A Cold Cold Weekend

about 1 month ago

I've gotta say, after six hours in the car, and five hours sitting in the 32 degree (F) windchill at the softball field yesterday, I am one tired @bozz today. Believe it or not though, this post is not about softball.

I am going to save that for tomorrow. I just wanted to give you an idea of what my day was like yesterday.

I promised you last week that I would be covering all of the NCAA Men's tournament action today, so here we go!

Friday we continued the second batch of 16 first round games.

Nine see Northwestern had to go to overtime to beat eight seed Florida Atlantic 77 to 65. One of the big shockers of the day was 13 seed Yale taking down 4 seed Auburn. We also had a really good game between 10 seed Colorado and 7 seed Florida. Unfortunately, if you are a Gators fan, they fell by two points 100 to 102 against the Buffaloes.

It has really been a big tournament for the 9 seeds as just about all of them have beaten the 8 seed. First we saw Michigan State accomplish that on Thursday, Then we had Northwestern and Texas A&M accomplish the same thing on Friday. A&M edged out Nebraska 98 to 83. That's a heartbreaking loss for Nebraska. They have been looking for a good season in any men's sport for a while now.

Another big upset on Friday came at the expense of the Big 10 when 12 seed James Madison ousted five seed Wisconsin 72 to 61. I think a lot of us saw that coming though. James Madison has been a good team all season. They were actually only one of three teams with over 30 wins in the tournament I think.

Utah State was the only 8 seed that stayed in the tournament taking down 9 seed TCU 88 to 72. Finally, we had another 12/5 upset when Grand Canyon threw a wrench in St. Mary's plans 75 to 66.

With the number of teams cut in half to 32, we saw a quick turn around with second round games starting on Saturday.

Two seed Arizona easily managed 7 seed Dayton 78 to 68. Five seed Gonzaga also had a pretty cruise control game against 4 seed Kansas beating them 89 to 68. Personally, I'm happy to see Kansas out of the tournament. I guess they had some injuries that might have cost them at this point in the season.

Unfortunately, 9 seed Michigan State got bounced out of the tournament on Saturday evening by 1 seed North Carolina. If they had to lose, I'm glad it was at the hands of a 1 seed, but there has been arguments that NC is the weakest 1 seed in the tournament, so that is not good.

I think Michigan State could have won the game had they not had so many turnovers and they could actually make a shot down the stretch. Lack of reliable bigs has been a concern for the Spartans for several years now. I can't disagree with that.

Eleven seed North Carolina had an overtime win against fourteen seed Oakland. It was a heart breaking loss for a team that Michigan had been really excited about. Especially after their early round win and the fact that Michigan State got knocked out.

Two seed Tennessee had a close game against 7 seed Texas, but they came out victorious which is good otherwise half of my bracket would have been busted right there.

Illinois was looking really good in their 3 seed versus 11 seed game against Duquesne. In stark contrast was the 11 seed Oregon game versus 3 seed Creighton. It went into two overtimes before the Bluejay's took down the Ducks 86 to 73.

Finally, on Sunday we had the final eight games to round out the sweet 16. Six seed Clemson had a huge upset over three seed Baylor, but other than that, the "lower" seeded team beat the "higher" seeded team in every game.

Action picks up again on Thursday with these matchups:

6 seed Clemson vs. 2 seed Arizona
5 seed San Diego State vs. 1 seed UConn
4 seed Alabama vs. 1 seed North Carolina
3 seed Illinois vs. 2 seed Iowa State

Then on Friday we have:

11 seed North Carolina State vs. 2 seed Marquette
5 seed Gonzaga vs. 1 seed Purdue
4 seed Duke vs. 1 seed Houston
3 seed Creighton vs. 2 seed Tennessee

We have another quick turnaround after those games with Elite 8 games being played Saturday and Sunday before we proceed into the Final Four.

I did some betting this weekend, but I quickly gave up after about Friday night as I was down most of my money. It was just horrible. I didn't have a great run this tournament like I have during some other ones.