting fadeaway shots.

Towards the end, Charlie finally started to use his height to his advantage. And then, with it tied at 10, Charlie took the ball out to the top of the key and drained a pretty shot to win. While the score was 11-10, it was clear that Charlie could have won at any time, but he didn’t want to drive into me and hurt me.

So, we proved three things.

• I still can surprisingly shoot the ball well when no one is guarding me.
• I am old, out-of-shape, and lose my shot quickly when actually running around or having someone try to guard me.
• Charlie is clearly better than his dad at playing basketball.

And it was a better way to spend the afternoon than watching Duke win by 23 points.