Eightness

The Tourney starts back up tonight, and we'll get our first four forays into the Final Eight. In the early games, Villanova (chosen into the Elite Eight by 44 entrants) takes on Miami (picked by 20), while Oklahoma (favored by 50) tries to corral Texas A&M (taken only by Pogach). In the later games it's most favored Kansas (62) against Maryland (32), and Oregon (16) vs. Duke (Grossman, J McAtee, B Whiteside, J Whiteside, plus the 31 who picked the Blue Devils as their wild card).

Tomorrow, we'll see Virginia (57) against Iowa State (7: Grossman, Miller, Pogach, Smith, Templeton, R Wanger, J Whiteside) and Wisconsin (Da Dye, Do Dye) vs. Notre Dame (Sciarabba) in the early games, while later on North Carolina (54) exchanges shots with Indiana (4: Coach Doc, L Schlegel, Sciarabba, J Whiteside). Oh, yeah, Syracuse plays Gonzaga, too, though you wouldn't know it from our contestants' predictions (or lack thereof). Nobody took either one of them.

As we mentioned Sunday, 56 of us foolishly favored Michigan State into the Elite Eight. Also wrong were the 42 of us who chose Xavier, the 22 who cared for Kentucky, the 16 who went with West Virginia, and the 11 each who chose Iowa and/or Wichita State. The following were not only mistaken, they didn't have a lot of company:

Arizona: 5 (Anania, D Kedson, Kovolski, Sa Leach, Tester)
Purdue: 4 (Mad Leach, Su Leach, Miller, Rybaltowski)
Texas: 3 (Baumgarten, L Leach, Sa Leach)
Utah: 3 (Nocilla, Sciarabba, B Whiteside)
Baylor: 3 (Booth, Sa Leach, Rybaltowski)


Special mention goes to Miller and Sciarabba, who chose uninvited Valparaiso into their Elite Eight. Special jeers go to J McAtee and Tharp, who chose ineligible SMU into theirs. And the most specialest mention of all goes to J McAtee who devoted almost 40% of his Elite Eight to ineligible SMU, Temple (only entrant to choose them) and Dayton (ditto on the only part).

Enjoy the games.