Before first games - Day 2

Good morning everyone!  I managed to make it home last night and got a really good night's sleep, so here I am revived and refreshed ready to watch another full day of basketball.  I learned a few things yesterday.  The first is that upsets seem to be wholly unpredictable.  The second is that a diet of pizza, chips and soda is probably not that good if you are trying to avoid indigestion.  I think I'll be drinking a lot more water today.

So the format for today looks a lot like it did for yesterday.  The first slate of games seem to go off in pairs every hour, and then the later games go off in sets of four more or less at the same time.  Given that, I think I'll be posting data roughly in the same time frames I did yesterday.  I think that was reasonable.

I am currently 0/1 in my underdog t-shirt strategy with Eastern Washington going down pretty easily to Georgetown last night.  Today I'm wearing my UC Irvine T-shirt.  It's one of my favorites because it's my only tie-dyed shirt.  I'm hoping that they pull off an upset of Louisville.  I know they have a 7'6" guy, and I am always partial to freakishly tall basketball players.  That's probably why my favorite player of all time is still and always will be Manute Bol.

So there's two games to start off this morning.

Kansas / New Mexico State:

Kansas: 202

New Mexico State: 4

Vegas Line: Kansas -10.5

I think this is a scary low line for a 2/15 game.  For some perspective, the other 2 #2 seeds today are favorites in the 17 or 18 point range.  It also looks like New Mexico State was a bit of a value pick here.  More than 4 people probably should have chosen them with a line this low.  I think that's why people think Kansas is vulnerable.  Plus, they went out pretty early last year, so maybe there's some residual memory of that.  I hope it's interesting.  I'd be totally OK with a Jayhawk loss here.

The second game is a game dear to my heart.  MSU/Georgia.

Michigan State: 180

Georgia: 26

Vegas line: MSU - 6

This pick distribution is wholly skewed for a 10/7 game.  Those that know my background should not be surprised by this type of pick.  I was born and raised in Michigan, so there's still a lot of people in this pool that have a background associated with Michigan, and especially MSU.  This game also means something to me because I spent 2 years at Georgia Tech, and there's a line in the fight song that says "To Hell with Georgia".  It's fair to say that I'm probably not going to find myself rooting for Georgia in any capacity, but especially not against the Spartans today.  Here's hoping this one is a blowout for MSU.  They do have a pretty incredible record in the tournament.

Hopefully your bracket didn't get destroyed yesterday.  A couple of sayings come to mind after the first day.  The first is that you can't win the pool on the first day, but you certainly can lose it.  Sadly, there's a few brackets that probably fall into this category.  The second is that any strategy you have in boxing works great until you get punched in the face.  Everyone is a genius with their picks until games actually start being played and results start coming in.  From there, it's pretty obvious that no one knows anything about anything.  Case in point, Seth Davis's picks are in the pool and they are currently tied for 190th place, and I believe he gets paid as a basketball analyst.

 
Good luck!!