What Do I Know?

There comes a time in every man's life where he has to own up to his mistakes, to admit his sins, and call himself out when he is TOTALLY off base about something. Well people, today is that day.

In my last post, I went out on a limb and made some bold, and some not-so-bold predictions about the NCAA "March Madness" bracket before it came out. Although they are not all proven wrong yet, enough has happened to admit how much this tournament has trashed my predictions...(Joe Lunardi, your resident Bracketologist position with ESPN is safe...for now).

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(POST pulled from 3/11/10) - AND I QUOTE:

1) If you're looking for an upset-special, take a look at University of Montana out of the Big Sky conference. If they get a decent matchup, they are my upset pick.
2) Syracuse will NOT make the National Championship
3) The Pac-10 will not get a team past the first round
4) If San Diego State makes the tournament, they will win their opening round game

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OK, let us recap the carnage of this year's tournament (and, more importantly, of my attempts at basketball forecasting glory). I will list the prediction, then the outcome, then my defense (or lack thereof):

PREDICTION #1 - University of Montana as an upset pick:
OUTCOME - Montana loses opening round game to New Mexico, 62-57

So this is the only one I feel I have any sort of defense on (albeit somewhat weak). I really believed that this team was a big-time threat, with the one caveat of them needing a good matchup for it to happen. Montana was the type of team that could do some damage to team's that play slow and have a big post-presence down low. NEW MEXICO is not a good matchup for them. It was such a bad matchup that I went against my blog prediction and chose New Mexico. New Mexico is a fast, explosive team, and Montana never had a chance. I would have liked to have seen a different matchup (with, say, Georgetown?) for the Grizzlies, but again, this is about repentance...ugh.

PREDICTION #2 - Syracuse will NOT make the National Championship:
OUTCOME - Syracuse wins first two games by 23 and 22 points, respectively (now in Sweet 16).

Now, this hasn't happened YET, but, I'm gonna be wrong. For two reasons:
a) Syracuse got a GREAT draw in the bracket, and are poised to make a deep run into the tournament. And now that Kansas has lost, they are the favorite on that side of the bracket to make the Championship.
b) They have been running roughshod over everyone. I flat out judged them wrong. They looked SO bad in their conference tournament that I thought it would carry over. Well, they must have heard me, cuz they are now absolutely HOUSING teams in the tourney. Sorry 'Cuse...go get 'em.

PREDICTION #3 - The Pac-10 will not get a team past the first round:
OUTCOME - Washington and Cal both win first round games.

Wow. Not only did Cal and Washington BOTH make the tournament, they BOTH won their first round games. And then after Washington ran through both Marquette and New Mexico, they now find themselves sitting in the Sweet 16 against West Virginia. If Cal hadn't drawn a 9-seed, they'd probably have a decent chance at Sweet 16, but instead they ran into Duke. Pac-10 proved me WAY wrong.

PREDICTION #4 - If SDSU makes tournament, they will win opening round game:
OUTCOME - SDSU loses to Tennessee, 62-59 in heart-breaker.

This one hurts so bad. Once the Aztecs made this prediction possible by winning the MWC conference tourney, they looked poised for a big time tourney win against Tennessee. I even chose them to go two games deep and make the Sweet 16. But for those of you who watched the game, you saw that the Aztecs forgot that basketball games have TWO halves. They looked strong, energetic and driven in the first half. Sadly, when the second half started, they then turned into what they ARE: a young basketball team. Turnovers, bad fouls, short tempers, and whining to the refs. DAMMIT!


Now, any lesser mortal would take this epic failure as a hint to jump off the prediction-train. And then there is me. All this means to me is that I need a reprieve. And how do I get that? BY MAKING MORE PREDICTIONS...DUH!!!

So, without further ado, here is my next set of predictions based on the remaining teams in the Sweet 16.

1) Xavier vs. Kansas St. will be the best game of the next round
2) Final Four - Ohio State, Syracuse, Kentucky, Duke
3) National Championship - Kentucky vs. Syracuse
4) Kentucky will win National Championship.
5) I will be avenged!