March Madness 2008 - Round 1 Upsets

I'm feeling just a little tired. It's actually a bit of a struggle to catch anywhere close to 64 games in 2 days and remember something significant about any particular game.

That's why running a March Madness pool works well for me. I can concentrate less on remembering particulars of specific games and more on how my family, friends, colleagues and I are doing in the overall prediction race.

As of slightly after midnight last night, I had fallen from my position atop the pool standings to a more modest tie for 6th place. Not that it makes much of a difference overall, since each accurately predicted game point accumulation doubles with each round. Today's and tomorrow's games will see quite a bit of movement in the pool standings.

There were some minor upsets during the first round - Arkansas beating Indiana and Texas A&M beating BYU. I actually got burned in those 8th and 9th ranked games in 3 out of 4 predictions. But what really surprised me (even though you know ahead of time that there will be upsets) was 4th-ranked Connecticut falling to 13th-ranked San Diego, 5th-ranked Drake falling to 12th-ranked Western Kentucky, 7th-ranked Gonzaga falling to 10th-ranked Davidson (but Stephen Curry's performance was the highlight of the tournament thus far for me), 6th-ranked USC falling to 11th-ranked Kansas State, 4th-ranked Vanderbilt falling to 13th-ranked Sienna, and 5th-ranked Clemson falling to 12-ranked Villanova. That's 6 major upsets!

Then there were the close calls, like 2nd-ranked Duke squeaking by 15th-ranked Belmont by a point.

Viewing and remembering games will be a little easier now that we're into round 2 of March Madness...not a lot, just a little easier. At least some of the games won't be scheduled at roughly the same time.

So now, I prepare for another two weekend days with the TV on, a couple notebook computers close by (one for the on demand VIP streaming video and another to do a little real work) and wondering how my long-suffering wife will put up with nothing but NCAA hoops.