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Thursday pick sheet will be up in the next couple of days!
Well everyone, the most exciting week in sports is over for another year. The next 51 weeks will suck by comparison. The beautiful distraction of amazing and competitive basketball is over. Now we're left to look for joy in much less meaningful things like family and friends. And, who knows, next year there may not even be an NCAA Tournament...By then we could have Bernie Sanders outlawing sports since everyone deserves an equal award and we shouldn't let the 1% be declared champion. Or, maybe we'll have Donald Trump build a wall around the game that the players have to for? Or maybe Hilary Clinton will email someone about it, have people find out, and then send all the players to some Benghazi Death Prison? Hell, maybe that computer that beat the world's best Go player will decide he's going to play basketball too and replace humans with the automation that will soon take all of our jobs? These are all realistic scenarios you guys.
But, instead of dwelling on a miserable dystopian future that we are hurtling toward, let's instead cling to those beautiful moments we were lucky enough to experience over the past few days. And, they really were beautiful for a lot of you, because we really didn't eliminate as many people as I think most of us expected to over the Tournament's first weekend.
Heading into yesterday we had 144 children of the narwhal still competing for the golden apple. At the end of the night we had lost just 22 of these brave and beautiful souls.
The day started with one of the most lopsided games in the tournament, as Villanova dismantled Iowa it seemed that maybe order was restored. That, after a few crazy days with wild finishes and insane results, we were going to get a day to catch our breath and relax a little bit.
You really are stupider than you look if you fell for the NCAA Tournament's little ploy...
After they brought out some extra brooms to remove all the hawkeye carcasses from the court, Notre Dame and Staphen F Austin went to work. This was the most controversial game of the day with 10 picks on the Irish and 10 picks on the lumberjacks (so mad I can't use this link again this tournament). With a couple minutes remaining Stephen F Austin (What? You were expecting a wrestler?) was poised to move on....at that point it became clear that Notre Dame truly does own an actual leprechaun that they have tied to a post in their locker room granting them wishes. After missing a few shots down 1, Notre Dame somehow got a tip to fall and sent the lumberjacks back to wherever the hell Stephen F Austin is located. It also sent home 10 of our entrants and the dreamiest player in the tournament.
The next couple of games were fairly tame. Oklahoma got by VCU in a tight game that never REALLY seemed in doubt. Seven survivors chose the easy route and took Buddy Hield here. After that Syracuse obliterated Middle Tennessee State and, in doing so, became this year's team that everyone complained about getting to the tournament that ends up going to the Sweet 16, this was a title UCLA held last year...it's like, the only title Steve Alford coached teams have ever held (burn). The Syracuse win, while largely unentertaining, actually did provide some impact in the Pool as six people got caught up in the excitement of grabbing those 15 tie-breaker points. Instead these suckers ended the day like a nine year old girl that was expecting to get a pony for her birthday...disappointed. You were never getting that pony. You're telling me you were gonna muck out stalls every day Susan? Seriously? You know who would have ended up with that job. You don't even brush your own hair, much less a pony's.
Maryland's win over Hawaii was surprising only in that it didn't knock out a single person. There were 33 picks on Maryland and not a single pick on the Rainbow Warriors. Not one.
Overall, the day had not been THAT crazy. Sure, we got a wild finish with Notre Dame winning, but that was it. This day was pretty subdued. Oh Billy, you stupid idiot, things were just getting interesting.
To call the comeback Texas A&M made against Northern Iowa dramatic, or crazy, or amazing, would be selling it short. It literally might be the most improbable thing I have ever seen happen in sports. The chances of a team down 12 with 44 seconds remaining in a college game winning are slimmer than 1 in 10,000. There's a 1 in 10,000 chance that you'll be physically injured by a toilet this year. A toilet. Toilet's are our friends, and yet, there's a better chance of a toilet injuring you than of Texas A&M winning this game. What makes it crazier is that Northern Iowa's last two games had ended LIKE THIS and LIKE THIS. You have to give props to Northern Iowa, if nothing else they are consistent in providing unreal finishes. As amazing as this was, it didn't knock out a single survivor...but, I really wish it had as it would be hilarious to make fun of someone after that. It did, however, allow 19 contestants to move on to Week 2.
Within ten minutes of that astounding collapse we also saw Xavier get knocked out by Wisconsin on a 3 as time expired. This finish actually did knock people out as seven combatants had their hopes pinned to Bill Murray's cap. The last game of the night saw Oregon escape St. Joe's and move the rest of our selectors on as well. It probably deserves more text than that, but I'm over it.
As mentioned above, there are 122 protector's of moral values moving on to the second week. With just four games Thursday and Friday we finally may witness some match-ups that get equal interest for both sides. Thus far the group has been pretty unanimous in their selections, and they've been right on almost all cases. As they say in my old hood, "Shit's about to get real." Indeed it is old hood....indeed it is.
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