The Madness Begins

According to ESPN, "week one" of Championship Week is upon us. How can something named "Championship Week" have more than one week in it? Well remember, these are the same people who when Joe Lunardi updates his page, flash his latest guesses on their news crawler as "breaking news." Kentucky moves from 'last four in' to 'first four out.' Oh, my.

But obviously we all have to live with the foibles of the Worldwide Leader. After all, we wouldn't want either Dennis Rodman or North Korea to threaten a nuclear attack against us, would we?

Tuesday marked the first conference tournament games of 2013. So it also marked the first failures for our contestants, as 17 entrants lost a conference winner on the opening day. UNC-Ashville got clobbered by Longwood in the first round of the Big South tournament, contrary to the predictions of Bi Acchione, Booth, Grossman, Steitz, M Josephs, M Kline, D Kornfeld, M Leach, Su Leach, J McAtee, L Schlegel, R Simon, and M Wanger, while also in the Big South, Coastal Carolina (chosen by Coach Doc, Gorenstein, Karlsruher and Sanders) was whipped by Liberty. Day two of week one of the Week was marked by 24 additional contestants with punctured dreams, 23 of whom picked Bryant in the Northeast conference (though unfortunately they are too numerous to conveniently mention individually). Finally, much to the commissioners' pronunciative delight, someone also picked Quinnipiac (Rubinson).

In an impressive display of anti-acumen, Bi Acchione, M Kline, and M Wanger have each in the first two days lost two of their conference champions (all choosing both UNCA and Bryant). If you count those who chose ineligible conference champions, then you can add Grossman, Steitz, Cristinzio, J Donadio, Leace, and M Peloso to this illustrious group.

Tonight we have conference tournament games from the Atlantic Sun, Big South, MVC, OVC, and WCC. Make sure to watch that ESPN news crawler!