Monday, March 23, 2015

Eat Mor Chikin (or at least, Jayhawk)

The smoke has cleared and two more high seeds are gone. Virginia's demise came as a big surprise to our contestants, all but nine of whom (that's 70, to the you-know-what-impaired) chose Virginia into the Elite Eight. UVa was also taken by 37 of us into the Final Four and by Brenner, Templeton, and C Whiteside as champion, while upset winner Michigan State was chosen by 17 of us as a wildcard and by M Peloso as an Elite Eight team. We weren't quite as enamored with Kansas (35 into Elite Eight, 7 (Burch, T Cristinzio, D Kedson, S Leach, K Ripley, Tester, J Whiteside) into Final Four), but it still came as a bit of a Shocker, especially to J Whiteside who took the Jayhawks as his national champ.

Much less of a surprise was Duke's (67 into E8; 49 into F4; 18 as champ) win over San Diego State (M Kleiman and Schiarabba into Elite 8 and 13 entrants' wildcard); Gonzaga's (58; 25; 3 (Booth, M Josephs, K Ripley) victory over Iowa (wildcard of Burch and Marshall); and Wisconsin's (70; 39; 11) success over Oregon (Haklar's wildcard).

The other three games concerned only a few of us, like the eight (Crotts, Hahn, D Josephs, D Kedson, E Pogach, Rybaltowski, Serri, Tester) who took Oklahoma into their Elite Eight and the three (T Joseph, T Joseph 2, Millan) who picked Dayton as their wildcard. West Virginia (chosen into the Elite Eight by Mahalko and Steinhardt) beating Maryland (14 into E8 and Da Dye, L Leach, Selarnick into F4) had a similar non-effect, but no less so than Louisville (7 -- Barone, Booth, J Broder, T Cristinzio, Crotty, Mahalko, Joe Mc -- into E8; Booth into F4) over Northern Iowa (14 into E8; Fitch and D Kornfeld into F4).

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