Stomp The Lunatic

It looked like we were going to see two more double digit seeds advance, and then March happened.

In 2022, Jermaine Couisnard played for South Carolina, but decided to transfer for his senior year due to the upcoming coaching change. Today, Couisnard scored a career-high 40 points for his 2023 team, the Oregon Ducks, the most points ever for Oregon in a tournament game. N’Faly Dante added 23 points and the Ducks won 87-73 to advance to the second round. This sets up a matchup with 3 seed Creighton, which is the school that Oregon coach Dana Altman was at for 16 years until heading to the Ducks.

In the other game, with 7 1/2 minutes to play, Nevada’s Jarod Lucas hit a three pointer to give the Wolfpack a 56-39 lead. Then DaRon Holmes II and Koby Brea took over. Over the next approximately 5 minutes, the two Flyers scored 14 of Dayton’s next 17 points – finished off by Brea draining a three pointer. Meanwhile, the Wolfpack were scoreless.

Jarod Lucas finally broke the run with a jumper, but Brea found his partner Holmes in the lane, and went strong to the basket to dunk the ball while being fouled. After hitting the free throw, the Flyers were ahead.

Kenan Blackshear gave Nevada the lead back with a minute to take the lead back, but the Flyers‘ Nate Santos got a layup, and Enoch Cheeks stole the ball with 15 seconds leading to Santos extending the lead to 3 from the free throw line. Nevada missed two three pointers, the clock struck zero, and the Flyers advanced off an incredible 24-4 run to end the game – making it that both Atlantic 10 teams survived to the second round.

We still have 6 perfect brackets as Joanna Crabbe, Rich Napolitano, Kevin Bostic, Drew Bradley, my son Charlie, and my step-mom Barbara have gone 8 for 8. It looks like Joanna, Rich and Kevin have Texas and Drew, Charlie and Barbara have Colorado State, so no matter what we will be down to 3 after the current game. Pretty impressive to get all 8 of the afternoon games right!

Last week, Duquesne upset Dayton and VCU to claim the Atlantic 10 automatic bid into the tournament. And apparently, the Dukes don’t want to leave the dance any time soon.

The A-10 champion jumped out to a 14 point lead on BYU and then hung on for dear life as the Big 12 team came storming back. The Cougars tied it with 1:47 at 60 with a big dunk by Fousseyni Traore. But the Dukes responded with a beautiful back door play that sent Jimmy Clark III to the free throw line where he put them ahead with 2 free throws.

And then, with 26 seconds left Clark drove to the basket again and scored to give them a 65-60 point lead. Dallin Hall tried to create some late game heroics for the Cougars with a deep three pointer that cut the lead to 2. But Duquesne’s Dae Dae Grant hit his free throws and iced the game for a 71-67 victory for the first big upset of the tournament in just the second game. Although I guess you could call Michigan State’s win an upset (but even Vegas had the 9 seed as a 1.5 point favorite).

Could be the start of a wild tournament!!!

I am excited to announce that it looks like we will have 312 entries for this year’s contest. When I get home from work tonight, I will do some checks on the system to make sure there are no errors or last second brackets in limbo on my database.

In the meantime, you should be able to see your picks both in the standings or by logging in.

Good luck to everyone in Stomping the Lunatic!!!!

Make sure Charlie and Katie have entered their picks so they can participate in the fun (I would have included Elizabeth – but does it surprise anyone here that my wonderful wife was the first to enter) – check

Reveal my horrible picks that everyone will stomp – check

Send a reminder email to people to please come to the website and enter picks that will be better than mine – check

Edit the handicapping page to have all 16 games today with poorly rushed analysis and commentary that probably only makes sense to a crazy person – check

Get ridiculously small amounts of sleep so that I will be watching the games ending around midnight in a dream-like state – check

The Lunatic is old so he might be forgetting something – but all in all, I think I have done everything on my check list. The Lunatic is ready!

The Round of 64 is set as the tournament has already provided 4 awesome game including an overtime victory and a game decided in the last minute (well 3 awesome games and a Colorado State blowout) – check! The tournament is ready!

There is less than 2 1/2 hours left before the madness begins. This is your final reminder to enter your picks! The Lunatic is ready!!! The tournament is ready! March is ready! So there is only one last question to answer on the check list.

ARE YOU READY!!!!!!!!

This hasn’t been the best start for the Lunatic. 0-3 for his handicapping against the spread. Missing 2 teams in his bracketology. Already struggling to stay awake and there is still one more half in the Colorado vs. Boise State game. But March brings that treacherous emotion – hope….. I desperately want these picks to go well – because it will mean that I can finally cheer for my Boilers in the Final Four. They have been to the Final Four before – but the last time that happened, I was 7 years old and I am not sure I even knew that Purdue existed. With Zach Edey and Braden Smith, I really like their chances.

There are also the moments of de-ja-vu that keep coming. Losing to the 16 seed (like Virginia did). Coming back to be ranked in the top 5 for most of the season(like Virginia did). Winning the regular season conference championship just to lose in their conference tournament semi-finals (just like Virginia did). It creates a level of hope that is dangerous. But I am still going to go with the hope.

In my Insane picks, I will go all the way with that hope. I have Purdue winning the championship against North Carolina, with Auburn and Marquette joining them in the Final 4. And as I type this, I hear the Taylor Swift song that went through my head a couple years ago.

This hope is treacherous. This daydream is dangerous. This hope is treacherous. I, I, I…….

In my Sane picks, I will still take my Boilers to the Final, but they will get beat by the team that I think has been the best all season, the Connecticut Huskies. Lets face it, a defending champion hasn’t repeated since Florida in 2007. The #1 team in the tournament hasn’t won since Louisville in 2013. (But the first one that did it was that 2007 Florida team). So, in the same sense of de-ja-vu, it is time for those streaks to end. The Huskies are an amazingly complete team that can beat you so many ways – and they tend to take big leads and not let up. 23 of the 31 wins they have this year have been by double digits. In my sane picks, they will be joined by Arizona and Marquette in the Final Four.

And as I think about all these streaks coming to an end, Taylor’s voice returns to my head

This slope is treacherous. This path is reckless. This slope is treacherous. And I, I, I like it.

So, there you go. Will this be the year that the Boilermakers break through? The Lunatic certainly can not pick against his team – no real fan can. It might not be the expert picks that the Lunatic claims to have – but maybe this year, the Lunatic will be served better by picking with his heart.

This slope is treacherous. I, I, I like it!

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