LOL..I think Tennessee should change their nickname to CSUN's "Matadors" after they vacated the lane like that.

Wow back to back clutch shots in the UT/OK St game.

I need the total opposite :p

nice

Unbelievable drive

And that was the Vols best defender (Tabb) he blew past.

Marquette is celebrating a bit to early

Damn it. I'm gonna lose both of those games. SOB!

Come on, Utah State...don't do this to me.

OK state FTW!

BANK FOR THREE! ROFL!

Fuck you Tennessee!

Thank god for the glass.

Good lawd there have been some great games today. I am freaking nervous watching these games. Cmon Utah State!!!

It was so bad...it's good

I've almost yelled 3 or 4 times at my desk watching these games.

Jesus, Marquette with a less then attractive inbounds pass

Well, I had OSU in all but oen of my money brackets... I have Utah St. in all of them though. Marquette is supposed to suck without Dominic James dammit!

And the poorly conceived possession puts an appropriate end to the Vols misery. One of the most frustrating teams I've ever followed, every bit on par with any GT team that's ever caused hair pulling.

Lowest fracking collective basketball IQ of any group I've seen at the high school level or higher, worst collective concentration of any group I've seen since elementary school. I believe the gross underachievement calls the coaching skill (not the recruiting skill) of Bruce Pearl into legitimate question and even moreso calls into question his ability to recruit basketball players instead of athletes that need to be coached up, which he clearly isn't capable of doing with the current staff. Another season like this one & the bloom will be entirely off of him in Knoxville, and he might actually be smart to take any equivalent offers he might get in the off-season.

He desperately needs to find some players who are interested in leading the lead in something other than tattoos and are willing to work at basketball to earn their free ride instead of playing at it like they're back on the block.

shit...Wilkinson had the look.

Sigh..

Exciting to watch. That's what matters.

I suck with the seeds 7-10... I have gotten everyone of them wrong.

make a F'n free throw!!

You're down 4 points with 5 seconds left. You can't inbound it to a guy standing right in front of you. You need to throw it at least to mid-court....

Still no real upsets this year.

Sigh, tried for the NDST upset bid over Kansas, but I got the other 2 right.

great start to the day, too bad NDSU and Utah State couldn't pull it out in the end.

There is someone in my office pool 20 for 20 right now. Bastard.

3 others at 19 for 20.

For those of you who haven't seen any of Arizona state this year try and catch some oh this game. They have 2 fantastic players in Jeff Pendergraph and James Harden.

But they're going to lose, right?

:D

I'm 19/20 in the gotti pool and 18/20 and in the lead at my wifes office pool

It's actualy a tough matchup, Christmas is a great player

The lack of 1st round upsets last tournament and so far this tournament is really starting to suck. The only lower seeds that win are mediocre major conference teams anyway. Not exactly Cinderella material.

I went to NDSU, so needless to say, I was on edge today. A good game, the team played well, just not deep or well rounded enough today. Still, they shouldnt be upset about the final score of the game.

I'd say WKU over Illinois is a solid upset, just not a spectacular one. And still bigger than Utah State over Marquette would have been.

One of the problems with trying to find upsets this year is that while the higher seeds may not be as good as they've been in the past, neither are some of the lower seeds.

The lack of upsets makes for better games later on, if you want to look at it optimistically.

It also provides more opportunities for upsets later, like 4/5 v. 1,

my exact thoughts

Let's go Temple! Christmas might be one of the best spot up shooters in College basketball. He should have a nice NBA career off the bench.

Sorry but I hope ASU cancels Christmas this year :p

Of course the lack of upsets tends to support the seeding job done by selection committee and Lord only knows we can't have that happening.

This isn't an accident. The NCAA has to keep the machine fed.

I have a feeling Dayton will be the first upset of the day

After the conversation on seeding and the pod system and teams closer to home I looked through 15 years of tournament history just out of curiosity to see if there were way less upsets since the pod system went into place etc. Looking over the tourneys from 1992 to 1998 and 2002(when the pod system started) to 2008, the numbers were strikingly similar.

In an average year there are right about 5 teams seeded 10 or lower that win first round games. If you don't consider 10 vs 7 games as noteworthy upsets, then we're down to a little under 4 11 seeded or lower upsets per year. In some years there were as many as 8(usually in those years 3 10 seeds win + an extra 12 or whatever) and in two years there were only 3 upsets in the first round, one in the 90s, one this decade, each of them including at least one 10 seed in that count.

So yeah, a 12 seed and a 10 seed winning on day one and that's it might be a little boring, but its just about average.

And of course, we're talking about 24 games in question(10-15 seeds, since 16v1 isn't happening). The difference between 3/24 and 5/24 in any given year is, to put it mildly, not even close to statistically noteworthy. Boring, yes, but not noteworthy IMO :)


... just trying to head off conspiracy theories with a little reason!

I watch a lot of Big 10 and Illinois was not that good. Plus they were missing Frazier which essentially turned them into a NIT squad. I don't think it was much of an upset.

I'd say it's still an upset, just one that's less surprising under the circumstances.

But I'm not sure what else you're going to get this year. I mean, do you really expect Binghamton to beat Duke?

It's a fairly chalky year. Anyone worked up about their bracket on day 1 or 2 hasn't done this too often. Once you start losing E8 teams, call me :)

SI

I guess it just feels light on upsets because most brackets are still well intact. Seems every year we lose an Elite 8 or Final Four team in the first round. I haven't even lost a Sweet 16 school yet.

Cornell up on Mizzou and ETSU hanging with Pitt near the half. Maybe it was just saving up for this afternoon.

If I was a college basketball coach I would make my whole team run 10 laps everytime a player of mine fouled someone going to the rim and the opposing player makes the basket.

I've got Dayton on TV and Mizzou on mmod... has anyone been watching the Pitt game? What's going on there?