Bracket Busted but hop along the Bruins Bandwagon!

Alliteration aside, my brackets took a hit on Thursday with the left half of my Final Four going down. J.J Manning, I mean Redick couldn't get his team past the Sweet 16 again and Gonzaga and Adam Morrison had the collapse to end all collapses. The silver lining is that Gonzaga only loss by 2 as they were 3.5 point underdogs meaning I move on in my Golf Ball-Spread Pool stealing UCLA as my team! While its easy to root for Gonzaga, I will enjoy cheering for UCLA as well. For one, the names on the team are fun to say and they have the best looking cheerleading/dance team in the country. They opened as a 3 point underdog to Memphis, a rematch of a game they lost by 8.

Atlanta: 6-8 (1-1)
Oakland: 10-4 (0-2, I mistakenly but correctly picked Memphis in Paul's Tournament Challenge Group)
Washington D.C.: 9-5 (1-1)
Minneapolis: 8-6 (1-1)

Overall: 33-23 (3-5)

Wrestlemania Moments: All Next Week!

Chances are you don't know or care but Wrestlemania 22 is a week from Sunday! Wrestlemania has always been a surefire sign of spring and been the center of some of the most fun moments in my life. I have had the privledge of attending three Wrestlemanias (XIV in Boston, XV in Philadelphia, X8 in Toronto). To provide trips down Memory Lane, I will provide retroblogs for all three Wrestlemanias and the weekends leading up to them spent with friends.

I hope you will read and enjoy whether you were there or not, for its the Showcase of the Immortals! All Next Week!

More on Adam Morrison

Earlier today, I outlined how Adam Morrison is integral to my success in my Office Pools. A little reassurance came in my friend Pete Thamel's column in today's New York Times. While I gave Pete a hard time that he was writing a column similar to his column last year on Andrew Bogut. This article centers around Morrison's father, John, a former high school and small college basketball coach and makes no mention of whether or not Morrison's girlfriend has dated Reggie Bush.

The article credits John with the intensity that Adam often displays on the court and makes him Scott's favorite college basketball and annoys Paul almost as much as Pete did in Booth Hall.

Pete Thamel Column

Pizza Parlor Madness: Bracket Redemption?

While 8 out of 16 Sweet 16 teams is a sub-standard performance. The office pool has hope in that all four of my Final Four teams are still alive. Unfortunately, there's a good chance so are everybody else's. The Sweet 16 begins tonight in Atlanta and Oakland with the Duke-LSU and Gonzaga-UCLA matchups being the main events.

Gonzaga holds in its hands my best chance to win money through the NCAA Tournament. For one, in my office pool, I have them going as far as the final game, which would be a surprise and is the only part of my brackets this point forward that isn't par for the course and my chance to gain ground on the rest of my office.

Also, I did a golf-ball draw with my old boss's friend a bar manager in Manchester. 64 golf balls are put into two buckets, one for each side of the bracket. If whatever team(s) you draw, win against the spread, you advance either with them or the team that wins. I drew Xavier and UW-Milwaukee. Xavier was a 6 point underdog to Gonzaga and lost by I believe 1 thanks to Adam Morrison's hulking up using the basketball, through that result I pick up Gonzaga. UW-Milwaukee easily beat Oklahoma whom they were a 2 point underdog to. I never saw the Second Round lines but UWM lost by 20 to Florida which would not have covered even the most misguided of spreads. Gonzaga ended Mike Davis' career as Indiana's coach by 10 in a game many picked them to lose, I doubt the line was more than 10.

Tonight Gonzaga is a 3 1/2 point underdog to UCLA. A final shot/minute game would get me the winner regardless, but I still feel Gonzaga is my best chance going forward. Here are my pool results (second round in parenthesis)

Atlanta: 5-7 (2-2)
Oakland: 10-2 (3-1)
Washington D.C.: 8-4 (2-2)
Minneapolis: 7-5 (1-3)

Lowest Seed Picked in Sweet 16: 7 Wichita State
Highest Seed Not Picked in Sweet 16: 3 Florida
Bracket Busters: Washington, Georgetown along with Bradley and George Mason, all First Round outs in my brackets, but we covered the last two in my last column. This has been a good tournament for schools with ties to the Constitutional Convention (Washington, George Mason, Georgetown) and Jesuit schools (Gonzaga, Boston College, Villanova).