First day of the tournament - First 2 games

Welcome to the 2018 NCAA March Madness pool.  There is some good news and some bad news to report already.  The good news is that we are pretty close to the same number of entries as last year (currently about 212).  I used a different e-mail address this year for some of the messages I've been sending out, and I think that caused some confusion.  I also have been having some problems with Yahoo in that batches of e-mail come in all at once, and a lot of them are times stamped for several hours before.  So, if you've sent me picks, but you don't see your name in the standings yet, it could be that they haven't arrived in my inbox yet.  That's not your fault.  As soon as they get here, as long as they are times stamped before now, I'll include them.

The other bad thing starting out my day is that I had a fever of about 100, so I had to postpone my usual trip to my brothers place and no longer have the luxury of 4 screens to watch basketball.  I only have my one screen, which is OK, but it's not the same.  The plus side is that I'm starting to feel better, so I think I'll probably make the trip tomorrow.  Also because I feel sick, I missed out on VG's Donuts for at least one day.  I do love VGs Donuts.

This year, I'm going to try using Google Docs to allow everyone to see everyone's picks.  In the past, I had done something similar when I only used e-mail.  Since all the scoring is done in a spreadsheet, and I had to transcribe people's picks if they sent them to me in a PDF, I want to make sure everyone double checks my work.  I don't want to get into a position where I entered something wrong and it makes a difference in the outcome.

There are a few picks this year that I think are pretty interesting.  I entered Barack Obama's picks.  I wanted to enter James Comey's picks, but he left about 4 games blank, so I didn't add him.  I added Seth Davis because he's terrible at picking, but still gets paid to be on TV as an "expert".  I also included 3 brackets that are computer rankings from Ken Pomeroy and Jeff Sagarine.  I also saw that someone going by the name of Malcolm X sent in two brackets, so it'll be interesting to see if he wins, and I have to wind up paying the Shabazz estate for picking from beyond the grave.

But games are starting, so let's get to some stats.

Games go off this morning at pretty regular intervals, so I'll just provide stats 2 games at a time.

First game of the day is Oklahoma / Rhode Island.

Vegas Line: Rhode Island -2.5

Picks for Rhode Island: 118

Picks for Oklahoma: 94

On paper, this looks to be one of the closest games of the day, so probably a good one to start off with.  The only 2 games that have a smaller point spread are Virginia Tech / Alabama and Miami / Loyola.  Oklahoma was one of those teams that has been playing pretty poorly lately, so it will be interesting to see if they can turn it around.  32 people have the winner of this game in the Sweet 16,           9 people have them to the Elite 8 and 3 have the winner all the way to the Final 4, so there 's a lot more at stake here than your average 7/10 game.

Tennessee vs. Wright State

Vegas Line: Tennessee by 12

Picks for Tennessee: 204

Picks for Wright State: 8

Tennessee seems to be the prohibitive favorite here.  Only one person has Wright State winning any more than just this game, so if this turns into an upset, it will be a pretty big one.  At least 12 people had Tennessee in the Final 4, including 2 people having them winning it all.

Ok, that's it for now.  I'll be sending out some more stats shortly.