Stomp The Lunatic

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.

I get that people are emotional after a loss. When you are trending towards being a Hall of Fame coach, you have to put your emotions in check.

I was trying to open my browser to get to write more in my blog, and the browser opens to a MSN site with a whole bunch of links to look at. And of course, my attention got caught by the headline about Hurley sounding off after losing to Florida.

As the Huskies left the court and walked by the Baylor locker room, he was caught on video saying this about the refs. “Hope they don’t (redacted) you like they (redacted) us,”  said Hurley. “I hope they don’t do that to you, Baylor. I hope they don’t do that to you guys.”

As a person who did not have any rooting interest other than being a college basketball fan, I didn’t feel like the game was unfairly called for either team. There might have been some calls I think might have been wrong as there is in any game – but they certainly didn’t look biased, and certainly didn’t decide the game.

It is horribly unprofessional to be using profanities when talking about the referees – whether it is on the court or off the court. Just because he doesn’t have a microphone on him doesn’t mean someone is not listening. But it is a ridiculously horrible look.

The Huskies have won 13 straight tournament games, which is an amazing feat. And the second that things don’t go their way, Dan Hurley wants us to believe it was because the referees stole the game from them. It certainly has nothing to do with Walter Clayton Jr putting the #1 seed Gators on his back and carrying them to a victory, although in fairness, I believe in his press conference, he did mention Clayton was heroic.

I just hate the fact that on the court, Dan Hurley deserves tons of accolades for the historic run that the Connecticut Huskies have done under his leadership. And yet, every time I see him, I see a person that I would not want to be leading anything I am involved with. Being a leader is more about winning. It also is about doing it the right way. And screaming for 40 minutes at the referees, making ridiculous trash talking with fans (like he did at Creighton), and acting like a cry-baby when he loses are certainly not things that true leaders do.

In what was a highly competitive game, the UConn Huskies held a small lead through most of the second half. With 4 minutes left in the game, they held a 61-58 lead.

Florida’s Alex Condon hit one of two free throws, and on the next possession, Walter Clayton Jr. hit a three pointer, to give the Gators a 1 point lead. Then, Will Richard knocked the ball away from the Huskies to Condon, who immediately through the ball back down the field to Richard for a big dunk.

The Huskies would not back down as Solo Ball hit a three-pointer to tie the game with about 2 minutes to play. Florida tried to run a dribble hand-off between Condon and Clayton, but the Huskies fouled Condon trying to get the ball. Condon hit the first free-throw, and as the TV did a close-up on him at the line, all I could think was “He does not look like a player confident he will hit this shot – he looks like he would prefer if anyone else was shooting.”

Sure enough, he misses the second free-throw, but the Gators deflect the ball back out and Clayton dribbled hard to the basket and got fouled. Clayton hit both free throws and the Gators led by three. Liam McNeeley missed a three-pointer to tie the game for the Huskies, and then the dagger was struck.

This time, the Gators successfully ran their dribble hand-off to get the ball into the hands of Walter Clayton Jr. but the Huskies successfully stopped Clayton from heading to the hoop. They ended up regretting that, as Clayton dribbled to the wing and hit a fade-away three-pointer to extend the lead to 6 points.

After Tarris Reed Jr missed a three-pointer, the Huskies fouled Conton. And Conton missed both free-throws to give the Huskies hope, and that would be short-lived as Alijah Martin would get the offensive rebound and dunk the ball to extend the lead to 8. I would never advise missing free-throws to try to win a game, but in this case, the Gators scored 4 points off those misses.

The Huskies did try to come back. Liam McNeeley made a layup to make it a 6 point game, and UConn called time-out. Which leads me to say this. I really would have loved it if the referees have given Dan Hurley a technical foul when he immediately used the stoppage of play to go out and scream at one of the refs. Lets remember that in the play-in game between American and Mt. St. Mary’s, the refs called a technical foul on the American coach for falling to the ground in protest of a call. So why when Hurley does all of his antics and screams about every call that it doesn’t get a technical called. I have a ton of respect about how talented of a coach Dan Hurley is. But I hate how he conducts himself, and it makes it easy to root against him.

Well, it is probably good that the referees are better tempered than me – since they let it go and let the players decide the game. With about 12 seconds and after some Gators’ free throws, McNeeley made another layup to cut the lead again to 6, and then he got a steal and was fouled. After the free-throws, the Huskies were down 4. But Will Richard and Thomas Haugh would make 3 of 4 free throws to give the Gators a hard-fought victory.

There is a common saying – to be the best, you have to beat the best. The Gators managed to beat the two-time defending national champions. It certainly wasn’t pretty, but in March, sometimes, it is important to simply survive and advance.

The Lunatic crashed hard last night – it was so nice to get a full night of sleep, even if it meant almost sleeping through the entire morning. Although maybe I am still dreaming since I think I saw that I was 11th in the standings after Saturday’s games. It gives me hope, but you know what they saw about that. As the title of season-finale of the first season of Ted Lasso tells us, it’s the hope that kills you. Still, the Lunatic is having such a great weekend that he doesn’t care about the consequences for later.

I did wake up in time this morning to get my handicapping page done, and so I can spend the day just enjoying the basketball. And there are so many good games to be played.

In the early games, we get to see two of the favorites play in Florida and Duke (with dangerous 8/9 seeds of defending champions UConn and Baylor from the Big 12 that is 9-1 in the tournament).

The dinner games have a track meet against Kentucky and Illinois, and a clash of styles as offensive-minded Alabama takes on defensive-minded St. Mary’s.

The early evening games let us see if the last of the teams I consider to be allowed to be a Cinderella – Colorado State can upset Maryland to send one of the 12+ seeds to the Sweet 16, and an exciting matchup between Iowa State and Ole Miss.

And the nightcap finishes with New Mexico trying to upset the Big 10 regular season champion Michigan State, and what might be the best game of the night as Arizona and Oregon finish off the night (both the Wildcats and Ducks won their 28+ points).

By the end of the day, we will be down to the 16 remaining teams with a chance to win the National Championship. There should be so much great basketball today – don’t miss any of it!!!

Can’t go to bed without congratulating our leaders.

In our Standard Pool, Scott Grimes has taken the lead with 430 points, closely followed by Ashley Peterson in 2nd with 420 points and Debbe Evans in 3rd with 410 points. Daniel Kaufmann is 4th with 400 points. Then a couple of past upset pool winners, Matt Agin and David Zimmerman are only 40 points behind our leader in a tie for 5th along with Cooper Ams, Jim Sell, Robert Ahles, and Kennedy Urban.

In our Upset Pool, Ashley Peterson leads at 199 points. Scott Grimes is 2nd with 185 points, and Stacie Gilmore is 3rd with 174 points. Tied for 4th at 173 points is Debbe Evans and Cooper Ams.

The Lunatic and his son Charlie have both climbed into the tie at 11th place. That is crazy the Lunatic is so close. But don’t worry, there is still time for all of that to fall apart and help your brackets Stomp the Lunatic.