Thursday, March 10, 2016

The big boys in action

The big conference tournaments are under way. Excitement builds in the days leading up to Selection Sunday. But ironically, news in our contest is lightest around now. In fact, the biggest news of the day is for the 2017 tournament: the Ivy League announced they will have a four team tournament next season to determine the league's automatic bid. Hallelujah.

Those of you who called your bookie to employ the Butscher factor probably cashed in pretty good. As we predicted, Butscher's choice, Lehigh, dropped the Patriot League final to Holy Cross, a team that finished ninth in the low-major Patriot League with a 14-18 win/loss record, as well as having no supporters among our contestants. Butscher is now oh for 13.

The trend of our entrants' favorite failing to meet expectations continued in Conference USA, where UAB (chosen by 60 out 67) got conked out by nobody's choice Western Kentucky.

Other than that, very few entries have been affected lately. In the MAC, M Josephs's and L Leach's faith in Ball State was proven misplaced. Similarly, Tharp probably wishes he hadn't backed Texas in the Big 12. In the Big 10, T Joseph, Mad Leach, Rybaltowski, and R Wanger erred on the side of Iowa. The Vanderbilt dreams of Baumgarten, Da Dye, L Leach, and L Schlegel were dashed in the SEC. And Duke blowing a 16 point lead in the ACC presumably irritated J Donadio, Jr., Grossman, D Kedson, E Leach, J McAtee, and Tester.

Also in the ACC, we noticed that current leader T Cristinzio picked ineligible Louisville to win it. We'll go out on a limb and predict this won't be the last time you hear about that.

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