Petey faired pretty well in the Tourney today. 16 games played, 14 correct picks. Nice. That brings my first round percentage to 78.1% (25/32) not too shabby for a guy who doesn’t watch much college basketball unless Bama is on TV. For those of you keeping up with the tournament through these posts, read on… if you don’t care about basketball, come back some other time.
The games went as expected today, for the most part.
In the South Region, Pitt moved one step closer to beating Bama in the sweet sixteen with a win over Central Conn and Cal beat the Ivy League champions, Penn.
Over in the East, both NCState and UConn beat up on their respective opponents (Michigan State and Hampton) by 11. Wisconsin beat St. John’s by 10. Maryland dominated Sienna like the final four team that they are. Georgia proved, yet again, that the SEC is the number one conference in the NCAA with a convincing win over Murray State.
In Midwest Regional action, Illinois routed San Diego State, Mississippi State beat McNeese State, and Texas won their game against Boston College.
Finally, in the West, The Number #2 seed Oklahoma beat University of Illinois at Chicago. Xavier sent Hawaii back to their island in preparation for a second round loss to Oklahoma. The top seeded Cincinnati beat Boston with authority and UCLA pulled away from Ole Miss.
Those were the fourteen games that I picked correctly. Then, I think most people did. Let’s talk about the two upsets that I didn’t predict.
In the East, Texas Tech couldn’t handle the Salukis from Southern Illinois. I expected Bobby Knight’s boys to be a little better than that, but they weren’t. This was just a bad call on my part, it really could’ve gone either way… and it went the way that I didn’t much care for. Oh well.
The big surprise of the day was Florida v. Creighton. Florida, despite having two chances to hold the ball and win in the last 24 seconds, blew the game. Nobody who has half a clue predicted this upset… it just shouldn’t have happened. At any rate… I, along with the rest of basketball watching public, picked this one wrong. If you got it right… don’t brag about it, it just makes you look silly.
The problem with those two missed picks is that I picked those teams to WIN in the second round. That means that their loses didn’t cost me one point a piece, like yesterday’s 5 miscalls did, they costed me 4 points a piece. So, while today was a good day for my percentage it was a bad day for my point total. Oh well.
I guess that means I should pick a new winner for those second round matchups: Expect Georgia to do away with SIU and Illinois to learn from Florida’s mistake and beat Creighton.
Saturday’s ball games will probably fall like this:
In the East Region, Kentucky should embarass Tulsa. In the South, Duke should beat Notre Dame (UND is very upset-prone), Alabama will narrowly avoid Kent State, and UNC Wilmington’s time will run out as they face the Hoosiers.
Kansas and Oregon (the Number 1 and 2 seeds) will beat Stanford and Wake Forest in the Midwest. Finally, in the West, Ohio State and Arizona get wins over Missouri and Wyoming.
If I had to pick an upset or two… umm… Kent State over Bama and/or Missouri over Ohio State.
Ok, I’m done now.
Pete’s Pool Score Tracker: 25 points (32 possible)