Day 1: Tide Rolls On

Late in my bracket-filling-out, I started to believe in Marquette, possibly through to the sweet 16. Clearly, I'm an idiot. Mike Gottfried might be a good March coach. Well, unless he has a good team. Look at these recent results for Alabama:

2006: advance to 2nd round as a 10-seed
2005: lost in 1st round to UW-Milwaukee as 5-seed
2004: advance to Elite Eight as an 8-seed
2003: lost in 1st round as 10-seed
2002: lost in 2nd round to Kent St as 2-seed

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Winthrop joins Pacific as nearly-Cinderellas. From what I caught, sounded like Winthrop played just as tough as last year against Gonzaga. Congrats on a good season, and count me as one who'll keep an eye on that program in future tournaments.

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Isn't it kind of bittersweet when a team pulls an upset over a mid-major? Like Montana knocking off Nevada. It's just not quite as fun as if they had beaten Washington or Pittsburgh or some other Big East team.

Same sort of thing if a major team pulls an upset as a low seed. Like if Texas A&M wins, at least from the perspective of non-SU fans, won't that be a lot less fun than Vermont's win last year?

If major Xavier beats mid-major Gonzaga, I'm going to puke.