Someone in Buzzy’s Country Store asked me how my brackets were holding up following the first 2 rounds of the NCAA’s Mens Tourney last weekend. I confessed that I hadn’t even bothered to check.
Well, having checked in with the ESPN Challenge Leaderboard just now, I find that I had 12 of the Sweet Sixteen correct on my JSR #7 entry and 11 of 16 correct on my #3 entry. (Recall that my 4, 5 and 6 entries were clones of Jay Bilas’, Steven A.’s and Pres. Biden’s picks respectively.) Here are my top 5 entries and where I now languish on the Leaderboard out of 29M entries.
As for the overall top 3 folks on the Leaderboard, each only missed 3 of the 32 games played and all have a perfect Sweet Sixteen heading into the next two rounds. The guy at Number 4 missed 4 games overall, but also has a perfect Sweet 16.
Interestingly enough, all four picked a different team to win it all. Sorta makes sense because most of the smart guys noted that this year’s tourney was up for grabs in that no one team stood out as dominant. If pressed however, they would all say that Connecticut is the big favorite.
However, I can’t root for the Huskies tomorrow night due to them playing San Diego State University. When Pam and I visited Reagan and Ben out there in February, we did a drive thru of the SDSU campus and I liked what I saw. Their campus is up there with our St. Mary’s College campus as being one of the nicest and most scenic of all college campuses. Following her visit here a couple weeks ago, Reagan sent me one of their SDSU hats for the Buzzy collection.
In addition, Reagan sent some Aztecs t-shirts to the Grandkids, so we’re all rooting for SDSU tomorrow when they take on the badass Huskies. (Spread is Connecticut by 11, so caveat emptor if betting on the Aztecs.)
Speaking of caveats – even though my #7 and #3 picks above have Connecticut as the overall winner, note that I am still on the Boilermakers’ bandwagon and think that they will win it all providing they can get by Gonzaga Friday night. Vegas has the Boilermakers favored by 6, which seems a little high to me. I am taking the 6 and sticking with the Jesuit boys to at least cover because after all, they are playing on Good Friday.
And since I have now stumbled into the gambling rabbit hole, I just saw where Duke is a 4 point underdog to Houston and the Creighton Bluejays are getting 3 as a dog to Tennessee. Don’t know that I have ever seen Duke as an underdog in a Sweet 16 game.
And while I recall some gambling tidbit that went “Anytime you can get Duke and points, bet it,” I just can’t bring myself to do so. On the other hand, Creighton did impress me the other night when they rolled over Oregon. Thus, I like them getting the 3 points vs. the Vols.
Bottom line then, I am thinking take the points and do a three team parlay of Aztecs, Zags and Jays. (Sounds like a variation of a Cher song doesn’t it?)