{"id":3495,"date":"2026-03-19T02:12:03","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T02:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/?p=3495"},"modified":"2026-03-19T02:12:03","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T02:12:03","slug":"lunatic-reveals-his-picks-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/?p=3495","title":{"rendered":"Lunatic Reveals His Picks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It could just be looking at too many handicapping stats. It could be that I am just tired. Or maybe it is simply that the top teams in the country have seemed to dominate teams throughout the season. But I was a little sad as I looked at my picks that were relatively void of upsets. Because the Lunatic loves it when the underdog wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first rounds, I am just not that impressed with the mid-majors. Almost always a 12 seed wins a game, and sometimes a 13 seed wins. But the teams I thought had the best chances to pull upsets, Northern Iowa and McNeese drew hot St. John’s and Vanderbilt. Typically, you see one of those updates happen because you get a mid-major champion playing against a team that was struggling down the stretch. Instead, you get a team that was the regular season and conference champion of the Big East. So, I tried to take some 11 seeds here and there, but I can’t see them continuing to then beat teams like Michigan State or Illinois. And it just keeps leading to the chalk winning. At one point when I was picking my sane picks, I had all four #1 seeds in the Final Four before I erased my bracket, took a step back to watch the Miami \/ SMU game, and then figured out what 2 or 3 seeds I was willing to give upsets to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my sane picks, I got Duke beating Houston and Arizona beating Iowa State as the Blue Devils go through the best teams of the Big 12 to win the championship against Arizona.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my insane picks, I still have Duke beating Houston to get to the final. But I have Purdue upsetting Arizona, Michigan and then the Blue Devils to cut down the nets in Indianapolis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the last 2 hours, we have had over 40 entries as we are now up to 222 entries. With the typical last minute rush, we will hopefully break 300 entries again – which always leads to a fun tournament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t miss your chance to Stomp the Lunatic!!!!! Get your picks in – you have only 14 hours (basically until Noon tomorrow) to make your picks and help us all Stomp the Lunatic!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It could just be looking at too many handicapping stats. It could be that I am just tired. Or maybe it is simply that the top teams in the country have seemed to dominate teams throughout the season. But I was a little sad as I looked at my picks that were relatively void of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2026-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3498,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3495\/revisions\/3498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}