If Thursday was the appetizer, Friday was the main course. Heavily favored Duke barely beat Belmont, but only because the 15 seeded Bruins made two horrid mistakes down the stretch. Gerald Henderson took the ball to the rim in the wake of some Belmont defense that must have been inspired by bullfighters and Renfro through the ball away on a terribly designed inbounds play with four seconds left.
Georgia gave it a good effort against Xavier, but faded at the end. Mississippi Valley State set a new record for fewest points in a tournament game guided by the shot clock. UCLA was responsible for that record. Kent State laid a first half egg against UNLV scoring just 10 points. Kansas State pulled an upset of sorts against USC.
The real action came the next day. Two 12 seeds will face two 13 seeds on Sunday. Both games will take place in Tampa. I thought Drake would have a tough test against Western Kentucky. Drake managed to come back from a deep margin and the game went into overtime. Earlier, I had read that Thomas Dewey gave a speech at Drake during his 1948 bid for the presidency. I didn't know if that was a good omen or perhaps a bad one because Dewey ultimate lost at the last second.
Western Kentucky committed a gaff that would've made a Hillary Clinton aid proud, fouling Drake with a difference of 12 seconds between the game clock and the shot clock and (the most important part) THE GAME TIED! Ty Rogers redeemed his teammate hitting a last second three-pointer with three Drake defenders surrounding him. The two teams combined for 200 points.
With their two top scorers out with fouls, San Diego somehow beat Connecticut. UCONN's A.J. Price went out with a knee injury, which handicapped his team. It was a stunning victory, but it will tough for San Diego to beat Western Kentucky if Brandon Johnson isn't 100% by Sunday. Sienna blasted Vanderbilt. On a personal note, I had a long streak of picking the MAAC team to upset and it never happened. I didn't pick it this time and it did. Villanova staged a stunning comeback to destroy my bracket.
Stephen Curry is a maestro out on the basketball court. He scored 40 and propelled his team to victory. Butler is really good. They destroyed an underrated South Alabama team in Alabama. Watch out Tennessee, who got a good game from American.
My bracket is busted and George Mason is out. Now the only reason to follow the tournament without falling into a deep depression is Georgetown, who didn't play particularly well against UMBC. I went 10-6 with my predictions on Thursday, which is awful. Today, I went 7-9, which is an all-time low. I can't really explain to you how bad that is. For round 1, I went 17-15, a historic low.
I picked the lower seed 9 times. The lower seed actually won 8 times. Only once did those two stats overlap- Davidson. I picked all four 8-9 games wrong. I only lost three Sweet 16 teams (one being GMU, I had them going very far obviously) until Clemson lost. I had them in the Elite 8. The door seems to have opened up for Kansas and UCLA, but you never know. I'm certainly not going to put both in the Elite 8 just yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment