I really have not been a fan of Turner's need to shoehorn their broadcast crew into the tournament. With the possible exception of Barkley. And it also kept Jay Bilas out of the tournament, a huge negative.
Group A: Albert Pujols Group B: Adrian Gonzalez, Carlos Gonzalez Group C: Troy Tulowitzki, Matt Holliday, Ryan Braun Group D: Jason Heyward, Justin Morneau, Kendry Morales, Ike Davis, Geovany Soto Wild Card: Will PM
Between dead students, getting spanked by Navy, losing to Tulsa, ND's spectacularly pathetic exit from the NCAA tournament, and now this, it's been a heck of a last six months in South Bend.
I'm not remotely surprised. FSU was a hideous matchup for Notre Dame, and it didn't help that just like in Morgantown, the game was more or less officiated like a football game. Kudos to the Noles. They played about as well as it was possible for them to play for about the first 25 minutes, and that was more than enough.
If that answer is remotely true, it exemplifies why I dislike UNC even more than Duke, because you know Heel fans will be whining about every call Duke gets against Michigan (and there will probably be many).
If Notre Dame struggles the Big East could be down to two teams in the Sweet Sixteen. Big assist to the committee on that for needlessly scheduling two Big East games in the 2nd round. I still don't understand that. Would've been as easy as switching Cincy with UCLA and Marquette with Penn State. But picking against the Big East to do big things seemed sensible to me this year. Incredibly deep conference, but each team had flaws.
I'm pretty sure they've done it in past years also. So dumb. Since the 2nd-day sessions are always together, it's also the only way to give CBS an exclusive window for 2 games in a row, which they clearly wanted to do.
Because he's butt-hurt that Deron Williams isn't the best PG in the NBA I'm guessing. Or because of his SAT flap, since IG and most of the Illini fans are all about college hoops integrity, hence their hatred of all the rule-breakers, rumored and confirmed in NCAA coaching.
1) Lesley Visser is a train wreck. Plastic-surgery nightmare. The cameras were purposely staying on her as little as possible when her parts came up, too. 2) For all the talk of the Southeast, today the bracket went straight chalk except for Gonzaga over St. John's. 3) I've already lost four Sweet 16 teams and two Elite 8 teams. The lesson: being daring is stupid.
I'm all for the NFL changing to the college replay system, except that I don't want some shrouded-in-mystery "replay official" making the judgments. Keep it so the refs review video replays.
Rumors about Mike Brey being interested in NC State. I'm hopeful - and expecting - that this is just Brey using leverage to get some better facilities (ND has ranked 14th in the Big East in hoops spending of late).
Upon review, we got 65 of the 68 teams in, seeded 30 of them correctly and got 52 within 1 seed line. Far from great, but considering how inane some of the choices were, I don't think that's that bad. It's a Paymon score of 317, which is the same as last year, although obviously the max points went up with 3 more teams added.
In my first gut picks, I somehow ended up with two double-digit seeds in the Elite 8 (Missouri and MSU), Old Dominion and Gonzaga in the Sweet 16, only 2 Big East teams in the Elite 8 (Syracuse and ND - I fully expect that after last year when the Big East bit me by sucking, they will now bite me by doing well), and a Kansas over Duke final. I damn near picked A&M to beat ND in round 2 but I couldn't do it.
Notre Dame could have been a 1, but like I said, they missed their chance. I can't complain too much about the draw. A&M is a tough 2nd round game, but I'm not particularly scared of Purdue or G-Town. And to soccer regarding ND's placing in Kansas's bracket, that was probably for travel purposes. I'm sure ND was the top 2, but they weren't going to ship them cross-country just to accommodate that. I'm probably biased but I feel like the Southwest is the toughest bracket. Pitt's feels like it's easiest.