March Madness -- A Belated Day One Retrospective

The guest bloggers have arrived! Hallelujah! Starting today, and continuing through the month (hopefully) we will have a regular NCAA tournament update by hoops afficianados worldwide! Okay, you got me -- Silentio's influence could only make it to rural Indiana. The first update is a day late, I know, but c'mon people it's just basketball, get over it!

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Another year, another bracket in shambles. And it's only the first day. My normal policy every year is that some coaches just don't have it. I'm looking at Roy Williams, Bob Huggins, Jim Boheim and Lute Olson here. Don't give me '97 on Olson either -- if Pitino realizes that Derek Anderson's agent walking around the Fayette Mall was feeding him a line, and had Anderson been used to play in that tournament for more then shooting technical shots against Minnesota, there would be no banner hanging in Tucson. But hey Rick was leaving for the NBA a couple of months later, what did he care?!

Speaking of great NBA career moves, let's start with Rick's buddy and Conference rival John (what violation at UMASS?) Calipari. I had them in the Sweet 16, and what do they do? They do lose to Arizona St. Terrific. But what was I thinking -- Conference USA?? Unless it's UNC-Charlotte, I just don't trust this conference. Which begs another question -- how could I have Memphis as a Sweet 16 team? The Roy Williams factor, that's how! Utah State had the chance to follow my bracket; but, alas, with 12 seconds to go, they opt for four horrible-looking shots, and Kansas survives. Oh well, I'll take the Sun Devils on Saturday.

Top of the bracket at Utah -- pretty simple, since it was Duke. I fell asleep as they went up by six, and awoke to find Dan Rather talking about Baghdad. I'm somewhat surprised we haven't sent Coach K to go after Sadaam. I guess he's going to have to settle with playing Creighton though, right? As much as I hate Conference USA, I just got to love the Valley. Always a great conference tournament, except this year, where Creighton left nothing to chance and blew Illinois St. in the finals [ed. I kept this ambiguous typo because it was just too damned funny.]. Well well well, funny thing they ran into the Chippewas of Central Michigan. Kent St. last year, could it be Central Michigan this year? No, Duke continues on to the Final Four.

But wait, how can that be? Isn't Arizona in that bracket? Aren't they one of the dominant 'Cats? Yeah, but, like I mentioned before, Lute will blow it. All the same, the top of that bracket looks good. Just like I called it, Gonzaga puts the Bearcats to sleep, but not before Huggins gets ejected. Nice job Bob. Although the season he's had, maybe he wishes the heart attack had taken longer to overcome. As much as it pains me, I just don't see the Zags in the Sweet 16. Oh, but don't worry Lute, don't start getting elite on me yet.

Why? 'Cause Brian Cook is going to take care of you, if he doesn't foul out. UW-Milwauke made it a good game, but the Illini move on to face the Irish . . . and, yes, they will crush them. Western Kentucky had the chance against Notre Dame, mostly because they have no interior defense. How do you blow a lead by allowing alley oops? Something to remember: Big East = overrated.

Hmm, maybe I should have taken Wittenburg and Hampton over Pitt afterall, but I'll get into that with day 2 commentary tomorrow. For now, in the West I'm taking Duke over Illinois, and expect that we will soon hear about how Roy Willaims is the coach with "potential."

Speaking of the West, Dayton got to Spokane because the pods help keep the top four seeds close to home. Interestingly, Notre Dame and Illinois get Indy, Dayton and Wisconsin like Mr. Smith go to Washington. What do I know about those games? Well nothing, except I didn't expect either team to win. Half-right ain't too bad in March. With that in mind, I think I'll go ahead and take Tulsa over Wisconsin -- you lose at Penn St. and you don't deserve to get out of the second round (oops, may have played my IU card early).

Oh, and this pod system sucks.

Speaking of pods, what a great job the committee did in not realizing that in BYU, had they made it to the Elite 8 (yeah, I know, they got beat on Thursday), they had the one school that won't play on Sunday set to play on a Sunday if they were to make it to the Elite 8. That's like scheduling Sandy Koufax to pitch on Yom Kippur. Oh wait, I guess that did happen. (BTW, during that '97 Final Four, I saw Sandy from the second tier of the dome, through the binoculars of the guy next to me after I came back from the concession stand, after skipping the Arizona practice because there was no way they could win a national title!). More comments later.