I swear they look for dramatic matchups on purpose. If UVA wins their first game, they will play Texas, who has one of our former players who transferred out after last year.
Sadly Akron didn’t get that treatment, as their 3-14 matchup is with Creighton and not Illinois. Akron’s head coach was fired from Illinois before taking this job.
UVA is busy playing their worst game of the year. What a total embarrassment. I think that Natty in 2019 has cursed us for eternity. Or maybe I should stop originating these basketball threads! Ugh.
Be sure to get your 13-4 upset pick for Samford in. Kansas having a down year, trouble making shots in general, terrible at making 3-point shots in particular, trouble defending the 3-point line (which is where Samford lives), and their best player is out for the rest of the year.
Bumping this in case anyone else wants to get in. So far just @Kelan and me.
And I had already picked Samford to upset Kansas!
I’m in!
lol, “ArmandoPenBracket”
Hah! Good one!
The play-in game last night between Grambling State and Montana State was pretty entertaining. Lots of swings and overtime. Those guards on each team were pulling off some amazing shots and clutch shooting.
The play-in games are usually pretty scrappy as both teams fight for their lives and a seat at the grown-up table. Some of those winners have had some decent success in the next rounds, too. I used to think they were a clunky addition, but they have proven to be a good appetizer for the Thurs/Fri gauntlet.
I used to think that it would really suck to win your conference tournament to maybe get to the big dance for the first time in program history only to find out you weren’t really in the 64 team field after all and got a crappy play-in game. I believed the play-in games should be reserved for only the last teams to get at large bids. However, after hearing them say they still get credit with an NCAA tourney win and perhaps the program getting more exposure being the only game on at the time, maybe it isn’t as bad as I first thought.
I agree that they can be very entertaining, though, and could give them an advantage the next game if they get through.
Come on, BYU! You can do it!
In a repeat of 19th century history, the Catholics just chased the Mormons out of the midwest.
What is the deal with the games where people were playing to get a 10 seed in the bracket?
In recent years, they expanded the bracket from 64 to 68 to probably help a few more deserving teams to have a chance, and probably monetary reasons for the extra games. Half of the play in games are 10 seeds, which should be the last teams to get at large bids, and the other half are 16 seeds, which are determined by the committee to be the weakest teams in the field that got automatic bids. They play 4 separate games on Tue and Wed to determine which of those 8 total teams make it into the main tournament bracket of 64. There are many other automatic bid teams that win the various conference tournaments across the country so those fill out many of the lower 11-16 seeds. It just turns out that the 10 seed ends up being the sweet spot where the at large bids end up (just based on a quick answer/assumption based on my personal knowledge)!
Great explanation, Kelan.
Yeah, you have to kind of separate in your mind the difference between the seeding, and how good a team might look according to statistical analysis. So yeah, the 10th seeds are usually the “last in” sides that got at large bids, and usually come from power 6 conferences, or close to it.
Oakland about to bust a lot of brackets.
Finally we have a little tourney spice happening.
Coach Kampe has been at Oakland for 40 years. Wow. They are easy to root for.
