NCAA Basketball 18-19 Catch-All

We all fly time.

Ego Man wrote:

Well, that sucked

Yeah, join the club of running into the fright train known as Duke w/ Zion Williamson.

I was concerned when they came back from being down and got the half tied. Then Duke's defense just went insane in the second half.

MannishBoy wrote:

We all fly time.

We booked our flight on a 737 Max 8.

MannishBoy wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:

We all fly time.

We booked our flight on a 737 Max 8.

Ouch. Yeah, that game.... did not play out as I expected.

Tenn just giving away a probable 1-seed.

I wonder if Mich-MSU even matters? So late in the day. Committee might have bracket A and B with one of them a 2 and one of them a 3, and just flip flop the winner?

Stele wrote:

Tenn just giving away a probable 1-seed.

I wonder if Mich-MSU even matters? So late in the day. Committee might have bracket A and B with one of them a 2 and one of them a 3, and just flip flop the winner?

Some people keep arguing that the winner could get a 1 seed. I don't think I see that, but who knows.

Bracket reveal coming soon!

I still haven't seen if they're going to do the whole thing at once, or region by region again. Last year's show was kinda .. crap.

Yeah last year sucked. And 2 or 3 years ago when they tried to stretch it out to a full hour, the whole bracket got leaked on twitter.

So hopefully they find a happy medium.

And we're off. Not a ton of surprises so far, Belmont as a play-in. Potential Duke/VT rematch in the sweet sixteen.

MSU getting a 2 seed and not a 1.

Good that Belmont got in.

Baffling that Maryland is a 6 and Louisville a 7. I felt great when I saw them pop up because we are ahead of them in all rankings.

But then of course they put Minn against us. Pitino vs Louisville. Ugh. Bullsh*t that they don't look at matchups and storylines when they seed.

Yeah, they totally consider storylines. Potential Duke / Gonzaga matchup in the final 4? Potential UNC/ UK matchup in the elite 8? Etc.

What the hell is the NET ranking for then?

NCSU and Clemson left out at 33/35

Arizona St and St John's in at 63/73.

Ohio St and Minn in at 55/61. 8 Big 10 teams? Yeah right.

Stele wrote:

What the hell is the NET ranking for then?

NCSU and Clemson left out at 33/35

Arizona St and St John's in at 63/73.

Ohio St and Minn in at 55/61. 8 Big 10 teams? Yeah right.

I don't know. Actually, I wonder if they penalized the other teams in the conference by giving the ACC 3 #1 seeds. That's ludicrous if true.

I thought going 1-5 against 3 1-seeds and 1-2 against 3 2-seeds would be enough to get a 6 at least. Jeez.

Stele wrote:

I thought going 1-5 against 3 1-seeds and 1-2 against 3 2-seeds would be enough to get a 6 at least. Jeez.

Yeah, the seeding reasoning seems suspect. But I think it almost always ends up with questions. Ones we never really get answers to.

In the end, it's March, it's madness, and it's go time. Still my favorite time of year!

ESPN Bracket Group is up again. If you were in last year, you should be able to pick one bracket and rejoin the group.

This link should work as a direct invite if you haven't joined us before.

Or the group home is here and the password is "stan".

As depressing as I found this season, I’m in. Still picking Kansas.

Jayhawker wrote:

As depressing as I found this season, I’m in. Still picking Kansas.

Kansas has taken some serious body blows this year, for real. Despite that, they've played amazingly well in some games. I imagine, like UNC, there are teams that will just be built to take Kansas out of their game... and this year, you have the added wrinkle of being down several key players.

Take heart though, Bill Self and Kansas are typically Kryptonite for Roy and UNC. So if that game comes to pass, I'm sure it'll be a hell of a game!

Tyrian wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

As depressing as I found this season, I’m in. Still picking Kansas.

Kansas has taken some serious body blows this year, for real. Despite that, they've played amazingly well in some games. I imagine, like UNC, there are teams that will just be built to take Kansas out of their game... and this year, you have the added wrinkle of being down several key players.

Take heart though, Bill Self and Kansas are typically Kryptonite for Roy and UNC. So if that game comes to pass, I'm sure it'll be a hell of a game!

If that game happens, it will be in KC at the Sprint Center, which is basically the Jayhawks alternate home court. Self said he was shocked they placed them in the Midwest.

I'm really just put off about Kansas putting itself in harm's way to sign one and done players. I've never liked the emphasis Self put on them, and now they are the direct source of why Kansas is staring down some serious penalties, in my opinion. And it's a lot less fun to reminisce about the long streak of conference wins when it ended with them losing players to that investigation. So when they were getting away with it, they won like crazy.

But I did watch the Big 12 Tourney games, and I like what KU has done to rebuild itself. They got one of their freshmen bigs up to speed, as he was sitting out most of the season. That has them back to a three guard line-up instead of four. So I expect them to play better. But I doubt even being in KC is going to get them pass UNC.

Jayhawker wrote:
Tyrian wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

As depressing as I found this season, I’m in. Still picking Kansas.

Kansas has taken some serious body blows this year, for real. Despite that, they've played amazingly well in some games. I imagine, like UNC, there are teams that will just be built to take Kansas out of their game... and this year, you have the added wrinkle of being down several key players.

Take heart though, Bill Self and Kansas are typically Kryptonite for Roy and UNC. So if that game comes to pass, I'm sure it'll be a hell of a game!

If that game happens, it will be in KC at the Sprint Center, which is basically the Jayhawks alternate home court. Self said he was shocked they placed them in the Midwest.

I'm really just put off about Kansas putting itself in harm's way to sign one and done players. I've never liked the emphasis Self put on them, and now they are the direct source of why Kansas is staring down some serious penalties, in my opinion. And it's a lot less fun to reminisce about the long streak of conference wins when it ended with them losing players to that investigation. So when they were getting away with it, they won like crazy.

But I did watch the Big 12 Tourney games, and I like what KU has done to rebuild itself. They got one of their freshmen bigs up to speed, as he was sitting out most of the season. That has them back to a three guard line-up instead of four. So I expect them to play better. But I doubt even being in KC is going to get them pass UNC.

I'm not crazy about the 1-n-done thing that's commonplace in today's college basketball world. It's got money at the root of it, of course, which is why it's so hard to solve! I imagine a lot of the top coaches see the writing on the wall, though. To keep their programs relevant, you've got to recruit the top 5 stars. To get them to even give you a second look, you've got to have some kind of "in", whether it's a winning tradition, instant playing time, out of band relationship, etc... It's sort of a self-perpetuating cycle! Duke and Kentucky have demonstrated that aptly over the last several years. UNC probably would have as well, if not for the looming specter of the NCAA violations scandal stuff.

Regardless of all that, the midwest region does seem to have some "fun" teams to play against.

I'm also shocked at the number of people picking a UNC/Duke round 4 for the national championship. I almost think I'd rather lose in the final 4 than go through that and LOSE. I can't think of many worse things than losing to your arch-rival in the national championship.

I never win these, but I do try to win the best name in the group.

Looks like 10 in the group so far. Still time to pick until noon eastern Thurs

Stupid ad content... I can't get past the ad-block detection in firefox when privacy badger and uBlock origin are tweaked / enabled. I even tried disabling them entirely, but it still thinks there's an ad blocker in place.

Making it hard to catch the live stream games!

Followup annoyance with the web player (eventually got it to work in Chrome)... they hide the player controls during commercials! So you can't mute them (unless you mute the tab).

Tourney’s done, right? It’s just a one game deal, right?

Yep. Time to get drunk for 72 hours

There it is. Ja Morant triple double!

Go Racers.

Stele wrote:

There it is. Ja Morant triple double!

Go Racers.

Dude is for real. Crazy!

Thought Belmont might pull that one out against Maryland for a bit.

Auburn tried really hard to give one away. That was some kind of sloppy ending from both teams.

So Miller Lite has an ad campaign spoofing the Bud Light ad campaign that was in turn spoofing Game of Thrones?