Day II - First 2 games

Good morning everyone.  I am revived and refreshed and ready for another day of college basketball.  Much like yesterday, the morning games seem more staggered, so I will be providing updates two games at a time in the morning and then 4 games at a time later tonight.  After today, we will have 32 teams left.  More than half the games will have been played, but only 1/6 of the points will be won or lost.

Here are the details for the first 2 games of the day:

Picks for Cincinnati: 155

Picks for Iowa: 72

Vegas Line: Cincinnati -5

If you recall from yesterday, 2/4 “upsets” came from the 10/7 game.  The only 7 seed to advance so far being Wofford.  That could be a bad omen for Cincinnati.  That being said, I think Cincinnati was pretty under-seeded in this tournament, having won the AAC conference tournament against the likes of Temple, UCF & Houston.  I also think that Iowa has a little of the stench that Marquette had coming into this game.  They were pretty good earlier in the season, but then faded pretty hard down the stretch here.  Honestly, if the NCAA took into consideration a teams last 10 games like they used to, Iowa would be in danger of not making the tournament at all.  We’ll see.  34 people have the winner of this game winning at least one more game, so there is something at stake.

Picks for Mississippi: 110

Picks for Oklahoma: 117

Vegas Line: Mississippi -1

Another classic 8/9 game.  Truly a toss up, and truly a “tie-breaker” game, as only 5 people have the winner of this game winning another game.  When I say it’s a “tie-breaker” game, what I mean is this:  The way the points are structured in this pool, you more or less can’t win unless you pick the winner of the tournament.  With so many people entered, you probably need to get both teams in the Championship game, and probably 3 of the final 4 (although I’ll calculate the actual needs, this is just an estimate).  So, say you take Duke to win it all, and they do.  What will determine whether you win or lose could come down to how you do in games like this one.  If you chose someone like Houston to win it all, less so because if Houston wins it, you aren’t competing with as many other people that also picked Houston.  These games become a little lower stakes if you picked a dark horse champion, more high stakes if you took chalk.  Let anxiety set in accordingly.

So my brother is at work today, so it is up to me and his two cats, Tacocat and Big Frank to figure out how to work the 4 screen set-up.  Games are about to start so wish me luck!!!!