Author Archives: Scott

Thank You!

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Well, Ark-Little Rock has jumped to an 11-point lead midway in the first half over UNC-Asheville for the right to lose to Pitt.  And with that, the First Four for Charity contest is closed.  I got 30 entries in just over 24 hours, so thank you to all!  And since it seems silly, that in my email, that if I only got 24 entries, I’d double it to $48 and if I got 26 entries, it would be only $26, I am doubling it anyway.  So over the weekend I’ll donate $60 to the American Red Cross (despite what this bozo says) to help those affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the Pacific on behalf of the HWCI NCAA Pool.

USC was the overwhelming favorite being picked 25 times.  Clemson received 22 picks while there was a toss-up in the two 16v16 games: UNC-Asheville and Alabama St. both got just 16 of the 30 picks.  The biggest margin of victory was Deven K picking USC by 16 (I have them winning by 15).  12 of the 16 possible combinations were picked with UNCA/CLEM/UTSA/USC being the most popular with 8 picking it.  Six picked UALR/UAB/ALST/USC.  7 combinations have just one person picking it (so no tiebreaker in play if that person goes 4-0).

After the jump, here are all 30 picks:

Continue reading »

Do you know what channel TruTV is on?

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Surprisingly, Verizon FIOS has just added TruTV in HD (I wish after the tournament, they axe this and put in Fox Soccer Channel in HD instead) so I could watch all games in HD, if I were home.  And for once, iPhone has a leg up on Android as the March Madness on Demand app is only available for iPx products.

As for the pool, we have 15 entries from 12 people at the end of Monday, which is ahead of last year’s pace.  But this year, the dour economy may be taking its toll as all 12 people are previous entrants.  Keep spreading the word!

The First Four for Charity now has 17 entries, so thanks!  The deadline is 3:30 PM PDT so if you haven’t had time to submit a simple email or comment on any of these posts, do so!  Here are the entries thus far after the jump: Continue reading »

Pool Update

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13 entries received thus far, ahead of last year’s pace.  In the free First Four for Charity contest, 7 have submitted thus far:

# FIRST LI UNCA>UALR UAB>CLEM UTSA>ALST USC>VCU
1 Stewart W UALR by 1 CLEM by 10 ALST by 1 USC by 6
2 Samer S UALR by 9 CLEM by 2 ALST by 5 USC by 5
3 David A UNCA by 6 CLEM by 1 UTSA by 11 VCU by 4
4 Isma S UALR by 6 CLEM by 1 ALST by 2 USC by 4
5 Ford R UALR by 9 UAB by 11 UTSA by 5 VCU by 3
6 Eric C UALR by 3 UAB by 2 UTSA by 2 USC by 7
7 Scott T UNCA by 3 CLEM by 7 UTSA by 1 USC by 15

First Four For Charity (Due: Tue 3:30 PM PDT)

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I was thinking of doing a short contest for the First Four which starts 3:30 pm PDT tomorrow.  Got a note from a friend that the best way to support the people of Japan is to send money to the American Red Cross (link: https://american.redcross.org/site/Donation2?idb=0&5052.donation=form1&df_id=5052).  If you could indulge me, please send your picks for the four First Four games and margin of victory for each (e.g., UNC-Asheville by 10 pts).  Your entry is free and for every valid entry I get, I’ll donate $1 per entry (if under 25 entries, $2 per entry) on behalf of HWCI NCAA Pool (I’ll use this as my middle name and hopefully my credit card will still go through).  Even if you don’t care about bball, just send in your picks anyway.  Best of all… no nicknames to come up with!  I probably won’t have time to figure out the winner til the weekend but it will help if you reply directly to this email or put in the subject line “First Four picks”.  Deadline is 3:30 pm PDT Tuesday (tomorrow)! I’ll post my pick on the website (http://www.hwci.com/ncaa) later tonight.

———–FORM————-
NAME (First, Last):
WINNER & MARGIN OF VICTORY: UNC-Asheville vs Arkansas-Little Rock (UALR)
WINNER & MARGIN OF VICTORY: UAB vs Clemson
WINNER & MARGIN OF VICTORY: Texas-San Antonio (UTSA) vs Alabama St
WINNER & MARGIN OF VICTORY: USC vs Virginia Commonwealth (VCU)
———-END———-

Thanks!  The winner gets bragging rights as the first HWCI NCAA First Four Champion.  Winner is the most correct picks with the tiebreaker the lowest margin of victory difference (above or below).

Cheers,
Scott

Local Represenation

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Long Beach St. (despite winning the Big West regular season title easily) may have been knocked out the tournament with its loss in the Big West final, but UC-Santa Barbara will replace them.  In addition to UCSB, UCLA as expected made the tournament but also USC, who will play in the first-ever First Four first round (it’s not a play-in!).  If we go further south, UC-San Diego San Diego St. got a #2 seed in the West giving the Southern California area four teams.

Planning to get the initial email out later tonight and hopefully we’ll get the bracket up Monday morning.

Heartbreak for Harvard

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March Madness will be soon upon us, minus one hour for daylight savings.  Well, the longest Division I tournament drought continues as Princeton beat Harvard on an incredible buzzer-beater in the one-game Ivy League playoff denying the Crimson an automatic bid (small chance they get in as an at-large considering the Ivy League has never had 2 teams in since the format expanded).  UConn did the improbable, winning 5 games in 5 days to not only win the Big East conference title but also showed that kids can be forced to work long, unreasonable hours and need to unionize.

We will still have the Most Wins in Conference tiebreaker but when you submit your bracket, it won’t be accurate until Thursday (due to First Four games between at-large teams).  Once we have everyone’s picks online, you can check to see how the First Four games tweaked your Most Wins in Conference.  Of course, no one cares about this until the last weekend anyway, so this isn’t a big deal.

David will be in Seattle starting Sunday and I’ll be in Phoenix starting Thursday noon but we’ll try to keep delays to a minimum.  The online bracket may not be up until Monday morning.

Harvard? Not yet…

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As we head into the 2011 March Madness, it is possible the Harvard Crimson (eh?) may make the tournament.  They have a share of the Ivy League title and if Princeton loses today (starts in 30 minutes, and is only on ESPN3.com), the Crimson are in.  If not, then a one-game playoff on Saturday.  Harvard?!

As for the 2011 HWCI NCAA Pool, no changes to format or point system.  What will happen is that the First Four (games played on Tuesday/Wednesday) winners get inserted into the proper 64-team bracket (as the Opening Game winner has been since 2003).  What may happen, is that depending who wins, you may want to update your bracket (likely the #11, #12, or #13 seed).  Feel free to email the update (if it’s just one or two changes) rather than refilling a bracket before the deadline.

What will be interesting is that with TBS, TNT, and TruTV entering the mix, the schedule for Thursday-Sunday are wall-to-wall basketball, with games now separated by half-hours instead of starting 3-4 games at the same time, meaning, ideally, no games should end at the same time, so CBS has less of a chance of screwing it up.  Full tip-off times are found here.

A Change for the Better, or a Plan for the Worst

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Turner Broadcasting is just pulling the rug out from everyone.  First it was the surprise deal that Coco had not signed with Fox, but with TBS.  Now, the NCAA is on the verge of opting out of their TV contract and signing with CBS and not ESPN, but TBS/TNT/TruTV.  And the more surprising part?  Instead of 96 teams, it looks like it will be 68 teams, which is manageable for us March Madness bracket folks.

It looks like, for the time being, that even though they are only going to just 68 teams, the number of live broadcasts that could be shown in their entirety will go from around 27 to all 67 games.  If you had four TVs, you could watch all 4 simultaneous games on that first day (okay, technically, second, but who counts the Play-In Games as a real day?) without having to pay extra (i.e., DirecTV).  Overkill?  I think it’ll enhance interest because you have a choice of watching which game instead of CBS telling you you have to watch the Duke game and then just show the last 10 seconds of a great game.

But, starting in 2016, TNT will get the Final Four every other week.  I like the major events on a free broadcast network.  Who watches the NBA All-Star game now that it’s on TNT?  Who watches hockey now that it’s on Versus (or VS. or whatever)?  Except for Monday Night Football, ratings and availability seem to go down when moving from broadcast to cable.  But that’s reality.  On the flip side, it may be even easier to catch games on planes with TVs since they usually have TNT/TBS (but probably not TruTV) whereas they don’t have local CBS stations.

The other unknown is what will happen with teams 66-68.  It seems the simplest would be to have four Opening Round games (whether it be 61 v 68 etc. or 61 v 62 etc.) and the winners play the #1 seed in each Region.  But in recent years, they have made it a point to have the Tuesday Opening Round winner play the next game on Friday (which is why the #1 overall seed doesn’t always play the Opening Round winner).  So are we going to have games on Monday & Tuesday now?  Going this route also further diminishes the lower rung conferences by relegating them to these not-really-a-part-of-the-tournament Opening Round games.  Meaning four teams, some who may have made their first NCAA tournament, will not see the 1st Round where the fun really starts.  It seems like the extra 3 teams will be at-large bids but maybe the NCAA will give these out to some mid-major or lower conference regular season winners who didn’t win their tournament… nah.

What I’m worried about, like with Health Care Reform, this is just a baby step just to get a foot in the door, and the horrible aspects will come out later.  Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim even hints at this in that he hopes this leads to further expansion (e.g., 96) of the bracket.

What does this mean to our pool?  If the four opening round games are playing #1 seeds, they we just have four “PLAY-IN” winners instead of one.  Everything else remains the same.  But until the deal is finalized, we aren’t sure yet.  We should know soon!

This Would Be an Upset…

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…if UConn women’s team wins by less than 10 points tonight, which they haven’t done in 77 games. Or possibly even lose? Couldn’t find the line for the game, but I suspect it’s less than double digits. I will still be at work, but I’ll definitely try to follow this game just in case the miracle happens.

UPDATE: At the half, Stanford 20-12. Can’t wait for the pundits to call this the greatest game ever! OK, they are shooting a horribly combined 21.7% from the field and have committed 13 turnovers. Sounds ugly to me.

Duke University Wins!

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I never thought I’d write this, and you may need to note this, but for once, I was not sick of the pro-Duke telecast… I was sick of the pro-Butler telecast.  Butler played a great game?  They once again had an embarrassing field goal drought late in the game, every shot seemed to be blocked, and they couldn’t hit free throws.  But they did make a good story. And boy, that last second shot almost banked in.

Executive decision! There is now a 6th place prize. Okay, just kidding. I guess there’s nothing wrong with 6th place. Congrats to the winners:

2010 HWCI NCAA Final Report           04/05/10
 # Correct --by Round-- Final


Rank            Name   1 2 3 4 5 6 Score   Prize  Tie Dif
--- ---------------------- -- -- - - - - -----  -------- --- ---
 1 Blue Devil Blues       24 10 4 2 1 1   126    500.00 169  49
 2 You're My Boy Blue     26 10 5 1 1 0   116    255.00 137  17
 3 Eros                   23  9 4 1 1 1   115    175.00 129   9
 4 Hummeless              26 10 3 2 1 0   114    120.00 145  25
 5 FOMI                   18  9 4 2 1 1   111     80.00 140  20


And the $40 Bonus Winner:  Has No Idea (Van P) who was the only one who got the total points of 120 exactly.