Blog

AKA: March Sadness 2006

What a bracket busting day, highs, lows, you name it, this had it… I love March Madness, especially over the (mostly) crap the NBA dishes out, and tonight had two finishes that was basically a big FU to people who view college basketball as nothing but kids who run and shoot.

First up, LSU knocking off overall #1 Duke with a great finish that everyone outside of Durham and half the Georgia Dome were simultaniously laughing and crying over… It’s good to see Duke done over, but sad that it completely screwed my Atlanta region. Then came the game of the tournament so far, Gonzaga’s dramatic loss to UCLA.

Gonzaga led for approx. 39:55 and blew it in the final 5 seconds with a heartbreaking finish, I couldn’t sit down for the final 5 minutes, I couldn’t look for the final 2, I left the room with 2 seconds left. That’s what’s so great about March Madness, I have zero affiliations with Gonzaga, I couldn’t pick it’s location out on a map but yet, I was totally involved with this team over the course of the last week, just because I had picked them to go all the way… I was there, willing them on, nearly screaming at the TV on occasions. Outside of Rangers and Braves games, I can’t remember the last time I’ve done that.

So my dream is over, as are these updates I guess. Only my picks of UConn and Villanova are left out of the potential Final Four, I doubt I’ll be as involved with the rest of the tournament now, but I’ll still watch for the outcome of these awesome games, played by kids who just run and shoot, and they do it for the love of the game…

This is what “Atlantas News” thinks I am, and who are Atlantas News? An unwanted site scraping my RSS feed representing my site as if I’m some kind of contributer to their site on, well, Atlanta News and they decided to add this fucking image on top of every scraped post of mine as some kind of banner…

Talk about shenanigans, So I’ve sent them a little email saying that this kind of misrepresentation is completely uncool and if they don’t do something about it, well… I’ll be one unhappy blogger, thats for sure.

Thanks for the heads up Maigh

FYI: Here is what I wrote to them…

Hello there,

It has come to my attention that you are aggregating my rss feed (http://www.gregorsmith.com/blog/) for your site and while a notification of this would have been nice, I feel I have to complain as a) My content is strictly my content, there is no wishy washy Creative Commons license applied to it, I only sumbit it to aggregating sites I wish to be aggregated by and b) I feel that the choice of image you have use at the start of every damn entry (http://atlantasnews.net/files/images/atlanta39.jpg) is totally unrepresentative of my site, my work and most of all me.

So all I ask is eaither you remove my feed from your site or at the very least, replace that image for something more representative… Scam City is merely a name, not my business…

Not as “jihad” like as I could have done, but it got the point across pretty quickly.

A short, painful day today as some of my Elite 8 teams took a big fall… Namely Ohio State and last year’s national champions North Carolina.

I said last night that I thought Bradley would beat Pitt, and hey, I was right, if only it was Kansas instead of Bradley… But I’ll give them props because CBS’ on screen score in the bottom left corner said “BRAD PITT” throughout the whole game. Then the real fun began, and by real fun I mean real pain. George Mason stunned North Carolina, whoever predicted that is a smart, smart man, one who prolly made a crapload of bank off it. Then later on, Georgetown layed some serious smack down on Ohio State, despite only 4 of their players scoring. To be fair, Ohio State were never in the game at all, they led for a brief period early on, capitulated way too easy and disappeared into the night with barely a whimper.

At least everything else went my way, small favours.

Now we have to wait till Thursday for the Sweet 16 to start, and a few worrying games for me… Memphis vs. Bradley for one, especially with the roll Bradley are on, and of couse Gonzaga vs. UCLA. This will be the real test, up against a higher seed.

After the chaos of days 1 and 2, day 3 seemed downright subdued, not that a little fairy dust wasn’t going on…

The only real upsets where Wichita State over Tennessee and Washington over Illinois, I don’t see those affecting me much though as they will probably face North Carolina and UConn respectively. LSU played the late late show against Texas A&M, but the rest of the games were pretty much by the numbers, even if Gonzaga did have me more than a little worried in their win over Indiana. Good thing the support cast stepped up as Adam Morrison couldn’t buy a bucket at times.

Todays play should be pretty much as expected, the only real upset I can see is maybe Bradley over Pitt, the rest should be top seeds winning, but nothing is guaranteed in March Madness.

After the highs and lows of day 1, day 2 had a lot to live up to, and live up to it most certainley did…

It started off with Ohio State overcoming an upstart Davidson team, quickly followed by Northwestern State toppling Iowa, good thing I didn’t have that much faith in Iowa… Later on, a few 16th seeded teams had some thoughts way above their station and even though it would have busted my brackets, I found myself willing Monmouth on for a historic win simply because Villanova were playing so god damn awful for a #1 seeded team, and one I picked for a Final 4 berth, but alas reality snapped in and Villanova took the game and saved not only their blushes, but a million brackets nationwide. In the other afternoon 1 vs. 16 game, Memphis took their sweet time in dropping Oral Roberts for another saved bracket, though I have Memphis dropping to ‘Zaga later on of course.

The evening would bring forth a few big upsets, Michigan State would be the first to go, faltering to George Mason, UConn and Albany had another close 1 vs. 16 game, with UConn eventually winning. But then came the killer barn burner… Kansas screw me over again with another 1st round loss to Bradley, thats 2 years in a row now, I’m a Jayhawk jinx! It’s the only logical answer.

Another 12/16 day, but as a footnote, I went 8/8 in the Minneapolis region, score!

Tomorrow should throw up a few interesting games, can Gonzaga get past Indiana? I for one hope so… Will Duke run roughshot over George Washington? There is also a potentially great Washington vs. Illinois game to be had…

As the Black Eyed Peas once said “Let’s Get Retarded! It Started!”

March Madness is only 16 games old and I must have had 4 strokes and 1 massive coronary yesterday, but thankfully I came out with a 12/16 record. Not too shabby methinks.

Boston College (one of my maybe teams) took it to 2 overtimes over Pacific in a great game, but Pacific, if you really want to upset people like me, you need to score more than 2 points in the second period of overtime. Tennessee then left it late over Winthrop, a bit too late for my liking, 2 strokes and that was only by dinner time.

The evening would be so much worse… George Washington looked dead and out but a 19-0 run led them to a OT win over NC-Wilmington but while that was going on, my pick to win it all wasn’t winning at all… Gonzaga left it late to beat Xavier, who dominated for 36 minutes and to compound matters, I couldn’t even watch it. CBS HD was focusing on the Illinois/Air Force game while the local feed was LSU/Iona while switching to George Washington/NC-Wilmington every so often. Luckily the last few minutes were shown and I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief.

The only real blemish was San Diego State screwing up against Indiana, a game San Diego State controlled until a late Hoosier surge, a botched backcourt decision and a stupid inbound that flew more than the length of the court iced them. Now I’m worried as Indiana is a dark horse team that could do some damage, and they face Gonzaga next, I’ll be watching that through the gaps in my fingers I imagine. The other losses don’t worry me much, only Syracuse were picked to go futher than the next round, and do I need to gloat cause I picked Montana over Nevada? Who saw that coming?

YAY for picture in picture…. Who needs On Demand?

On the left is Seton Hall vs. Wichita State in HD and on the right is Pacific vs. Boston College on regular TiVo’d cable.

I also have Oklahoma vs. Wisc. Milwaukee on the computer… It’s completely covered.

March Madness!

Originally uploaded by FLC.