NCAA Tournament Pool Round 2 Day 2 Standings

Ladies and Gentlemen:

So we now know the entirety of the Sweet Sixteen, and we have lost more champions with Michigan State’s victory over Virginia and Wichita State’s defeat of Kansas.

Particularly hurt by the loss of Virginia is Justin Yung of Raleigh, NC, and Mac Kroesen of West Palm Beach, FL, who are the highest ranked brackets with Virginia as a champion, and nobody even remotely high had Kansas.

As a reminder, the champions selected this year are:  Arizona, Duke, Iowa State, Kansas, Kentucky, Notre Dame, SMU, Villanova, Virginia, Wisconsin.  As usual, bold teams remain in the tournament.

I would like to welcome Paul John Reichert IV, Allison Parker and Griffey Parker into the pool.  For some reason I never initially printed out Paul’s brackets, but when double checking all of the entrants I saw his timely sent e-mail.  Allison and Griffey Parker’s entries showed up in the mail, appropriately time stamped as being completed prior to the start of the tournament.  Paul and Griffey are doing very well to this point as they are tied for 5^th Place, and a second Paul entry is tied for 7^th.

Kingfish Rod Parham of Atlanta, GA maintains his lead with the help of going 8-0 on Sunday.  The only thing that kept him from maximum points is he had Michigan State defeating Belmont, not Virginia, and thus did not earn the 5 bonus points for that game.  Several entries did earn both bonuses and rocketed up the standings, most notably George Walks 1 of West Palm Beach, FL, who is now tied for first.  Anthony LaPira of Demarest, NJ, Day Yi of New York, NY, Brent Bellinger of Duluth, MN, Cory Mauro of West Palm Beach, FL Carolyn Fowler of West Palm Beach, FL and Steffan Alexander of Portland, OR all earned 10 bonus points for selecting Wichita State and Michingan State.  They, however, did not earn the picks of the day as three entries won their guaranteed bonuses in the second round.  This is even more impressive given the fact that there is no guaranty their preferred second round matchup will occur, as one of the teams could be beaten in the first round.  That being said, Cheryl Spuhler of Acworth, GA, Hershey Zdrowak of Orlando, FL and Brian Spatchek of West Palm Beach, FL won their guaranteed upset picks, Cheryl and Hershey for Wichita State and Brian for Michigan State.

As a reminder here is the payment information:

For those that wish to pay via PayPal, my e-mail address is:  sosalaw@yahoo.com

For those that prefer Google Wallet, my e-mail address is:  pepsosa21@gmail.com

The Sweet Sixteen commences Thursday, so relax until then.  I will have at least one more update before then, showing how many of the Elite 8 and Final 4s each entry has left, along with identifying Champions.

As always, please double check your math as I may have missed something.  I corrected a few ballots from yesterday’s results, as yes, I even double-check myself.

Now, on to the standings.  Ties, for now, are listed alphabetically.

1.         Kingfish Rod Parham – 76

            George Walks 1 – 76

3.         Kim Bancsi Lumpkin 2 – 63

            Silas Nichols - 63

5.         Griffey Parker – 61

            Paul John Reichert IV 1 – 61

7.         Adam Jorgensen – 60

            Anthony LaPira - 60

            Paul John Reichert IV 2 – 60

10.       Carolyn Fowler/Jane Reynolds – 59

            Colleen Hamilton – 59

            Si Nichols 1 – 59

            Si Nichols 2 - 59

14.       Jacey Fowler 2 - 57

15.       Sasha Moon – 55

            Steven Usma 4 - 55

            George Walks 5 – 55

            Day Yi – 55

19.       Jacey Fowler I – 54

            Cory Mauro - 54

21.       Carolyn Fowler – 53

            Kyle Henderson 2 – 53

            Arlene Hopps – 53

            Brian Spatchek - 53

            Cheryl Spuhler – 53

26.       Ashley Poer 1 – 52

27.       Katie Butler Litsey - 51

            Ashley Poer 2 - 51

            Chad Upson – 51

            Katie Zdrowak - 51

31.       Debbie Nieman – 50

            Rich Samuels 1 – 50

            Rich Samuels 2 - 50

            George Walks 2 – 50

            Jonathan Wasserman - 50

            Justin Yung - 50

37.       Brent Bellinger – 49

            Alvaro Gonzalez – 49

            Eric Inge – 49

            Greg Kummerlen - 49

            Traci Lynn Sheehan and Kyle Sheehan - 49

            Hershey Zdrowak - 49

43        Steffan Alexander - 48

             Jed Dorsey - 48

            Albert Harper III – 48

            Jessica Koch – 48

47.       Karen Katz – 47

            Kareem Montague – 47

            Jason Schultz - 47

            George Walks 3 - 47

51.       Serena Davila - 46

            Mac Kroesen – 46

            Trenton May - 46

            Allison Parker – 46

55.       Kyle Henderson 1 – 45

            Michael Litsey - 45

            Kim Bancsi Lumpkin 1 - 45

            Noel Martinez - 45

            Matt Nieman - 45

            Jane Reynolds – 45

            Rich Samuels 3 – 45

            Stacia Wilkaitis 1 – 45

63.       Matt Hopps – 44

            Martha Kroesen – 44

            Steven Usma 2 - 44

            Steven Usma 3 - 44

            Amy Zdrowak – 44

68.       Alex King - 42

            Sam Lozier - 42

            Jen Mahoney - 42

            Steven Usma 1 - 42

72.       George Walks 4 – 40

            Stacia Wilkaitis 2 – 40

74.       Koma Gandy - 39

            Ty Leatherman – 39

            Abigail Sosa – 39

            Hannah Sosa – 39

            Jason Spuhler – 39

            Joshua Zdrowak - 39

80.       Barkley Sosa - 38

            Pepe Sosa – 38

82.       Vic LaPira – 37

83.       Erin Devlin - 33

            Keith Zdrowak – 33

85.       Chris Kroesen – 32

86.       Braeden Helland – 31

Lessons Learned

As we are in the middle of a hard fought National Semi-Final game between Michigan State and Connecticut, I thought that I would just share my thoughts of the entire tournament (to date). Here is a list of the five things that I learned (or noticed) in this year's tournament.

5. The Griffin brothers are ugly. Really, really ugly. Ugly like you absolutely read about (or more particularly, are currently reading about).


See what I mean. Ugh! Times two. And after watching their parents in the stands, I just have to cheer, "M A M A, how do you think you got that way? Your Mama! Yeah, Yeah, Your Mama!"

4. Coach Pitino - what is Edgar Sosa doing on the bench for long, long stretches of time? I don't even say that because an (admittedly small) chance exists that we might be related. He is the only guy on the team that can legitimately handle the ball, and he is gifted offensively. In case you didn't notice Coach, you had a big problem scoring against Michigan State. I know that you don't think he plays defense well enough, but defense hasn't been your team's problem this year.


3. Levance Fields really should have led Pittsburgh to the NCAA Championship. Why, you might ask? Because watching him play helped me remember that the last two perfectly square point guards that led their teams far in the tournament ending up as champions; Mateen Cleeves and Khalid el-Amin. All 3 of those guards are exactly as tall as they are wide. In fact, when I googled, "Levance Fields Pictures" to add to this post, on the bottom of page 3 was a picture of Mateen Cleeves! I wish I made that up.

2. Goran Suton is really good. that guy can play. I had absolutely no idea before this tourney. He has a great mid-range jumper, a very good outside jumper because he doesn't force many shots, and he plays really tough defense inside. By far the player that has impressed me the most.

And, the number 1 thing I noticed during this tournament is ...

The remarkable resemblance of Oklahoma Guard Willie Warren to famous actor, Djimon Honsou. This picture from the school website doesn't do the resemblance justice, but it was the best one I could find. I swear I heard him argue with an official over a no-call by saying, "Give us, us Free (Throw)!" Maybe I was just drunk when I noticed it - you can decide.









What are some of the things you learned from this year's tourney?

Opening Performance

If you are like me, nay, like everybody else, you completely discount the play-in game. You don't watch it, you don't include it in your brackets, and most likely, you don't even know who is playing. This excludes those of you who may actually be parents of the players in the play-in game. However, the game counts, the performances count, and most importantly, the statistics count. Including, well, especially, Moorehead State's Kenneth Faried's performance Tuesday in their 58-43 victory over Alabama State for the right to play overall number 1 seed Louisville. Faried had 14 points and 21 rebounds. That's right, 21 rebounds. I don't care who they played, 21 rebounds is impressive. Especially given that the second highest total for the entire game was 8.

Although nobody expects Faried to duplicate that effort against the likes of Samardo and Earl Clark, he will always have this game to remember. And he will likely be the leading per game rebounder in this tournament. Plus, it allows me to post this picture of Faried blocking the shot of none other than the immortal Chief Kickingstallionsims of Alabama State.

Have a great tourney everybody, it's just getting started.