NCAA Tourney Thoughts

Texas A&M got jobbed. If you look at the close up replay of that last shot, it was no block. The UCLA defender clearly swiped both arms. That said, you could feel it slipping away for the last 5 min of the game, as A&M just seemed to lose that killer instinct and start playing not to lose.

This marks the second year in a row that my BYU Cougars have lost to the #9 seed (Xavier in '07) who has then gone on to almost beat the #1 seed (Xavier lost in overtime to Ohio St.). I guess that gives some vindication that we at least got a good opponent. Just once, I'd like BYU to get a #7 or #10 seed, rather than an #8. At least then you get the #2 in the second game.


Standings for the pool shifted greatly today. That surprised me. "MoJo" jumped into the middle of the pack, while "Heifer International (ESPN)" dropped way out of first place. After mulling it over, the culprit is ESPN's scoring. It gives 10pts per game the first round game for 320 total points, and 20 points per second round game, for 320 total points. Essentialy what that means is that picking poorly the first round hurts you less than picking poorly later on. Since only 8 games were played today, picking one incorrectly was worth 2 of last rounds via points, but is even more precarious because you'll only have 4 games next round.

So if you pick poorly but spread them out in your bracket, that's better than missing everything in one region, where you automatically doom yourself to losing points in the later rounds because neither of your picks made the next game.

That said, since tomorrow another 160 points are up for grabs, anything's possible.