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OMG I LOVE IT.

I don't care how far I had Louisville going, THAT is why this is my favorite day of the year. Screw the Big East and go insane Morehead States of the world!

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

Kenneth Fareid has just become one of my favorite people of the week. That was a massive performance. The end of this Temple/Penn State game is going to be amazing, too. I haven't even turned on the Liverpool match yet because today has been so fantastic for basketball.

Edit

And it looks like I don't need to bother.

Edit

Oh, I was so excited from basketball I was reading the aggregate score as today's score. Go Pool!

This post has been edited by Rangers51 on 17th March 2011 20:17

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN? Or perhaps buying a really good looking shirt?

Quote (Kappa the Imp @ 14th March 2011 03:39)

Duke could have/would have repeated if Kyrie Irving didn't get injured. Thank God.

I put Duke down to win anyway and then read he could be back for the first game. ESPN If he isn't back from injury can Duke call him for future games, or do they need to use the same team?

This year I've just seen red worse than last year's Kansas crash. I had Louisville for runner-up. Gutted. Also hilarious. Wrecked bracket in one of the first games.

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.

does this mark the first year that everyone remembered to fill in their entries?

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"We're not tools of the government or anyone else. Fighting... fighting was the only thing I was ever good at, but at least I always fought for what I believed in." - Frank Yeager (a.k.a. Grey Fox)

Yeah, it definitely does, heh. Good eye.

I guess I went a little TOO upset-happy, even in one of the craziest first days I can ever remember in a tournament. I lost two Sweet 16 teams yesterday, ouch.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN? Or perhaps buying a really good looking shirt?

I see a lot of red on my bracket... and that means it's a good year.

I think the tourney is already better than the (absolutely insane) 2009-2010. Love Morehead State, love Gonzaga (they looked really good! St John's is not a good barometer though...). LOVE Butler. I don't know why I never pick them far enough... I guess I felt like last year was all the good mojo they could get for a few years. But wow, awesome last shot, Matt Howard. I still love you, even if you are a hack machine.

Although I won't have quite as much time to watch all the early games today, I think it'll be another great one. Games to watch:

Villanova/George Mason: GM has all the hype in the world, but I think Nova's got a bit of a chip on their shoulder to keep it close.

Marquette/Xavier: Scrappy, mid-level teams... I'd like to see how good Holloway really is

Georgia/Washington: Washington probably has the most hype in the field right now (even more than KState and GM). Let's see it, Isaiah Thomas (holy cow, this team can SCORE)

VCU/Georgetown: SHOULD be a blowout... but we all know how GTown is when March rolls around. But I like their team this year, so I want to see Chris Wright be an impact player.

Should be good! Hope to enjoy these games with some of you in chat later today

This post has been edited by Kappa the Imp on 18th March 2011 12:25

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I find your lack of faith disturbing...

Opened 13-3 yesterday. I'm sure Louisville losing may of thrown a couple brackets off as I had them winning along with Belmont and Missouri.

Dayum that GMU game was good. Plenty of drama, comeback finish, it was all there. Great game.

If I had known that Kyrie Irving was going to be available, I would have picked Duke to win it all. Now they might very well repeat. I'm going to unofficially (because the picks are locked in) change my prediction to Duke winning it all. Irving is a game-changer for a team that was already a 1-seed without him.

My bracket's toast. I'm pretty sure I had Louisville in my final four. Nice knowing you guys.

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER

Well, I like where I stand heading into the round of 32's.....only one Sweet 16 team gone (Michigan State...guh) and the rest intact.


Del's tiebreaker score is 12-15.

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The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"

Man, Duke with Kyrie back looks amazing. He only played i think 16 minutes and still scored like 14 points. Of course, it was 16 seed Hampton, but still! I'm glad I picked them to beat Ohio State in the Final Four because I think that might actually happen. I'm not too happy about the buzzer beater losses I have accumulated though (3 of my 6 missed picks). I'm looking at you Old Dominion, Louisville, and Penn St.

I hope this isn't too off topic, but I just watched the NCAA Wrestling Championships on ESPN yesterday and it was awesome. I used to wrestle back in high school, and haven't seen much of it since then. Did anyone else see this?

One of the most amazing parts was this guy from ASU who had only one leg! And he was in the championships! That was pretty impressive. I think that's one of the cool things about wrestling: you can have guys like that, blind guys, deaf guys, etc. all being able to compete at the same level as everyone else.

Anyway, I figured it's an NCAA topic, so hopefully it kind of fits... feel free to delete this if not.

Who does Temple think they are?

Who does Butler think they are?

Who does Gonzaga think they are?



If those 3 games go bad, it's 100% gg for me. BYU and SD State in the Final Four, Pitt in the Elite 8. Yikes!

--------------------

The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"

Holy crap, the end of the Pitt / Butler game was incredible. There's a lot of discussion about whether or not the fouls at the end were legit, but I love that both of them were called. I was fuming at the first one, since I loves me some underdogs, but I absolutely loved that the refs weren't afraid to correctly call the end of a game. I have no doubt that the shenanigans in the Rutgers / St. John's game in the Big East tournament had some impact on the way this game was called.

Glad to see a lot of mid-major love in the S16. Butler, BYU, SDSU, and Richmond are all there now, and VCU could join them tomorrow (but hopefully they don't)!

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

Oh ****. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh damn.

Bye guys.

Good lord..... Duke better win.

yeah I'm screwed, I had Syracuse in the top 2. I don't know... they were pretty good a few years ago right?

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"We're not tools of the government or anyone else. Fighting... fighting was the only thing I was ever good at, but at least I always fought for what I believed in." - Frank Yeager (a.k.a. Grey Fox)

-checks bracket-

Well, that's a lot of red. Lol.

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You're telling me that there's no hope.

I'm telling you you're wrong.

I love that I am down to having only have of an E8 but still have all my F4. Chalk victory!

Also, way to almost make yourselves look respectable, Illinois. Missed it by thaaaat much.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN? Or perhaps buying a really good looking shirt?

The 11 tournament teams of the mighty Big East are down to 2: UConn and Marquette. The only conference with a whopping 3 (sarcasm) in the Sweet 16 is the ACC, with Duke, UNC, and Florida State surviving. The only conference with a 100% retention rate of surviving teams is the 1 for 1 Horizon League, whose champion Butler has been doing okay right?

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER

Quote (laszlow @ 21st March 2011 09:07)

The 11 tournament teams of the mighty Big East are down to 2: UConn and Marquette.  The only conference with a whopping 3 (sarcasm) in the Sweet 16 is the ACC, with Duke, UNC, and Florida State surviving.  The only conference with a 100% retention rate of surviving teams is the 1 for 1 Horizon League, whose champion Butler has been doing okay right?

The ACC has a 75% retention rate... if that isn't an indication that we deserved more bids that 4, I don't know what is. Oh wait, a better reason is that the Big East had an 18% retention rate after breaking the bid record and being called "the greatest conference in college basketball." Oops, sorry. As a side note, 10-seed FSU embarrassed 2-seed Notre Dame in a textbook display of ACC basketball philosophy decomposing weak, overrated Big East play. Meanwhile, Duke and UNC move their way through Pac-10 and Big 10 teams.

And no, Clemson doesn't count

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I find your lack of faith disturbing...

Quote (RelmArrowney @ 21st March 2011 02:54)

-checks bracket-

Well, that's a lot of red. Lol.

Nice heh.

Yeah, ND losing last night killed me. Besides ND, my bracket is still looking ok, but I had them going to the final game, making it difficult for me to recover.

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Currently Playing : Final Fantasy V
Most Recently Beat : Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Favorite Game : Final Fantasy X

The newest CoNcast is up! Have a listen!

The problem with this ACC / Big East talk is asking who you're going to leave out to make room for more ACC teams. The most likely candidate for an addition is Boston College over VT - despite Boston College having one more loss in the non-conference schedule, they had a higher RPI, a much better SOS, and they had identical in-conference schedules with BC winning both matchups between the two teams. Going forward from there, if you're trying to use tournament data to justify throwing Boston College in over another Big East team, who do you throw out? Marquette was the last Big East team into the field and by the logic of

Quote

The ACC has a 75% retention rate... if that isn't an indication that we deserved more bids that 4, I don't know what is.

you can't say that they didn't deserve their own bid based on their current 100% win rate in the tournament. It just doesn't work when you try to argue additional seeds based on how the tournament is currently going.

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

Quote (FallingHeart @ 21st March 2011 01:03)

yeah I'm screwed, I had Syracuse in the top 2. I don't know... they were pretty good a few years ago right?

I must have missed the bracket on CON that year (or filled one out with different teams), but Carmelo's Syracuse team won me $350 in the school-wide pool back in high school.

They've always had a place in my heart since then...hence why I had them in the Elite 8 this year. I really wish UNC could have gone down too....that was a rough ending.



--------------------

The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"

So I have just two of my top 8 left. Damn you Marquette, DAMN YOU

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Squenix games completed:

Final Fantasy: 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, Tactics Advance 2
Chrono Trigger
Dragon Quest: 7, 8, 11
Super Mario RPG

Quote (Neal @ 21st March 2011 11:09)

you can't say that they didn't deserve their own bid based on their current 100% win rate in the tournament.  It just doesn't work when you try to argue additional seeds based on how the tournament is currently going.

I totally agree that it's unfair and illogical to retrospectively criticize the seeding. What I'm arguing is not so much that the tournament results validate the committee as much as I'm criticizing the national misconception that the Big East is deserving of 11 bids in the first place.

I think it's fair to say that Villanova and Marquette receiving at-large bids is mostly due to their association with the Big East and not the quality of their teams. Marquette has two quality wins (both in conference, @UConn and vs Syracuse) and two quality out of conference losses (vs. Duke and vs. Gonzaga). The rest of their resume is basically built upon the assumption that their in-conference play is an indication of strength. Meanwhile, Virginia Tech beats the #1 team in the country at the time (Duke), has two quality out of conference losses (vs. Purdue, @Kansas St.) and one bad loss (vs. UNLV... who is in the field). These teams have very similar resumes, including their natural losses in-conference. Villanova has a couple of barely-quality wins, a barely-quality loss (Tennessee), a ton of in-conference whackings, and a 5-loss streak to close the season. So why do they get bids? Because they play "the best teams in the nation" when they play in-conference.

So what the committee is basically saying by throwing in Villanova and Marquette and leaving out teams like VTech and BC is "The Big East is better, so let's give them 11 bids." Extremely similar resumes, supposedly different conferences... the nation buys into the hype that Duke and UNC are the only bastions of basketball left in the ACC, but the fact of the matter is that the Big East is super inflated in regular season rankings (see: Louisville, Syracuse, St. Johns) and ACC conference play is terribly underrated.

Has the ACC lost some of its luster? Perhaps. But we hardly get a chance to prove that... and yet the Big East gets to prove to us year after year that they're overrated. Of course Marquette is showing the nation why they deserve to dance... but that's a product of the tournament and I believe that any team can step up like this if they're given the right circumstances. Our >6 seeds almost always show up for the upset... probably because they don't deserve to be >6 seeds!

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I find your lack of faith disturbing...

Quote (Death Penalty @ 21st March 2011 16:54)

Quote (RelmArrowney @ 21st March 2011 02:54)

-checks bracket-

Well, that's a lot of red.  Lol.

Nice heh.

Yeah, ND losing last night killed me. Besides ND, my bracket is still looking ok, but I had them going to the final game, making it difficult for me to recover.

Here's hoping to more upsets to balance it out. Butler for 2nd! From what I read in this thread I thought Purdue and ND would be knocked in their second game, however I got only one because my upset pick Georgetown was upset. It's bracket Inception. I don't mean to blow my own trumpet here, I made some other horrible silly hunch picks that failed at the first hurdle, these were just two that I thought I'd mention because of what Kappa and someone else was talking about earlier, and because of ND last year.

I'm not happy picking Duke as the winner. I understand the sign of a good champion team will be to win games even when they're playing badly, but that last one was too close. Sure they were fine until the last 10 minutes or so, but if that last 10 minutes happened against a slightly better team they would've gone to overtime or worse. And if Duke don't win the lot then I'll finish about 20th if I'm lucky.

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.

I stand corrected: The Enemy IS Kansas.

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And have you found your joy, in this near dead world of ours?

My bracket took a huge hit with the Irish losing. I went from tied for 1st after the round of 64 to tied for 9th now. Heres to recovery.

Here is a list of teams that I love watching bomb out of this tournament:

Notre Dame
Pitt
BYU
Duke
Wisconsin
Louisville

Maybe tonight we can watch Carolina go!

Unless I get just about everything else right, this will probably be the worst I've ever done in a CoNCAA, by far. And the best part is that I don't even care. I loved watching my school actually win a game in the tournament, even though I picked against them. I love seeing Florida playing on the second Saturday, even though I picked against them getting this far. I love seeing UConn just continue to be unstoppable.

I lost two Final Four teams last night and I am loving it.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN? Or perhaps buying a really good looking shirt?

Lost my two wildcard Final Fours (San Diego St and the Fightin' Jimmers), and an Elite 8 team (Duke). Ouch, bracket officially busted.

I was happy to see Duke go down though. My only hope remaining in any of my brackets was this random draw-out-of-a-hat where we each started with 4 teams and the winner versus the spread moves on....all I have left is Butler. So go Butler!

--------------------

The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"