Stomp The Lunatic

It might be two 16 seeds but it has certainly been entertaining. Grambling State came back from 14 down to send the game to overtime. They stayed super hot in overtime Jourdan Smith and Antwan Burnett both scored 18 points to lead the Tigers to an 88-81 victory.

Just one more play-in left between Colorado and Boise State and then it will be a short 13 hours until the true madness starts.

The first is the biggest news on the injury front. Kansas’ leading scorer Kevin McCullar Jr will miss the rest of the NCAA Season Tournament with a knee injury that has plagued him through February and March. It looks like they will at least get big man Hunter Dickinson back from his dislocated shoulder injury, but losing your leading scorer is not news that Jayhawks’ fans wanted to hear. My apologies to the loyal Jayhawks’ fans out there for bringing bad news (although I am just the messenger – and they probably already heard it when the news broke yesterday).

So the Lunatic will end with a more fun story. It started bad and has led to one last good moment. On Monday, March 11th, Dan Monson, who had coached for 17 years at Long Beach State, was fired after a 5 game losing streak had them drop to 18-14 on the season. They mutually agreed to have Monson finish out the season at the Big West Tournament before he left campus for good.

All LBSU has done since is beat UC-Riverside, regular season champs UC-Irvine and regular season runner ups UC-Davis to win the Big West Tournament and its automatic bid. In a nice, maybe appropriate send-off, they will play Arizona – who is coached by Tommy Lloyd. Lloyd was a long time assistant at Gonzaga, who was hired by Monson when he was still the head coach of the Zags. It should be an emotional game!!!

OK – I really probably should get back to handicapping. So many games – so little time.

In all my madness to try to get my handicapping set up and obviously have a few posts about the games, I forgot to post the link to the podcast.

Thanks again to Kevin, Paul and Kenny for inviting me to be on their podcast – Virginia is for Sports. It was super fun!!!

If you want to hear all four of us break down the bracket, the link is here:

It took some effort this morning, but the Lunatic is happy to report that the Handicapping page has all 4 games (his two losses from yesterday thanks to Wagner and Colorado State) and his hopefully two big comeback victories today (Go Montana State and Colorado).

This means as I go through the craziness of handicapping the upcoming 32 games on Thursday and Friday, I can simply put my information on a form on my laptop and then update the page through a code (well and an FTP when I am at home).

The Lunatic is very thankful – just putting the 4 games into the blog from his phone took more effort than he wanted – and certainly going back and editing the results would have been a nightmare. I can go back to simply ranting about the games.

And I am sure all my readers are thankful that the blog will return into reactions to plays in the games, commentary about the tournament and of course the random craziness we have all come to expect from the Lunatic.

Enjoy tonight’s games – and don’t forget to enter the pool!!! We already have 123 entries and I know the majority of you all wait until the last minute to enter. It should be a fun tournament – don’t miss your chance to Stomp the Lunatic

Well – I have done horrible on the first two games, so lets keep this up while I work on the code that will track my imaginary losses.

6:40 pm – Montana St (-3.5) vs Grambling O/U: 134.5

Don‘t know much about either team but Montana St has a NET of 208 while Grambling is 279 – so the statistics say Montana St is the better team. If I figure they will control the game, have to figure they will also control the pace and the score will go over.

Picks – Montana St (30), Over (20)

9:10 pm – Colorado (-2.5) vs Boise State O/U: 140.5

So if I exclude San Diego State’s magical run last year (and Tuesday night’s debacle by Virginia), the Mountain West is 0-11 since 2019. Colorado had won their last 8 before losing in the Pac 12 final, and I think the Pac 12 is better than what the stats made them. I am going to go aggressive and pick the Buffalos and pick the over in a fast paced high scoring game.

Picks – Colorado (30), Over (30)

Hopefully, I will get my code done – I don’t think I have the patience to put 16 games into the blog (and while I know people love reading the blog, that might be too much for all of us).

After 19 misses, the Cavaliers finally got a runner in the lane to bounce off the rim and fall in to end the brutality.

The TV broadcast put up the stat – first points since 9:48 pm. That is right – there was the 15 minute halftime in between to add to the margin, and obviously all the normal time-outs and stoppages, but the Cavaliers went for 52 minutes without scoring a point.

Guess when I said I would lock UVa in my handicapping with the exception that sometimes they can go cold was prophetic. I did not realize anyone could go cold for 52 minutes.

I know the Cavaliers go cold from time to time, but they did not hit a field goal in the last 10 minutes of the first half. And somehow, with only scoring 14 points, they are only down 13.

I have to say this is brutal. I am not sure if anyone knows the record drought, but we are currently at 18 straight misses including a wide open shot from the elbow.

The Wagner Seahawks built a 17 point lead and looked like they were easily heading to the first round. Then, Howard came storming back to cut the lead to 1 with a Bryce Harris layup for the Bison. The Seahawks got fouled and Julian Brown pushed the lead to 3 points with just 14 seconds.

Howard came down the court, and Jordan Hairston missed a three-pointer. But Howard’s Marcus Dockery got the rebound and kicked it back out to Hairston, who missed a second three pointer, but Dockery came down with the ball again, desperately headed out to the three point line and fired a third desperation three pointer at the buzzer. But it missed as well and Wagner survives.

Can the NEC do it two years in a row? Last year, we all remember (some of us more than others) that Fairleigh Dickinson won in the play-in game and then two days later became the 2nd 16 seed to win against a 1 seed by beating Purdue. It seems like a tall task but I have learned not to count anything out in March. Welcome to the tournament – the Wagner Seahawks are the first to win in Dayton!

We definitely have representation in the NCAA Tournament for Virginia – but those are going to get plenty of press.

So, for the local fans, we have three other Virginia schools playing in the NIT – Unfortunately, two of them play each other so we will be down to 2 by the end of the night.

Tonight at 9 pm on ESPN2, the Richmond Spiders (23-9) will travel to Blacksburg to play Virginia Tech (18-14)

Then, Wednesday at 9 pm on ESPN2, the VCU Rams (22-13) get their chance as they travel to Philadelphia for a battle with Villanova.

Obviously, living in Richmond, I am more rooting for the two local Atlantic-10 schools (it is always more fun when the smaller schools win). But if the Hokies win tonight, I will happily cheer for them as well – lets see if one of them can bring a NIT Championship back to Virginia!!!

In thinking about my picks, I thought it might help to have a cheat sheet of the one-bid conference champions – these are the teams that most of us including the Lunatic know very little about, but we will likely learn more about on Thursday and Friday in the first round games.

Obviously, for full details, you can check out the cheat sheet on the research page. But for those of who want something simpler, here is the Lunatic’s upset rankings.

I classified the teams into 4 groups.

– Teams that have beaten an at large team (High) – I might have also added Drake, NC State, and Oregon into the list – my sleep deprivation is already impacting my old mind.

– Teams that have beaten a top 100 NET team (Medium) – some teams have simply not played a tournament team this year, but they might have beat some NIT eligible teams.

– Teams with close losses to top 100 NET (Low) – lets face it, some of these teams only play a couple teams in this group – so were the games close or not.

– Teams where all games against the top 100 resulted in double digit losses (Surprise)

A few more caveats before we get started

– I will also identify teams that won a share of their regular season title (RS) as well as the tournament bid – there is something to be said for having the best record in your conference and then back it up in the tournament.

– This is only going to investigate based on the bubble team’s schedule – it takes two to tango as they say and sometimes upsets are just as much about the streakiness (or injury situation) of the favorite as it is about the underdog.

– It only looks at the top games. I sadly don’t have time to evaluate the entire schedule. Maybe a team got blown out by a 1 seed, played no one else of relevance and then blew out the other 30 teams on their schedule. As unfair as it is, I am only looking at what they did against tournament caliber (or close) teams.

– 33 of the last 38 champions were 1, 2, or 3 seeds. Only 2 were 4 seeds and none were 5 seeds. I mention this for a reason. It is tons of fun to be able to claim that you picked 15 seed Princeton last year and be excited as they run to the Sweet 16. But in order to do that, it means you have to knock off one of the 12 teams most likely to win the tournament. This post is not saying which 15 seed will win – just the one that has done the best against tournament level teams. So choose a 14, 15 or 16 at your own risk.

12 seeds

– UAB (High) – beat Florida Atlantic by 3 and Drake by 1 (also only lost by 1 to Clemson)

– Grand Canyon (High – RS) – beat San Diego State by 6 (also only loss by 7 to South Carolina)

– James Madison (High) – beat Michigan State by 2

– McNeese (Medium – RS) – beat VCU by 11

13 seeds

– Vermont (Medium – RS- beat other 13 seeds Yale by 1 and Charleston by 9 but lost to Virginia Tech by 22

– Yale (Medium) – beat Princeton by 6 and Cornell twice (but double digit losses to Kansas and Gonzaga)

– Charleston (Medium – RS) – beat St Joseph’s by 7 but double digit losses to FAU and Duquesne

– Samford (Surprise – RS) – Lost to Purdue by 53 and VCU by 10. But the Lunatic will note that you should watch the Kansas injury report – if both their top 2 scorers are out, this gets more interesting.

14 seeds

– Oakland (Medium – RS) – beat Xavier by 2 (and only lost to Drake by 8 and Illinois by 11 but also got crushed by Michigan State and Dayton)

– Akron (Medium) – beat Bradley by 15 and close losses to Utah St (3), UNLV (2) and St Bonaventure (1). I almost listed them first but I gave the edge to Oakland due to the Regular Season championship.

– Colgate (Low – RS) – lost to Syracuse by 4 with double digit losses to Arizona and Illinois

– Morehead St (Low – RS) – lost to Indiana by 1 with 30+ point losses to Purdue and Alabama

15 seeds

– Long Beach St (Medium) – beat USC by 5 and UC-Irvine by 4 (only tourney team was 12 point loss to San Diego State)

– Western Kentucky (Medium) – beat Louisiana Tech by 5. This probably should be low or surprise but the Conf USA champ sneaks in as the 99th NET team, and is the only team the Hilltoppers played (also lost by 6)

– South Dakota State (Low – RS) – lost to UCF by 3 and George Mason by 2

– Saint Peters (Low) – lost to Duquesne by 9 and Seton Hall by 11

16 seeds

– Stetson (Medium) – beat UCF by 3 (and lost to Cincinnati by 8) – really wish they didn’t draw UConn but also very glad they didn’t draw Purdue

– Longwood (Low) – lost to Dayton by 9 and St Bonaventure by 4

– Howard (Low) – lost to Cincinnati by 5 and Yale by 8

– Grambling (Surprise – RS) – lost to 6 tourney teams by double digits with best games being Drake by 12 and Washington State by 18. They were never close but have to give them credit for scheduling against the best.

– Wagner (Surprise) – lost to Seton Hall by 21

– Montana State (Surprise) – lost to Washington by 24

So there you go – if you are trying to learn more about the one-bid champions, that is your quick cheat sheet!!!!

Good luck to everyone with their picks.