Sunday, March 18, 2007

March Madness: Reaction to the First Two Rounds


Some are calling the first weekend of the NCAA tournament boring. Here at thatguysports, we're not quite as outraged. The weekend went a lot like we thought it would.

There seemed to be quite a difference between the top 4-6 seeds in a bracket and the bottom seeds in the bracket. More-so than ever.

No 5/12 upsets. No 14/3 upsets. 2 6/11 upsets (both very "popular" upset picks). Even the 10/7 games went the way of the seeding.

Now the fun starts in my opinion. Look at today's games - many spreads under 5 points. Here is where the cream will rise to the top.


Some knee-jerk reactions to the weekend:

- Tough tournament for the ACC. Many had Georgia Tech as an upset but they didn't last day 1. Maryland doesn't get to the sweet 16 either, and Va Tech takes the pipe as well. What an overrated conference.

- Great tournament for the SEC so far. Vanderbilt with an upset to get into the Sweet 16, beating a very good, "hot" Pac-10 team in Washington State. Tennessee overwhelming Virginia. Florida surviving a scare. 3 teams in the Sweet-16.

- Kudos to Butler who came under fire for not winning their own conference tournament. Clearly their schedule throughout the year and winning the pre-season NIT helped them tremendously en route to their Sweet 16 birth.

- Ohio State should become the independent and Notre Dame should join the Big-10 instead of the Big-East as an "also-ran" with the rest of the losers. Every major sport is Ohio State and everybody else.


- Looks like I was wrong about the Pac-10. 3 teams in the Sweet-16 if the USC score holds up. Solid showing thus-far.


- Does Billy Packer talk to everybody as if he's permanently annoyed, or just during times that he broadcasts games. I feel like he announces as if he's a perpetually annoyed senior citizen. Wait, I think he actually is that. Can't CBS make Raftery their #1 color guy? He just called a horrendous travel call by the officials in the Nevada game with a very dry "Where?"


- How does Gus Johnson not become CBS's #2 play-by-play guy for every sport? Take over for Dick Enberg and his senility in football PLEASE.


- Its nice to watch a series of games on CBS and not hear Randy Cross or any sort of "Cross Talk."


- Right now I'm hanging in there on my bracket pool. Riding Kansas for all I can, Texas A&M and Georgetown are my keys. Florida is almost a lock for everybody - G'Town and KU are fairly split. A&M is a 2nd top choice out of that bracket.

Need Nevada to pull off an upset right now - that would be HUGE.



More to sometime on Monday, but for now this is it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Your Dad needed Nevada gone...and guess what?