Disappointing

When Duke lost to Lehigh, I thought it was a portent of good things to come.  Unfortunately it was not the case.  Last night my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th most hated basketball teams, Louisville, Florida, and Ohio State, all advanced to the elite eight.  I can't wait for Pitino to leave Louisville so I can be a Cardinal fan again.  Tonight Indiana, 5th on that list, has a chance to join them in the next round.  If Kentucky doesn't win tonight, I might not watch any more basketball this season.

Weekend Update

It has taken me until now to recover from all the basketball last weekend.  Here in no particular order are the highlights from the weekend.

Murray State beat Colorado State 58-41.  As disappointing as the game against Marquette was, it doesn't overshadow the great 31-2 season.

Duke lost to Lehigh 75-70.  The game that Duke loses is always my favorite game of the tournament.  The fact that it happened in the first round against a 15 seed may make it my favorite game of all time.

Former Racers Mick Cronin and Mark Gottfried both reached the sweet sixteen.  I will keep cheering them on despite the fact that they ruined my bracket.

I ate my weight in Oreos.  I know that sounds impossible, but I it actually happened.  It was no easy task considering that with each Oreo that I ate my weight increased.  I also ate quite a bit of non-Oreo food that was really good, but it paled in comparison to the Oreos.  Did I mention that I like Oreos.  I just had to take a break from writing this to go to the kitchen and get an Oreo.

Ellen and I spent some time using the scenario generator trying to determine who needed to win the games to put either of our brackets in first place or put other people's brackets into last place.  I can no longer reach first (thanks Missouri and Florida State) but Ellen still can.

The lowest light of the weekend was watching all those commercials over and over again on live television.  It did lead to the stunning revelation that Mayhem and Dennis Duffy are played by the same actor.  It blew Ellen's mind.  She was torn between a love for Mayhem that is deeper than the Mariana Trench and a hatred for Dennis Duffy that burns with the intensity of a thousand suns.

I had my first fantasy baseball draft of the season Sunday night.  With the #1 pick I drafted Miguel Cabrera, then he broke his face the next day.

Game Notes

My favorite holiday is the second round of the NCAA tournament.  I stopped at Mark's Donuts on the way home from work Thursday morning, and I have not stopped eating yet.  The only times that I have left my couch in the past two days is to empty my bladder and refill my coffee cup.

I have watched most if not all of 31 of the 32 basketball games played so far.  I did not turned on the Duke/Lehigh game until there was less than two minutes left.  I hate Duke so much, that I will not watch them play, even when they are losing.  Though that little bit of the game that I watched was nearly my favorite part of the weekend.

Of course my favorite game so far was Murray State's 58-41 win over Colorado State.  The Racers shot poorly from the free throw line, the three point line, and from two point range.  Their usual difficulties with defensive rebounding continued.  Because of these struggles, Murray limped into half time down by one.  In the second half the defense that earned them a 30-1 record shutdown the Rams offense.  Now that the rust from the eleven day layoff is gone, Murray State is poised to make their first trip to the sweet sixteen.

The state of Kentucky has a 4-1 record so far.  The only loss was against another Kentucky school.  In addition to Murray State's win, two former coaches, Mick Cronin and Mark Gottfried, also won their second rounds games.

There have been a few moments when only one game was on, but more often at least two and sometimes four games were going on at once.  To keep from missing any of the games, I borrowed my roommate's laptop.  This was almost sensory overload.  Especially since I had the sound turned on for three of the games.

Missouri losing yesterday ruined the chances that my prediction bracket would win any awards.  I picked Missouri to advance to the final four.  The last time this happened to me was 2006 when Kansas lost their first round game to Bradley instead of in the championship game like I predicted.  I picked Duke to lose in the next round, so their loss did not hurt my brackets much (though even if it had, it would have been worth it).

I should be glad that Missouri, the #2 seeded team in the West, was upset yesterday, but I'm not.  If Murray beats Marquette, they play the winner of the Florida/Norfolk State game.  I think the Racers matched up better against Missouri than Florida.  But I will wait to worry about that game after the Marquette game today.

Tourney Time

The six division one basketball teams from Kentucky are members of four different conferences.  Murray State, Western Kentucky, and Louisville all won their conference tournaments.  The state had a chance to win all four tournaments until those losing losers from Losington lost to Vanderbilt.  Somehow UK got an at large bid giving the state four teams in the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1995.  Three times in the last seven years two instate teams have been forced to play each other in the first or second round.  If WKU can win tonight, they will play UK on Thursday.

I really like Murray's bracket.  There is no really good big until Michigan State, which would be an elite eight game.  Of course that means that their opponents likely play a similar style of basketball as the Racers do.  This year is the first time that I have picked Murray to win their game since 1999 against Ohio State.  Yes I do still have all of my brackets since 1993.  This is the second year in a row that I have picked the OVC champion to advance to the sweet sixteen.  Last year Morehead State beat Louisville but then lost to Richmond.  A higher seed for MSU would have been nice, but playing in Louisville is more important.

Racer Withdrawal

Today is the first Saturday in months that I there has not been a Murray State basketball game to watch.  To fill my Racer needs, I turned to the dvr and the internet.  I watched the tournament win over Vanderbilt from two seasons ago.  Unfortunately back then all the games were on CBS instead of the four channel schedule that started last season.  My local station was showing an earlier game that went into overtime.  As a result, I only have the second half of the Murray game recorded.  The game was just as great as I remembered, though not as stressful this time around.  It was really strange seeing Ed Daniel with short hair.  Here are some of the game highlights.

Here's another highlight from that season.

This is a video made by CBS Sports recently.  Earlier this week I went searching for Aubrey Reese's buzzer beater against SEMO in the 1999 OVC title game.  All I could find was a low quality twelve minute video that took forever to buffer.  Since I could not find a good clip of that shot, I will leave you with this instead.

Next up on the dvr is last season's win over Stanford.

Funny Anecdotes from Work

The other day at work, a truck driver said to my supervisor, "I heard that you married an eighteen year old."  Actually I don't remember the exact quote, but it was something like that.  Tony quickly said that he was not, but that I was.  I stated emphatically, "I would shoot myself in the head before marrying an eighteen year old."

This morning I was dumping sacks of mail.  The container of empty sacks was sitting about five feet away from me.  Empty sacks have almost no weight to them, so they have to be thrown in a way that keeps them from catching too much wind.  I usually throw them with a frisbee type motion.  One time I had to hurry my throw as my supervisor was about to walk through the flight path.  The sack unfolded and fell short of the target.  Raymond laughed and said, "Mr Kentucky."  For those of you who don't speak basketball, this was a reference to the fact that basketball was invented, perfected, and is worshiped in Kentucky, my home state.  The fact that the sacks are orange helps the analogy.  It is possible that he was also referring to the rumor that has circulated through the post office that I was an All-American basketball player in college.  Unfortunately a car wreck following my senior year injured my knee and kept me from reaching the NBA.  I am still amazed how many people were gullible enough to believe that story considering the source, and how many people stopped believing it after actually seeing me play basketball.