Stomp The Lunatic

So, it looked like we were going to have a battle in Chicago, as Tennessee took a 16-14 lead with 11 1/2 to play in the first half. Then, the following things happened before the Volunteers would score their next basket.

• Morez Johnson Jr got fouled and made one of his two free throws
• Yaxel Lendeborg got fouled and hit both free throws to take the lead
• Aday Mara got fouled and hit both free throws
• Yaxel Lendeborg drove to the basket for a layup and got fouled. He added the free throw to make it a three-point play (although I have more to say about this later).
• Lendeborg drove to the basket and passed it to Roddy Gayle Jr in the corner for a three-point play.
• Lendeborg passed the ball to the other corner for Elliot Cadeau for another three-point play.
• Aday Mara scored on a layup
• Nimari Burnett passed the ball out to Lendeborg, who drilled a three-pointer from the wing.
• Cadeau passed the ball into Burnett who scored on a layup.

It was 6 minutes for Tennessee without a score until Jaylen Carey drove to the basket and got a layup. The Wolverines 21 point run took any hope out of the game being interesting as Michigan ran away to a 95-62 victory.

Yaxel Lendeborg scored 27 points, while 6 other players scored 8 or more points.

I do have to use this moment to state that I do not understand the challenge/appeal system. The reason that I say this is it doesn’t make sense what you can challenge.

With the score 16-15, right before Michigan went on their run, Trey McKenney stole the ball and drove down the court to try to get a layup, but DeWayne Brown came from behind to block the shot. After a foul stopped play, they showed a replay of it, and you could see the ball hit the backboard before Brown swatted it away. It should have been goaltending – but because it wasn’t called on the field, it apparently couldn’t be challenged.

Then, when Lendeborg made his exciting drive to give the Wolverines a 5 point lead, the ball was going in but a Michigan player clearly touched the rim (and after the replay, clearly touched the ball) while it was going in. It should have been offensive goaltending. But it wasn’t called on the field, so it also apparently couldn’t be challenged (if I understood what the TV crew was explaining).

To be fair, it evened out. Michigan should have gotten a basket on the first play, and should have lost a basket on the second play. But it still is confusing – what is the point of having a challenge system if you can only challenge goaltending if it is called.

Basically, if the refs miss a call and don’t call anything, it is too bad for you. But if they call something and it is wrong, you can at least correct that. That is stupid – a missed call is a missed call.

I understand that they don’t want fouls to be called because of replay, since when you slow the game down to replay, you could probably find contact and a foul on every play. But it feels like if you can challenge if a block is goaltending, you should be able to challenge it – whether it is called or not.

It didn’t matter – the Wolverines ran away. A couple of calls didn’t decide a game where Michigan won by 33.

Congratulations to the Big 10 regular season champions on cutting down the nets in Chicago and heading to the Final Four in Indianapolis, where they will meet Arizona in what should be a fantastic game.

It is hard to write whenever the Boilers get eliminated from the tournament. But the Lunatic also knows that there are some people in the pool who have done an amazing job, and this late in the tournament, they deserve to get recognized for their amazing picks.

In the Standard Pool, Mark Walsh has held onto his lead with 940 points. Mark has a 60 point lead over Heath Lindvall at 880 points. Bill Richter is all alone in 3rd place at 870 points. Tied for 4th place are Kathy Godwin and my son Charlie at 860 points. We have a 4-way tie for 6th at 840 points between Ryan Zotti, Jay Carini, Cinde Schumaker and John Greene. Wrapping up the top 10 is Stacy Dooms at 830 points.

In the Upset pool, Mark has taken over the lead with 263 points, now followed in 2nd by Shirli Zelcer at 258 points. Matt Reilly is 3rd at 256 points, Mack Fournier is 4th at 247 points, and Al Lester rounds out the top 5 at 241 points.

In the Second Chance Pool, Sonny Mao has taken over the lead with 440 points. But he is followed closely by 11 people tied for 2nd at 400 points. Congratulations go out to Lauren Martin, Drew Bradley, William Craft, Michael Cheung, Autumn Busby, Brian Betz, Audra Chamowitz, John Franklin, Jerry Caldwell, and Debbe Evans.

With Purdue losing, the Lunatic’s sane picks have surpassed his insane picks (the ones he really cared about). His sane picks had boring choices like Duke beating Arizona for the championship, so I guess they could still move up the standings if the Blue Devils and Wildcats keep winning. But those picks were never going to have a chance to win – too many people have picked Duke. The chance for the insane picks to rocket up the standings with a Purdue victory are now sadly going to fall to the bottom of the standings.

It looks like a lot of people will Stomp the Lunatic this year. Good luck to all the leaders and the teams you are rooting for!!!!!

Iowa jumped out to a 12-2 lead, but the Fighting Illini fought back. Then, there was a horn delay for 11 minutes where after the break. When play resumed, Bennett Stirtz hit a layup and a three-pointer to extend the lead to 7, but the Fighting Illini fought back.

The second half was more back and forth as the teams kept exchanging the lead. With about 7 1/2 minutes, Bennett Stirtz got fouled and hit both free throws to give Iowa a 51-50 lead.

Then Illinois’ David Mirkovic got fouled and hit his free throws to take the lead. Then after a missed three-pointer by Kael Combs, Illinois got the ball down to Tomislav Ivisic who hit a hook shot in the lane. Then Iowa’s Tavion Banks drove the lane but his layup was blocked by Ivisic. Illinois got the ball into him again at the lane, and once again Ivisic would hit the shot.

Then, Illinois played great defense on Bennett Stirtz, forcing him to try to pass it instead of shooting, and it was stolen by Keaton Wagler. On the offensive end, Wagler drove into the lane and hit the floater and suddenly, Illinois was up by 7.

There was a foul by Ivisic on Isaia Howard in the lane, so they brought in his brother Zvonmir Ivisic. As one of the announcers was questioning Illinois’ coach Brad Underwood for the substitution when Tomislav had been so hot, Iowa’s Tate Sage drove the lane only to get stopped by Zvonmir. And then, on the offensive side, David Mirkovic drove the lane and lobbed it to Zvonmir for a thunderous dunk. Iowa would call timeout and the announcer would say that is the reason why he is announcing the games and Underwood is potentially leading his team to the Final Four.

And Illinois did not look back. Iowa’s Howard hit a three-pointer to cut the lead to five. And Tate Sage got fouled with about 2 minutes to play and hit his free throws to cut the lead to 4. But that is as close as the Hawkeyes would get.

Keaton Wagler would make a nice pass underneath to Andrej Stojakovic for a layup, Iowa’s Cam Manyawu missed a shot, and Wagler got fouled and hit his free throws to extend the lead to 8. And the celebration was ready to begin in Champaign-Urbana.

The Illinois Fighting Illini are the first team to cut down the nets at their regional site. Next weekend, they will make the 2 hour drive to nearby Indianapolis for a chance to play in the 2026 Final Four.

Or maybe too ready. I have been trying to not blog too much about the games while they are playing since the first day I mentioned multiple teams possibly pulling upsets based on the early scores of the games and then the favorite came back to win. But I feel like I can say this without impacting anything since it is just a close game.

At the 8 minute TV timeout with Iowa up 22-20, something happened that I don’t remember seeing in a tournament game (or any game for that matter). The horn went off, and then wouldn’t go off. About 5-6 minutes in, the announcer mentioned that they had unplugged the horn and shot clock, and yet, the horn was still going off so at that point, no one knew what was happening.

The delay was so long that they started allowing the teams to start warming up again – they brought balls out so players could take some shots, while others were jogging back and forth between the out-of-bounds line just trying to stay ready to play.

After about 11 minutes according to the announcers, they finally were able to get the old horn to turn off, get a manual horn that they could use for stopping play. And to thunderous applause, the game started back up.

Anything can happen in March – even a horn going off for 10 minutes.

It was a little too cold today to golf (although it has gotten nice this afternoon). So, I figured I should at least close out my bracketology page as a way to spend some time before Illinois and Iowa kick off the Elite 8 at 6 pm. And I was shocked. I wasn’t in a hurry because I figured with missing SMU, I would be in last place.

However, a very weird thing happened this year. The Lunatic normally is happy with the number of teams he gets right but because he is rushing Sunday afternoon to seed the teams, he does poorly with that.

Well – all the media members that I track on the Bracket Matrix got all 68 teams correct so you would figure my miss on the last team in the field (SMU) would make for a miserable showing.

However, I got 58 of the 68 teams seeds correct!!!! And I only was off by more than 1 seed on St. John’s (I foolishly thought that the Big East championship would bump them up a couple lines). So by the scoring system on the Bracket Matrix, I beat all the media members (with the closest being ESPN’s Joe Lunardi and NCAA.com’s Andy Katz at 381 pts to my 383 pts).

While I don’t know him, a special callout goes to Antonio Barbetta, a student at Indiana University. He was the Bracket Matrix winner with 68 correct, 61 correctly seeded and only one team off by more than 1 seed line (he had Vanderbilt as a 3 seed instead of a 5 seed).

So that made the Lunatic happy – especially considering that his handicapping has been the worst he has ever done since doing this. I enter the Elite 8 down $715 imaginary dollars. I literally went 0-8 against the spread in the Sweet 16. Any time I thought a team would win but not cover, they routed them. Any time I thought a team would cover, it would be close. And then you have teams like MSU, Houston and Nebraska outright losing. I could not be more wrong when I tried to seriously analyze things. With only 7 games left, the best I can do if I get all the spreads and all the totals correct, I still lose 295.

I seriously debated about just stopping – and actually I might for the Final Four so that the Lunatic’s handicapping isn’t possibly influencing who wins the National Championship (the Lunatic believes in Karma and so I can’t have who I write on a page impact these amazing athletes). So for the Elite 8, instead of trying to handicap the games, I picked all of them to be overs (since it is more fun to watch when teams are trading baskets left and right). And since I want to see the Big 10 do well, I took Illinois, Purdue, Michigan and Duke. I don’t know if I was trying to handicap the games that I would pick that but I figure I will go with the approach of picking the team you want to see win instead of something silly like Illinois winning but Iowa keeping it close to cover the spread.

Anyways, I have my lucky Purdue shirt on. I have my lucky socks on. I have on the Purdue quarterzip that I desperately put on for extra luck in the Texas game. The Lunatic is ready for tonight!!!! BOILER UP!!!!

The Elite 8 is starting in about 20 minutes – and I can not wait!!!!!

On a night when all the favorites had won, it made sense that March had saved an upset for the final Sweet 16 game. 6th seed Tennessee took a one point lead into halftime against the 2nd seed Iowa State. But they came out strong to start the 2nd half as Nate Ament hit a three-pointer and Ja’Kobi Gillespie drove to the hoop for a layup to quickly extend that lead to 6.

Then, on two back-to-back possessions, Tennessee’s Jaylen Carey got an offensive rebound and tipped the ball back in while the Volunteer defense continued to shut down Iowa State, and with about 12 minutes to play, Tennessee was up 14 points. And they never looked back.

Nate Ament had 18 points and Ja’Kobi Gillespie added 16 points to lead the Volunteers, but to be honest, the thing that really won the game for Tennessee was their defense that held Iowa State to 39% from the field and 22% from three-point range on the way to a 76-62 victory to claim the final spot in the Elite 8 – the third consecutive year that Tennessee has reached the regional final.

Congratulations to our leaders after the Sweet 16. Thanks to getting 7 of the 8 Elite 8 teams, Mark Walsh has claimed the lead with 780 points, giving him a 30 point lead over Stacy Dooms. We have a 4-way tie for third between Brian Betz, Will Richter, Chris Stolzer and Mike Wyatt at 740 points. And another 4-way tie for seventh between Mary-Rian Bradley, Matt Reilly, Al Lester and Bo Luy at 730 points.

In the Upset Pool, Matt Reilly still leads with 252 points, but his lead has shrunk to 5 points as Mark Walsh and Mack Fournier are tied for 2nd at 247 points. Shirli Zelcer is in 4th place just 6 points behind, and Al Lester rounds out the top 5 at 237 points.

In the Second Chance Pool, we lost all our perfect brackets by the end of the night. But we still had 6 people who went 7 for 8 to be tied for first at 280 points. Congratulations to my wonderful wife Elizabeth Hodgson, Mack Fournier, Sonny Mao, Natalie Parker, Steve Thornton and Wendy Joseph. It seems only fair that my wife have some success in the pool with me making her watch all this basketball in March.

Congratulations to all our leaders!!!! And of course, the 8 teams that made it to the Elite 8. By the end of the weekend, only 4 will remain with the opportunity to travel to Indianapolis to play for the NCAA men’s national championship.

I am sure that Tom Izzo and the Michigan State Spartans wish they had the first 10 minutes of the game back. Despite getting a bunch of offensive rebounds, they could not make a basket, and the Connecticut Huskies jumped out to a 25-6 lead.

The Spartans would chip away in the first half to cut the lead down to 8 at halftime. They even took a lead with 10 minutes to play when Jaxon Kohler got fouled on a layup and hit the free throw to take a 45-44 lead. But the Spartans would go cold from the field again, and UConn would get a three-pointer by Alex Karaban, a layup by Solo Ball, and then Jayden Reed would steal the ball, get fouled and hit a free throw to give the Huskies back a 7 point lead.

But the Spartans would continue to chip away. With two minutes to play, Michigan State ran a high pick and roll to Carson Cooper, who charged down the lane and made a huge dunk to cut the lead to one. But on the next possession, Alex Karaban hit the dagger with a deep three-pointer to extend the lead back to 4.

Michigan State would try to get the ball back into Cooper, but his drive got stopped so he kicked it back out to Jeremy Fears, who hit a three-pointer from the top of the key to cut the lead back to 1 with about a minute to play.

Tarris Reed from UConn would get the ball need the hoop but was fouled with the shot clock running down. And the 58% free throw shooter hit both free throws to make it a 3 point game. Jeremy Fears would try to quickly drive to the hoop, and missed the layup but got fouled. His two free-throws cut the lead back to 1.

Michigan State tried to trap in the backcourt, but once it crossed the half-line, they fouled Alex Karaban. The senior calmly came to the line and hit both free throws. The Spartans would come back down the court clearly looking to drive to the basket and score quickly. But the Huskies played strong defense and wouldn’t let Fears get a path to the basket. They forced the ball out of his hands, and with the clock winding down, Kur Teng missed a well-defended three-pointer with about 5 second left, and Carson Cooper got fouled trying to get the rebound.

Cooper hit the first and missed the second. While it was unclear if it was intentional or not, it was a great try and a miss that would allow the Spartans to get a rebound and try to tie the game as it bounced softly off the front of the rim. But the Huskies’ Tarris Reed Jr outleaped everyone for the ball and was fouled.

And with the season on the line, as he did with about 45 seconds in the game, the worst free-throw shooter on the court calmly drilled both free-throws and sent the Huskies to the regional final against Duke.

Congratulations to the Huskies on surviving and advancing – it should be an incredible regional final in Washington, D.C. on Sunday.

In the first half, it looked like Alabama could continue their run and upset the Big 10 regular season champions. The Crimson Tide led at halftime by 2 points in a half that they led for a good amount of the half including getting all the way out to a 9 point lead. At 49-47, the half was being played at Alabama’s pace of play.

But Michigan came out in the second half and slowed the game down into more of a half-court game. They would start the second half off on a 15-5 run and they simply didn’t look back at that point. Alabama’s hot shooting slowed down and the Wolverines took advantage.

Yaxel Lendeborg scored 23 points and Elliot Cadeau added 17 points for the Wolverines. But the biggest difference might have been the fact that Roddy Gayle Jr and Trey McKinney combined for 33 points off the bench.

Alabama’s Labaron Philon Jr did everything he could as he scored 35 to lead the Crimson Tide. But Michigan was able to shut down the rest of Alabama in the second half, and they won 90-77 to advance to the Midwest Final in Chicago.