Round of 32 preview

Good morning.  I was looking at last year's March Madness pool to get some perspective on the differences between this year and last.  I was thinking that this year seems to be substantially easier than last, and it turns out I was right.

First off, I had 213 entries last year, and 225 this year, so the numbers are pretty close.  The leader last year after the first round had 27 points.  That would be good enough for about 29th this year.  Something else to keep in mind is that there were three people that got 27 points in the first round last year, and they finished 52nd, 126th and 155th respectively.  Last year's winner only had 21 points after Round 1.  That would be good enough for about 210th this year.  Last year, it was 105th.

Also the thing to know was that he made his big move up the standings by going 4/4 on the second day of the Sweet 16, getting all 16 points that day to move from 148th to 31st.  He also happened to get points for Syracuse in the Elite 8, and had Villanova over North Carolina in the Finals.  The important thing to take away from this story is that whatever game is critical to you winning probably hasn't been played yet.  There's still over 83% of points still on the table.  It's anyone's tournament.

Another take away for me from looking at last year's standings.  Dan Dz. finished in 2nd place last year.  That's a pretty good hot streak for picking games if you factor in Round 1 of this year.

It looks like they are going to show 1 game at a time at the start of the day today for 2 games, and then start games off every hour after that.  I'll update standings as often as I can.

The first game of the day is West Virginia / Notre Dame.

West Virginia: 98

Notre Dame: 113

Other: 14

Vegas Line: West Virginia by 2.5

The thing to know about the rest of the tournament is that there doesn't seem to be a Cinderella.  Teams like Rhode Island, Middle Tennessee State and USC didn't win games because they were lucky or caught a superior team on a bad night.  These are good teams.  Looking at the point spreads today, there is only one game where a team is favored by more than 1o points.  Most games look like this first game.  A coin toss.  A very important coin toss because 33 people have Notre Dame in the Elite 8, 25 have West Virginia.  7 people have Notre Dame in the Final 4 to 6 for West Virginia.  That's a lot of points to leave on the table if you lose.  I guess this is what we get when most of the favorites win the opening rounds.  I suspect a lot of nig shakeups in the standings today.  I'll also predict that no one goes 8/8 today.  There are too many coin flips among the games for me to think someone will nail them all.  Good for you if you do.

Good luck to everyone!!!!!!