Welcome to all - Veterans and Rookies alike!!! As always, it was a crazy start to the Tournament, as the Paladins proved they truly are "A knight without armor in a savage land"! If you don't know this lyric, it is a line from the theme song to a television show Have Gun, Will Travel, by Johnny Western. The name of the song is the The Ballad of Paladin. What is a Paladin you ask? It is a team that just beat Virginia when JP Pegues launched a three-pointer with 2.2 seconds left in the game to defeat the Cavaliers by 1, that is what a Paladin is. By the way, doesn't Paladin versus Cavaliers seem like some sort of team jousting competition? Just me? Ok.
A side note, there are two concurrent pools being run on this blog. They are very different as one is a traditional "squares" pool regarding final scores and the other is this one. I have a feeling that you can wade your way through. Just wait until we arrive in Houston and start posting our tournament blog!
Before the tournament even started we had shots fired (not the Alabama basketball kind) and the trash talk commenced. Allison Parker of Washington, D.C. submitted her bracket with a frown emoticon drawn next to each time she selected Alabama and a filled-in heart emoticon for each time she selected Duke. No, she is not an alumna of Duke, she did that to spite me, and I will exact my revenge, somehow. Feel free to contribute to the trash talk in the comment section.
Well, back to the welcome. We not only have some new entrants into the tourney, we even have a new city represented. No, not a city that hasn't had a resident entrant before, an actually new city. We have veteran contenders that used to live in Lake Worth, Florida that now live in Lake Worth Beach, Florida - and none of them moved. How is this relevant? It probably isn't - but just expanding the breadth of the pool.
Welcome back to 2 of our reigning pool winners from last year: Dawn Lamb (Keith) of Delray Beach, Florida and Jeff Plamondon of Lincoln, Rhode Island.
So, the road to Houston has already proved troublesome for some high ranked teams, like the aforementioned Virginia, and also Arizona. Fourth-seeded Virginia lost to 13th seeded Furman - the Paladins - and the 15th seeded Princeton Tigers of the Ivy League shocked the 2-seed in Arizona. Those were the only two upsets to win bonus points in our pool, and yes, we had entrants that selected each of those upsets. In fact, 24 entries selected Furman, including three guarantees. Those were Carolyn Fowler of Greenacres, Florida, Mitch K (Lamb) of Delray Beach, Florida, and Pepe Sosa of Riviera Beach, Florida. For those that don't know Pepe Sosa, I hear that he is a helluva guy. Two people chose Princeton to upset Arizona, and they are Alyssa Hopps of Quincy, Massachussetts, and the aforementioned Allison Parker of Washington, D.C. Since 24 people chose Furman, the pick of the day goes jointly to Alyssa and Allison. A special note to Paul Cummings 2 of Palm City, Florida who was the only person to correctly pick 14 games.
Although, more of us should have seen this upset coming. Although this is only the 11th time a 15th seed has defeated a 2 seed (and for the third year in a row), it is the second that that this has happened to Arizona. Anyone remember that game? Well, you will now.
Santa Clara entered the NCAA tournament as a 15th seed in the west bracket, and played Arizona in the first round in Salt Lake City, Utah, where Arizona was a 19 1/2 point favorite. Arizona was loaded that year, started Ed Stokes, Khalid Reeves, Chris Mills, Ray Owes and Damon Stoudamire, with Reggie Geary playing major minutes off the bench. Some of these guys played major NBA minutes, but not as much as Santa Clara's "star." Santa Clara won with defense, holding the vaunted Arizona offense to just 17-55 shooting, while shooting just under 49% themselves. The Broncos were led with 19 points and 8 rebounts by Pete Eisenrich, with starters DeWayne Lewis and John Woolery each adding double digit. But the name to come out of this game, and off the bench for Santa Clara, is a generously listed 6'3" point guard from Canada named Steve Nash. Nash came off the bench and scored 10 points, added 7 rebounds and led the team with 4 assists as the Broncos defeated the Wildcats 64-61.
Santa Clara proceeded to lose to Temple 68-57 in the second round as Aaron McKie scored 25, Rick Brunson contributed 20 and Eddie Jones added 17. All three of these players had solid to great NBA careers, but none of them ended up in the Basketball Hall of Fame or won 2 MVPs like Steve Nash.
I bet Silas Nichols of Washington, DC, thought I was going to write about the Richmond Spiders, the first 15 seed to defeat a 2 seed when the beat Syracuse Orange, nee Orangemen, 73-69 in 1991, but I wouldn't do something like that, seeing that I already did that last year. You can see that entry here.
Since Arizona lost, now is the time to discuss our pool's predicted champions. We have 18 this year, including Arizona. All picked champions will remain in the updates, but only those teams that remain will be capitalized. The champions selected are: Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Duke, Florida Atlantic, Gonzaga, Houston, Indiana, Kansas, Kansas State, Miami, Marquette, Michigan State, Purdue, Tennessee, Texas, UCLA, Virginia.
You read that correctly, somebody chose Florida Atlantic. And although we do have a current FAU student in our pool this year, it was not her. We might have more to come on this topic.
As for the rest of the games, the only unanimous picks from yesterday were: Alabama and Houston. So yes, that means some entrants selected Howard over Kansas, and Northern Kentucky over Houston. A few even selected UNC-Asheville over UCLA. With craziness like these picks, that is how we have entrants with Princeton over Arizona and Furman over Virginia.
Interesting Stats - Day 1
4. Alabama All-American Brandon Miller scored 0 points in Alabama's first round victory. ZERO!
3. Virginia basketball is 1-3 in its last four first round games in the NCAA Tournament, including the infamous defeat to University of Maryland - Baltimore County in 2018.
2. Furman last won an NCAA tournament game in 1974, defeating South Carolina.
1. After three games had finished yesterday, only 6.6% of brackets uploaded to CBS Sportsline had 100% of the games correct. AFTER THREE GAMES!
Fun Social Media Posts
Ok - I admittedly didn't follow much social media yesterday, but perhaps more today.
1. From Facebook: "Glad to see Alabama didn't come into the NCAA Tournament gun-shy!"
Players of the Day
6. Dereck Lively - Duke - 4 points, 12 rebounds, 6 blocks
5. Jalen Swanson - Furman - 19 points, 10 rebounds, 4 assists
4. Johni Broome - Auburn - 19 points, 12 rebounds, 5 blocks
3. D'Moi Hodge - Missouri - 23 points, 4 rebounds, 2 assists, 4 steals
2. Sir'Jabari Rice - Texas - 23 points, 6 rebounds, 3 assists
1. Andrew Frank - Penn State - 27 points, 4 rebounds, 1 assist
Now, on to the standings. Feel free to let me know if you think I made a mistake, as sometimes I do. Just know that if I re-score your sheet and find a mistake that was made in your favor, I will correct that to. Now, onto the standings ...
1. Pepe Sosa - 21
Did you really quote your own Facebook post re Alabama????
ReplyDeleteI remember that Arizona/Santa Clara game -that was the first year I won money in the Pepe pool!
ReplyDelete