Once again, I’m breaking down the right side of the bracket, and make sure to check out Marken Madness to see the left side of the bracket. I can’t break down the entire thing. I’ll go insane trying to remember all of these stats and player’s names.
My right side of the bracket had no First Four games, which allowed me to dive into Friday’s game. I bought Kenpom, which is nerd heaven. It has every advanced stat known to mankind, and I’ve been staring at rows of numbers for the last 14 hours. I won’t bore you with all of those numbers as you’ve probably had to stare at your accounting books, and the last thing you want to see is more numbers. In my first write-up, I talked about UNC being my dark house, having no faith in Colgate or Florida, and Winthrop being a fun upset team in the South division. In the Midwest division, I talked about Illinois being my chalk pick, Oklahoma State being a fun dark horse, and thinking that Syracuse will get killed.
The games start to heat up with 11th seed Utah State vs. 6th seed Texas Tech. The 12th vs. the 5th and the 11th vs. the 6th are always fun and are on upset watch. I don’t see that happening in this game. Texas Tech played in the winningest conference in the Big 12. Texas Tech played in 16 games against teams that made the NCAA Tournament. It was the complete opposite with Utah State as they had a cakewalk in the Mountain West, which only had two teams make the big dance. Texas Tech had to try and pick up girls while every guy was handsome and rich. Utah State was the only guy in the bar who wasn’t 300 pounds, had all of his teeth, and had an actual job while everyone else was digging through ashtrays to find half-smoked cigs. I see Texas Tech easily winning this game.
Remember how I talked about the 12th seeds upsetting 5th seeds? Well, the next great game is 12th seed Oregon State vs. 5th seed Tennessee. Sound the motherfucking alarms upset watch is going to be in full effect. Oregon State is used to being the underdogs. They are the Disney version of a college basketball team. On neutral sites this year, they were underdogs 3 times, and they went 3-0 in those games. Tennessee is a defense-first team, but their offense is in the middle of the pack. Oregon State is just an overall good team. They aren’t an amazing offensive or defensive team, but they don’t have the huge difference like Tennessee. There’s a reason why Oregon State is the 12th seed they played in an easy Pac 12 and finished the season 17-12. It’s always fun to root for an underdog, and that’s what I’m going to do here.
Now that we got all of the basketball talk out of the way, what are your plans for the first day of the big dance? If you have a cooler, it’s always clutch to fill that with ice and dump beers in that thing and have that parked in the middle of your living room. There’s nothing worse than fighting with your buddies for who will get another round of beer. Imagine being the guy who is in the kitchen with a handful of beers, and you miss a buzzer-beater all because you were thirsty.
Times like this are when I hate where I live. I have no uber eats and no pizza delivery near me, so unless I want to miss part of the madness, I have to make my own food. Being drunk by noon and trying to cook food is never a good combo. The chances I forget to take the cardboard off the bottom of a frozen pizza and burn my house down are high. Are you going to have the food delivery guy at your house every hour bringing you more junk to stuff your face with?
Regardless of whatever you are eating or drinking, make sure to go extra hard. This is two-march madnesses combined, and if you’re not stumbling by the last game and wondering how you’re going to pay your bookie, you didn’t do it right.
