The Big Dance: Day 1

Day one of the tournament. First round games (32 of them) are worth 1 point a piece in the pool that I’m in. Half of the first round games were played today, and I picked 11 of them correctly. Not too shabby. That isn’t going to be enough to land me at the top of my pool (I don’t think) but it’s a good start. Let’s have an analysis of the tournament as seen by Mr. Pete.

Duke owned Winthrop. In my opinion, Duke is the ONLY favorite that came ready to play the underdog. It was a 52-15 advantage at the end of the First Half. What was the final score? 84-37. Duke literally could’ve scored ZERO points in the second half and they still would’ve won by double digits.

After seeing bits and pieces (and the box score) from the UND/Charlotte game, I have to say that I just made a bad choice. It was a guess, and I guessed wrong. The Golden Domers were just too much for Charlotte. My bad.

Indiana beat Utah. No huge surprise there. It was a fairly convincing win down the stretch, but was closer than I would’ve liked for most of the game.

The biggest upset of the day HAS to be UNC Wilmington’s overtime win against Southern Cal. UNCW had too much heart for the Trojans. USC made a 19 point run to tie the game at the end of regulation, but UNCW proved that they were there to win. They put the game away in overtime and earned the right to play Indiana in Sacramento on Saturday. Petey missed this one too, oh well.

Kent State was a likely upset that I just didn’t pick. Oklahoma State didn’t lead AT ALL during the course of the game.

Alabama held on to beat Florida Atlantic. It was a close game, but Mo Williams wound up with 33 points and 10 rebounds for his second double-double of the season. His stellar play kept the Tide from being one of the few #2 Seeds in NCAA history to lose in the first round.

Missouri upset Miami, which I predicted. Ohio State held on to beat Davidson and Arizona just outplayed UC Santa Barbara who hit 16 three-pointers on 27 attempts. To beat a team who shoots THAT WELL from behind the stripe takes a talented ball club. This was a quality win for me, as I expect Arizona to make the elite eight.

Tulsa upset Marquette, I didn’t pick that one. Kentucky showed their spunk in a great win over Valpo. Kansas overcame a rough start to beat Holy Cross by 11 and, just like I told my brother, Stanford beat Western Kentucky. Wake Forest and Oregon also got wins today. I predicted both of them.

For those of you counting at home, that leaves one game… Wyoming/Gonzaga. Don’t think that I’m going to miss a chance to give you concrete proof that Gonzaga can’t play basketball. This wasn’t a “down game” for the Zags. They just can’t beat the number 11 seed. Next year Gonzaga ought to spend less time whining about being under-rated in the tourney and more time practicing so that they can show up to the big dance and not get embarassed. Maybe if they played any real competition during the year they’d fare a little better in the Big Dance. Way to go Wyoming…

So what does this all mean for Pete? Well, all of the games that I picked incorrectly are fairly inconsequential. The teams that won beat teams that I expected to receive second round losses to. The point? I only lost one point per game. I didn’t expect any of those teams that lost to make it to round three, so (as long as the other team gets beat tomorrow) I can still score pretty close to perfect in the bracket. Yay for me!

There’s one problem: looking at my bracket for tomorrow, I realized that I didn’t pick any upsets. That’s not good. If things go Petey’s way tomorrow, look for wins out of the following ball clubs: Cal, Pitt, Cincinnati, UCLA, Xavier, and Oklahoma in the South and West. Maryland, Wisconsin, Texas Tech, Georga, NC State, and UConn should win in the EAST and Florida, Illinois, Texas, and Miss. State should take their games in the Midwest. The biggest chance for an upset, in my book, is Ole Miss over UCLA or St. Johns over Wisconsin.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll journalize about something OTHER THAN the tournament. We’ll see.

Pete’s Pool Score Tracker: 11 points (16 possible)