March Madness Day 1, Recap

And Day 1 is in the books. Normally for the first 2 days of the tournament, one day is relatively mild with few close games and fewer games that truly come down to the final buzzer. The other day features game after game that is in play until the dying seconds. Yesterday's slate of games definitely felt like the former (2/16 were upsets, 1 game truly came down to the buzzer), though we did get the bonus of seeing a #1 seed sweat out its initial game. Based on past history, I'd do what I could to keep an eye on today's slate of games, I think we'll see some excitement.

The game commentary is up, apologies for how little there is, between work, baby, and my weekly dose of anything resembling exercise (pickup frisbee), I didn't see as many games as I would have liked.

Shoutouts:
To Miles, for being the first person to finish his bracket (he finished on Sunday), and for being the youngest person in the history of the pool. For those of you wondering, yes, Miles did in fact "choose" his own bracket. This was a little bit more of a process than I anticipated.

My original plan was to take the three plastic cookies he got with a cookie monster doll, set them out, and designate two cookies the higher seed and the third the lower seed. Miles likes this toy so I figured getting him to grab a cookie wouldn't be a big deal. So on Saturday I laid out the cookies and encouraged him to pick one. He started at me for a few seconds, then started walking away to do something, anything else. Knowing I was going to have to get him to do this 63 times, I quickly racked my brain for another option.

For my next try, I decided to geek out. For those of you in the pool, this will come as no surprise, considering the official picks sheet is an Excel sheet full of drop-down menus and made to look like an actual bracket. Miles has a set of wooden blocks with letters, numbers, pictures, etc. on them. I grabbed blocks 0-9 and A-F and planned to set up the matchups hexadecimally (1v16 would be 0vF, 2v15 would be 1vE, and so on) and have Miles pick them. He was uninterested. I then made two little towers with the proper "numbers" at the top of each one and decided to see which one he'd knock down first (he loves playing godzilla). He looked at the towers, looked at me, and then (mocking me for putting the two towers too close to each other) knocked them both over at once. Progress, but not helpful. I re-stacked the towers, and he lost interest.

Yikes, on to Plan C (with a big assist to Celinda for the idea). For his first birthday a little over a month ago, he received a little "playground set" complete with a basket. The basket is a little taller than him, but he can easily reach up and dunk a basketball. So I decided that I'd have him try to dunk 63 times. If he made it, the higher seed would win. If he missed, the lower seed. It took two days (he'd usually dunk 5-6 times and then move on to something else), but he did it. And when I tallied up the results, he made 66% of his dunks (and threw the ball at me at least 3 times and then laughed). Likely a little upset heavy (see his day 1 results), but not bad.

Quick footnote: I decided I wouldn't interfere with his picks with one exception: the 1v16 matchups. I wasn't going to let my son pick something that had never happened before without trying to guide him away from it. He made the basket for 3 of the 1v16 matchups, but missed the 4th. I gave him a second chance on that miss and he made it, so I counted it as a win for the 1 seed. The game in question? Syracuse vs UNC Asheville. Maybe he's a savant? If so, look out for Notre Dame and New Mexico.

To Rachel G, for being the first non-Kofron to turn in a bracket.

To Zach and Lisa, for being the first official entrants.

To Ben P, for the funniest email submitting me a bracket.

To Corey H and Celinda, for correctly picking 15/16 games today, best of anyone. COrey missed on Wichita St-VCU, and Celinda missed on UNLV-Colorado.

To the current leaderboard. Unfortunately there are 35 of you in the top-3, so the sheet will have to suffice for listing you all out.

To Terri M, Michael F, and Susan G, for going big and picking a 9 seed to win the whole thing. Unfortunately, that 9-seed was UConn. Still, major props for being bold. Also a shoutout to Lisa A, the only other person to pick a non-top 4 seed to win it all (Gonzaga).

Condemnations:
To the NCAA, for needlessly complicating keeping tabs on the games on a computer. In the past, there was one location where you could watch any game, switching back and forth and it was all FREE. This year they changed the model. That central hub requires payment ($4 for everything, but still), but if you have cable, you can still watch the games for free...but only by going to the individual network's page. CBS.com, TNT.com, etc. To make matters worse, only CBS.com has the scores of the other games going on at that time. The other networks only show the games that will be on that network. So if you wanted to keep track of multiple games, you need to have multiple tabs open on your browser. Given what the computer viewing experience has been in the past, this year is a pain in the you-know-what.

To Jay Bilas, normally a good college analyst. He picked his bracket, and it was only available on ESPN Insider (costs money). It's billed as a thoroughly scouted, game-by-game breakdown. It's basically just him picking all the top seeds. Maybe he'll be right, but with only a couple sentences on each game, it looks like he just went with the chalk. Hardly worthy of "insider" status. I blame his Duke connections.

To Mario Williams (DE formerly of the Texans, #1 overall pick the year Reggie Bush came out, and best defensive player on the market), who just got paid an obscene amount of money but has now stuck himself in Buffalo. There's a reason Buffalo wouldn't let him get back on a plane once he took his first free agent visit there, it's Buffalo. Everywhere is more exciting than Buffalo. Have fun, Mario, your team stinks and, well, it's Buffalo.

To the Portland Trail Blazers. In 2007, they had the #1 pick in the draft. They selected Greg Oden over Kevin Durant, despite Oden looking like a 55-year-old. It's true that the traditional mantra is go big over small, but Oden's injury concerns destroyed his time in Portland, meanwhile Durant is one of the top players in the NBA. Why bring this up today? Portland released Oden, to make room for players brought in at the trade deadline. Oden was on the shelf yet again undergoing yet another microfracture surgery on his knee.

Enjoy Day 2!