Welcome Tournament Players to the Road to New Orleans 2022. And a true road it is this year, as no more "bubble" like last year's Indianapolis tournament, and as those of you that read the rules and instructions, Your Tournament Host will be making a sojourn to check out the Final Four.
I am not going to lie. Your Tournament Host is struggling today with the loss of his favorite team, the Kentucky Wildcats. I am not sure how I am going to address it here - and I HAVE to address it here as it was THE story from yesterday, but I am sure that it will have something to do with some not-so-subtle digs at Syracuse, who knows.
Before I begin, I do want to say thank you to Martha Kroesen, of West Palm Beach, Florida, who purchased this lovely dry-erase bracket board for me oh so long time ago when I ran the office pool for where we worked. Although a bit worn, and scratched, it is still in use!
A hearty welcome to our three reigning prize winners, Edith Pecan, of West Palm Beach, Florida, Steven Usma of Miami, Florida, and Brian Hinaman of Parrish, Florida. Our reigning last-place "winner", Sean McInerney of Jacksonville Beach, Florida, is also returning. It looks like you are going to have a lot of stiff competition, since no less than 18 of you submitted e-mails to me with the "Winning Bracket." Now, I am not great at math, but I don't think that is possible. I guess we shall see!!!
We have 140 entries in the pool, from near and far. For the first time that I can remember, we have expanded the pool to a second country!!! Welcome to Ron Stewart from Toronto, Ontario, Canada! Although most of our entrants are bipedal, we do have a handful of 4-legged entrants, including the return of our first ever (non-Florida) gator, Bubba Zdrowak from Orlando, Florida. Interestingly, he did not pick the actual Florida Gators, mostly because they are not in the tournament.
I also want to thank the 78% of you that followed the instructions. The rest of you 22%, I don't know. I do want to specifically mention Day Yi of Forest Hills, New York, who forgot to put any identifying information on his bracket. Since he turned it in relatively early, I knew to whom the brackets belonged. But, after the tourney started, Day wrote to me apologizing for forgetting, replacing his old brackets with ones containing his name (and no other changes), and offering the possibility that I remove him from the pool. Well, a lot of you are going to wish I actually did (more on Day later).
We have 11 different champions among our brackets, listed here. The teams will remain capitalized in bold so long as they remain in the tournament. The selected champions are: AUBURN, ARIZONA, BAYLOR, DUKE, GONZAGA, KANSAS, Kentucky, TENNESSEE, TEXAS TECH, VILLANOVA, WISCONSIN
Yes, that means a number of participants have already lost their champion. On DAY 1! And yes, I'll admit, Your Tournament Host is one of them. But all of us were hurt by the Kentucky loss to some extent, as it was one of the two games for which our pool was unanimous. Everybody had Kentucky to defeat St. Peter's, and everybody selected Kansas over Texas Southern. Good luck tomorrow to the 2 entrants that selected Murray State OVER Kentucky in the second round. If that occurs, you are sure to receive a mention here!
This means that Gonzaga and Baylor were not unanimous. Dawn Lamb - Quarter of Delray Beach, Florida selected Georgia State over Gonzaga, and our defending champion Edith Pecan of West Palm Beach, selected Norfolk State over Baylor. The other near-unanimous selection was Tennessee, as only one entrant selected Longwood! These selections were, let's say, not the best of the Day.
The Best Selection(s) of the Day will be discussed later.
Onto the games. The day started off strong, with an 11-6 upset in our very first game; Michigan defeating Colorado State. However, according to our pool this wasn't much of an upset as most entries selected Michigan, and a good number even had that as the guarantee. This was the first of four upsets on the day, including New Mexico State defeating Connecticut, Richmond defeating Iowa (both 12-5), and of course, the talk of the day, St. Peter's beating the vaunted Kentucky Wildcats, only the 10th time a 15 seed has defeated a 2 seed in the first round of the tournament.
This reminds me .....
The Richmond Spiders have a history of upsets in the NCAA Tournament. In 1984, as a 12 seed, they defeated the Auburn Tigers 72-71. Auburn had a player named Charles Barkley, but still could not overcome the Spiders. Four years later, Richmond earned a 13 seed, but defeated the Indiana Hoosiers, at the time the defending champion on Keith Smart's jumper to beat the Syracuse Orangemen in 1987 for the title. Richmond followed that up with a win over the 5 seed Georgia Tech to advance to the Sweet Sixteen. The Spiders also reached the Sweet Sixteen in 2011 as a 12 seed, upsetting the 5-seed Vanderbilt in the first round. However, Richmond's most memorable tournament win came in 1991 as a 15 seed.
Staying in the east, the Richmond Spiders had to play the 2nd seeded Syracuse Orangemen in the storied Cole Field House in College Park, Maryland. That Syracuse team was loaded, paced by Billy Owens, LeRon Ellis and Adrian Autry, were favored. Billy Owens, playing all 40 minutes, scoring 22 points with 7 rebounds. He led 4 players in double figures as Dave Johnson (13), Michael Edwards (12) and LeRon Ellis (12) joined Owens on the scoresheet. Syracuse's problem was a lack of depth, as only 3 players came off the bench to play 25 total minutes and scored a total of 3 points.
Contrarily, a deeper Richmond team had 4 bench players play a total of 65 minutes, led by Terry Connolly with 14 points in 30 minutes, and Jim Springer and Chris Fleming each contributing 8 points. But the story was Curtis Blair, who scored a team-high 18 with 7 assists, including 7 free throws in 8 attempts to seal the 73-69 victory, and to become the first 15 seed to defeat a 2 seed!!!
[Editor's Note: For the history section, I was torn between mentioning this NCAA Tournament story or discussing St. Peter's coach, Shaheen Holloway playing career in the tournament, but ultimately chose this story for three reasons: (1) St. Peter's is still in play, so I might be able to use this for Sunday's update; (2) This story ties into BOTH the St. Peter's win (a 15 over a 2) and Richmond's win from yesterday; and (3) to bust the chops of one Silas Nichols of Washington, D.C.]
Back to yesterday's action, we had some great performances from players notably Gonzaga's Drew Timme scoring 32 points with 13 rebounds, leading scorer Teddy Allen of New Mexico State scoring 37 points in defeating Connecticut, and Kentucky's Oscar Tshiebwe, the odds-on NCAA player of the year, scoring 30 points with 16 rebounds in a losing effort. Also in a losing effort, Jamaree Bouyea from the University of San Francisco - Bill Russell's alma mater - scored 36 points against Murray State. But, the star of the day was St. Peter's Daryl Banks, who scored St. Peter's first 8 points, and finished with 27 as the St. Peter's Peacocks defeated the Kentucky Wildcats. If NBC owned the rights to the tournament rather than CBS, I would claim the fix was in, but alas, St. Peter's earned it.
A special mention to University of San Francisco substitute Volodymyr Markovelskyy, whose father is a policeman in Truskovets, Ukraine.
Another special mention to Amy Barron, who became only the second woman to officiate a men's NCAA Tournament game.
Stats of the Day:
5. South Dakota State is number 1 in the NCAA in team three-point shooting precentage at 44.9%. They have seven - 7! - players that shoot 39% or greater from three point range. Providence held them to 7-23 from range yesterday.
4. On ESPN's NCAA tournament pool section, nearly the same amount of entries (4.1%) had Kentucky AND Iowa in the Final Four, as had St. Peter's (4.6%) winning one game.
3. Richmond won its 9th NCAA Tournament game as a 12 seed or higher. Nobody else has more than 4.
2. Kentucky was up six points with 2:57 to play in regulation against St. Peter's.
1. St. Peter's won its first ever NCAA Tournament game.
Best Social Media Posts
3. From everywhere .... the Indiana cheerleader retrieving the ball from the top of the basket. Seriously, it is everywhere. I would not have even been acknowledged had that game been anything even remotely close to adequate.
3. From Ja Morant on Twitter:
2. This beauty from the NCCA's March Madness Twitter Feed: "I didn't know Zorro was San Francisco's mascot.
1. From Everyone on Twitter: Some version of: "Happy St. Peter's Day!
Now, back to the pool. As stated earlier, a lot, and I mean a lot, of entrants selected Michigan, and none had St. Peter's. Approximately 20 selected New Mexico State, with 7 selecting the Aggies as their guarantee. We also had about 17 choose Richmond, with 6 guaranteeing a Spiders victory. However, the Best Selection(s) of the Day have to go to the aforementioned Day Yi of Forest Hills, New York, for picking Michigan, New Mexico State, AND Richmond, and selecting Richmond as his guaranty. Those 20 points have Day in the lead. Day's might be my least favorite bracket, given that he has Yale winning today and he has Duke winning the championship! Ugh!!!
On to the standings .... If you think there is a discrepancy between your listed score and the score you believe you earned, just send me an e-mail and I will be more than happy to re-visit and re-score your sheet. I do make mistakes and I will be happy to correct them. Just know that if in re-scoring your sheet I find an error, no matter which direction, I will use the appropriate score - so there is the possibility of moving backward. On to the standings (ties listed alphabetically):
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