The Sports Sauna: Notent Notables: NCAA First Round

Maybe I'm looking ahead, but I'm already excited for the UNC-Butler regional final.

One of my new schticks is to try to predict ahead of time how many points will be needed to win the game. With five minutes to go in the Lackadaisicals-San Diego game, I predicted 60 points would win it. 60-60 was the final score at the end of regulation. Two minutes into OT I predicted 70 would be enough. The final score was 70-69.

I think Stephan Curry scores at least 30 against Georgetown. That game could definitely go either way, although Davidson doesn't even have a center on the roster to match up with Hibbert.

This one girl at Borders knew nothing about the NCAA tournament, but we talked her into filling out a bracket and, at the last second, entering the pool. The one bit of advice I gave her was "the lower numbered teams are the better teams." She subsequently turned in a bracket without a single upset in three of the four regions. Randomly she went nuts in the East: Tennessee over Washington for the regional final, with UNC losing to Indiana. She's not winning, but she's still very much in the mix.

A lot of bad commercials on CBS, but I'm fortunate that my dad sprang for the March Madness package on satellite so I can Q/V between the games. There are a couple I like. I find the Delta campaign highly amusing. And Jordan's ads are always excellent.

Speaking of commercials, instead of getting Jeff Bridges to voice a long boring monologue about Duracell batteries, they should have just edited the scene from The Big Lebowski where the Dude is lying on his back listening to bowling noises to have the walkman run out of batteries. Then Maude could bust in with her goons, and she could tell one of them to give the Dude new batteries. Then they'd all lie down and listen to bowling noises together.

You know what? At some point, somebody should have realized that there was no way the Pac-10 suddenly became the powerhouse conference that the stats and the experts said they were. In retrospect, that somebody should have been the Sports Sauna. I apologize.

Watching Clemson struggle against Villanova reminded me of two games. First, the massive rout Villanova mounted in the second half against Syracuse in this year's Big East tournament. Second, the Texas A&M upset of Syracuse two years ago, when Texas A&M clearly had more talent than your average 12-seed.

I'm going to come right out and say it; I kinda...sorta...like Bobby Knight on ESPN. The first time I flipped to ESPN and he was on, he made me really uncomfortable and I had to change the channel. Think about that for a second. Can you imagine if the majority of the feedback ESPN gets regarding Bobby Knight is, "Yeah, I had to change the channel because I felt uncomfortable." I don't think that's what they're going for. Since then, I've gotten used to him, and realized that 90% of what he says is tongue-in-cheek or sarcasm. Now he actually gets me laughing. Granted, the laughter is mostly a nervous reaction to seeing him staring at me through the camera, but I'm not changing the channel any more. Plus, having just left the game he brings a lot of pertinent knowledge to the table.

Speaking of ESPN, Rece Davis is doing yeoman's work anchoring a show that includes Dick Vitale and Bobby Knight. Thank goodness Digger Phelps is there, or Rece Davis might be the first sports anchor to have a nervous breakdown on camera. But seriously, I think it really helps Knight to have Vitale and Digger on either side of him. They both respect Knight, but they both know him well enough to get lost in his intense personality. Still, at the end of the day Rece Davis gets the bulk of the credit for the success of those shows.

Generally very good commentating with, of course, the glaring exception of Billy Packer. At this point I'm picking blowout games with The Great Bill Raferty over close games with Packer. I hate the inertia that rules broadcasting assignments. Packer will call the final four because he has for three or four decades and he still works for the station that owns the NCAA rights. They should rotate that position a little bit.

There were at least three guys named Hansbrough playing today. None of them will be a great NBA player. (Thank you, thank you! I'll be here all weekend!)

I ended up not submitting my ultra-conservative bracket I created based on the musings I rambled on about on Tuesday. I didn't like the strategy after I came up with it, nor did I like the blog after I wrote it. Instead, I submitted two other intelligence/gut brackets. One has UNC, Texas, Vandy, and UCLA in the final four with the Bruins winning it all. The other has UNC, Georgetown, Duke, and Memphis with Georgetown winning it all. Currently, they are both almost at the bottom of the standings. The only person doing worse than me is the guy who is helping me run the pool. We're running the pool, we were the only two people to submit two brackets and we were in dead last after one day. My ultra-conservative Bracket, by the way, would be tied for first with three other guys (as of 6:30pm this afternoon).

Besides the 1-seeds, here is a quick list of the teams that seemed most impressive after round one: Purdue, Stanford, Pittsburgh, Butler, Texas, Siena, Louisville.