Madness!

March Madness begins (for real) tomorrow, so time is running out if you haven't filled out your brackets yet. As if anyone in the world could possibly care, I've finally filled mine out and you can see it (if you want), HERE. (After the games begin on Thursday).

Highlights of my picks in this year's Tourney:

• Notre Dame beats Old Dominion, but loses to a Baylor Bears team that makes a nice run all the way into the Final Four where they lose to West Virginia.
  
• #1 seed Duke gets taken out by Texas A&M (game being played in Houston) and thus failing to advance beyond the Sweet Sixteen.
  
• Baylor beating #2 seed Villanova in the other South Region semi-final (in Houston) to advance to the Elite Eight match-up versus Texas A&M.
• #1 seed Kentucky losing to #4 seed Wisconsin in their Sweet Sixteen match-up.
  

My Elite Eight:

1. Kansas
2. Ohio State
3. Syracuse
4. Kansas State
5. Wisconsin
6. West Virginia
7. Texas A&M
8. Baylor

The Final Four:

1. Kansas
2. Syracuse
3. West Virginia
4. Baylor

I have Kansas defeating West Virgina in the final game to win the National Championship.

Irish Round-Ballers Need a Parachute

OC Domer readers know that I'm pretty one dimensional as a blogger, generally sticking to football-related topics. There are a few reasons for this. One reason is that when I blog on other topics, like politics, I catch a bunch of grief from uninformed readers telling me that I should stick to football. Another reason is that when I branch out to post about other topics, like Irish basketball, bad things can happen. Let me explain.

On January 13th, at the tail end of a post about the importance of John Latina being afforded the chance to "pursue other opportunities," I gave a shout out to the Notre Dame basketball teams and wrote:

Irish Basketball rocks. If you haven't been following Irish hoops, you should. The Big East is dominating the rankings, and the Notre Dame men's team is hovering just outside the Top 10 right now. They already have several quality wins, and really for the first time in a long time there is no question of them making the NCAA tournament. Not to be outdone the women's team is ranked in the Top 10 with an overall record of 41-1 (3-0 Big East) heading into tonight's game against Marquette.

It is now time for me to personally apologize to the Notre Dame men's basketball team, the University, and Irish fans everywhere. Clearly my January 13th post jinxed the program and sent them into a free-fall that does not appear likely to end in a soft landing.

Prior to my post, the Irish were 12-4, just coming off a tough overtime loss to Louisville. Since my post, Notre Dame has lost six in a row (Syracuse, U-Conn, Marquette, Pitt, Cincy, UCLA). The worst loss was of course last Saturday on National T.V. against UCLA 89-63. Sadly, the game was not even as close as the final score indicated. There aren't many cupcakes on the remaining schedule, so Irish chances of making the NCAA tournament likely depend on either a very strong finish in league play or a deep run in the the Big East Tournament (at Madison Square Garden, a venue where the Irish have not had great success).

I hope the basketball team and the wider world of Notre Dame fandom will accept my apology. I promise, no more basketball posts. For now. Hopefully this will clear the air of any bad basketball karma or voo-doo or fate and allow the Irish to get back to business and snap this nasty 7-game losing streak.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled football blogging, free of any snarky blog comments about the stock market free-fall since President Obama took office, or the pork-filled-delayed-spending-stimulus bill that will nationalize America's health care system by stealth, or the multitudes of tax cheats and lobbyists in the "most ethical administration in history," or Obama's full-scale adoption of Bush-era security policies that were inhumane and unconscionable two months ago but which don't look so bad now.

The Worldwide Leader Needs More Bandwidth

I'm doing pretty well so far in the tourney. Through 20 games I'm 18-2 (Drake lost in OT, BYU fell to Texas A&M). No serious damage to my brackets yet.

I only entered one on-line bracket challenge this year, at ESPN.com. I enjoy listening to Colin Cowherd in the mornings on ESPN radio, and he started up a group for himself, some of his ESPN buddies, and his listeners, so I joined the group and am doing pretty well so far (I don't expect it to last).

The interesting thing is that ESPN's web servers are really struggling to keep up with service demand. When asking for my real-time brackets to display, pages are loading slowly, if at all. Frequently you get a "page unavailable, check back later" message." Most recently, I'm getting error messages saying that the pages can't be found at all. So, if you are in the Bristol, Connecticut area and see a column of smoke rising from the ESPN campus, it's probably because their web servers are melting down. The problem was very noticeable yesterday as well, and I'm surprised that a company with the resources of Disney, Inc. couldn't find a way over the course of 24 hours to add more bandwidth.

Madness, 2008 Edition

Yes, I have blogger guilt over the low productivity lately. But surveying the blogging landscape it is clear that I'm not the only blogger out there with a case of the Spring doldrums. For several weeks now I've been on the verge of writing my "Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead" article devoted to Hillary Clinton's spectacular defeat, but the bit*% won't die! And I just have a hard time getting fired up about NBA basketball, regular season college basketball, hockey, or spring training. Hence, a lull.

But it's March, and the real beginning of March Madness is just a few hours away. (Who else cringes every time they hear the phrase "first round of the tournament" used in reference to the play-in game between the 64th and 65th seeded teams? Can we just un-do that horrible mistake and pretend it never happened?) Before the tournament gets under way, I had just a couple of thoughts, and I wanted to get my picks on the record so that I can totally gloat later if I guessed, errr, "predicted" correctly.

First, congratulations to Coach Mike Brey and the Fighting Irish for a great regular season and for landing a #5 seed in the tourney. Coach Brey has done an outstanding job of building the program up from one that was maybe on the bubble each year if they were lucky to one that is consistently in the tournament at a very respectable seeding. That's a big step up in overall quality. We still need to fix that Madison Square Garden jinx, and it's now time for the program to take the next step up to winning some big games and becoming a regular Sweet 16, Elite 8 level team. I think that can start this year. In my bracket, I have the Irish losing to UNC in the round of 16.

As for my brackets, understand that I haven't watched a lot of college hoops this year, and I spent a total of about 25 minutes making my picks before heading off to a doctor's appointment yesterday. What this means is that if my picks are better than yours, you are weak! Here are my picks for teams making it to the Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final 4, and the Final:

Sweet 16:

1. UNC
2. Notre Dame
3. L'Ville
4. Tenn
5. Kansas
6. Vandy
7. K State
8. G-Town
9. Memphis
10. Pitt
11. Stanford
12. Texas
13. UCLA
14. U Conn
15. Xavier
16. Duke

Elite 8:

1. UNC
2. L'Ville
3. Kansas
4. G-Town
5. Memphis
6. Texas
7. UCLA
8. Duke

Final 4:

1. UNC
2. G-Town
3. Memphis
4. Duke

Tournament Final: University of North Carolina defeats Memphis.

Let the madness begin! And thank goodness the Irish don't have to play the opening game in New York!

Madness. Irish stone cold in Spokane.

Props to Winthrop, who outplayed Notre Dame today in almost every facet of the game. The Irish, a #6 seed who thought they should have been a #4 seed got dropped by a #11 seed who showed up ready to play today. I don't know if it is on the players or on Coach Brey, but Notre Dame looked horrible shooting the ball today. Overall they shot 43%, but were only 3 of 13 from the free throw line. 3 of 13? Likewise, they shot only 22% from 3-point range (5 of 22). Live by the 3, die by the 3. The Eagles, by way of contrast, hit 8 of 22 from deep, and 10 of 19 free throws. Not great, but good enough. Equally galling was the poor rebounding. Notre Dame had 31 rebounds to Winthrop's 40. And to top it all off, the Eagles had 16 assists to ND's 6. The only category in which the Irish significantly outplayed the Eagles was fouls. Notre Dame committed 24 fouls to Winthrop's 13. Way to be physical guys.

So, Notre Dame gets to be part of the NCAA tournament highlight reel all weekend as Winthrop basks in the glow that comes from being Cinderella.

The only good news that I saw in the game was that, despite the poor performance, the team never gave up. They were down by 20 points and came all the way back to briefly take the lead late in the game before finally bowing out. That heart is at least something for a young team to build on next year.

Winthrop?

March Madness is here. I don't follow Notre Dame basketball nearly as closely as I do Irish football, but I have been interested to watch how well a promising BBall team rebounded from the loss of their starting point guard at the beginning of the season. Although they sputtered a bit at first, the team looked very strong at the end of the season and most "experts" projected them as a #4 seed in the tourney. Of course we got worked in the back room, and are actually a #6 seed in the "Midwest" region. Sounds okay, right? It is okay, except for two things. First, the "Midwest" has apparently been redefined in your atlas so that it now includes Spokane, Washington. Nice town, but it's not in the midwest. Which means we travel a long way from our midwestern home to play in the "Midwest" regional. The second issue is our draw. We play the Winthrop Eagles, who were undefeated in their conference this season and who have been picked as everyone's Cinderella team for this tournament.

Well, to that I say: Winthrop? Who the heck is Winthrop?

The 4th place team from the Big East will crush the Eagles like a bug! Then we will shock the world by defeating Oregon, before bowing out of the tourney against Wisconsin. That's my prediction. In my bracket I have a Wisconsin, Kansas, Georgetown, and Ohio State final four, with Kansas beating G-Town in the final.