tourney update

With the Final Four this weekend I wanted to give a quick update on where Steph and I stand in our head-to-head matchup.

My final four:
Louisville (lost to Michigan State)
Memphis (lost to Missouri)
Syracuse (lost to UNC)
Pittsburgh (lost to Villanova)

Steph's final four:
Michigan State (beat L'ville)
UConn (beat Mizzou)
UNC (beat Syracuse)
Duke (lost to Villanova)

Somehow or another I went from correctly picking 14 of the Sweet 16 to getting exactly ZERO correct in the Final Four. That's right. I'm 0-for-4 (first time in my life!), while my wife, who I think picked by choosing the school's she's simply heard of before, is 3-for-4. This is going to be a long year between now and my chance at redemption in next year's tourney.

tournament time

So Stephanie and I are having a little head-to-head bracket competition with this year's NCAA tourney and, thankfully, after a horrid day one, I've taken the lead.

It's tough to be a huge sports fan (heck, I majored in "Sport Studies" at UGA...no joke...) and be down to your wife in the bracket. But that's exactly where I stood when I went to sleep after the first day of the tourney.

I spent that evening hearing Steph with excitement proclaim "I voted for them!" each time one of her teams won.

Apparently the NCAA tournament is now a democracy. Who knew?

Somehow or another, though, the tide has turned and she's no longer happy when her team wins; now she's only happy if her team wins and my team loses. So it goes.

But, as I type at 7:32 on Saturday night (UNC 74, LSU 63), I'm 24-for-32 in the first round, with only one team out of the second round and Steph's 23-for-32 in the first with five teams out of the second.

Not trying to brag about beating my wife and all. Or maybe I am.

My ego needs all the help it can get.

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For what it's worth...

My sweet 16: Louisville, Arizona, Kansas, Mich State, UConn, Purdue, Marquette, Memphis, Pitt, Xavier, Villanova, Duke, UNC, Illinois, Syracuse, Oklahoma.

My Elite Eight: L'ville, Mich State, UConn, Memphis, Pitt, 'Nova, UNC, Syracuse.

My Final Four: L'ville, Memphis, Pitt, 'Cuse.

My Championship Game: Pittsburgh over Memphis.

Sweet Goodness

So I'm losing to my wife in our brackets, but not by much. But here's my Sweet 16 picks:

Tar Heels over Washington State (in a close game by Tar Heel standards)
Louisville over Volun-tears (and the Vols still have never been to the Elite 8)

Kansas over 'Nova (though I'd love to see the upset here)
Wisconsin over Stephen Curry (Eventually somebody's gonna guard him)

Michigan State over Memphis (in my real bracket I've got Memphis winning, but I've got a feeling with this one)
Hook'em Horns over Stanford (Only because Stanford is cocky enough to name themselves The Cardinal... Who does that? What about the Cardinals? Are they The cardinal? Kinda like The Ohio State University... Makes me sick...)

UCLA over WKU (Haven't you seen the commercials? There are no cinderellas)
Xavier over West Virginia (Bob Huggins can only take the Mountaineers so far)

*Side Note: I only had 9 of the 16 teams correct in my bracket... I certainly didn't pick all these matchups correctly coming in. That's what happens when you've got teams like Davidson and the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers in the mix. Or are they The Hilltopper?

Bracket Bulldogs

Anybody else got Georgia facing North Carolina in the NCAA Finals?

Mock Bubbles

I'm hoping to keep this quick this week... But there's two things that are completely useless in the world of sports (Unless your name is Joe Lunardi or Todd McShay or Mel Kiper, Jr. - The ESPNians who make there living off of the following...):

Mock Drafts and The Bubble Watch.

The NFL Draft is April 26 and 27, and on April 28th Kiper will have his 2009 Mock Draft already posted on the web. And it'll get updated about once a week between then and April 27, 2009.

Is this guy really making a living off of guessing over and over and over again about who's going to draft whom? Are you serious?

And then there's Joe Lunardi's Bracketology and Bubble Watch. Like we're all sitting on the edge of our seats waiting to see who the 12th seed will be. Has a 12th seed ever done anything worth mentioning?

I don't understand how these guys get paid big bucks to "project" who really will be in the NCAA tourney or when Matt Stafford will get drafted and by what team next spring. With everything that can happen between now and then, what are the chances that Kiper ever gets it right? I'd like to see some stats on this, people.

I don't understand how there's a market for this.

And then I do. And I think of the third thing that's completely useless in the world of sports... People obsessed with Bracketology and Mock Drafts.