…is what I’d say to the experts who were pointing to Iowa as a hot pick during the last week or so. I can say it safely now, since Cincinnati just trounced them, 76-64.
Leaving aside my non-hatred of Cincinnati, which many people seem to find inexplicable, I’ll just note that as a devout fan of the Gophers, I am sworn to hate their most reviled rivals, the Wisconsin Badgers and the Iowa Hawkeyes. That doesn’t keep me from being able to evaluate those teams semi-objectively, though, and Iowa just wasn’t a very good team this year. A nice little run at the end of the season propelled them into an undeserved NCAA berth (I don’t think Indiana deserved to go to the tournament either, but to pick Iowa ahead of them was just an insult by the committee), but anyone who’d really been paying attention could see that their brief momentum wasn’t going to last. And it didn’t. Therefore, ha!
(Warning: Expect multiple and frequent posts about the NCAA men’s basketball tournament over the next few days…)
I have a total of four different brackets, but only one of them involves money; the rest are for bragging rights.
Right now, with the first games underway but none completed yet, I’m feeling pretty good about picking Wisconsin-Milwaukee over Alabama in the money pool. I’m feeling significantly less good about picking Pittsburgh over Pacific, though, especially since most of the experts were calling that a near-certain upset. I went with Pacific in at least a couple of my brackets…but not in the one that could make me a few bucks. At least Pitt isn’t as far behind as they were at halftime.
And is anyone else surprised at how close Niagara was playing Oklahoma for a while there? They’re down 13 now, but they were within 4 points at a couple of different times in the game. That would have been quite the bracket-buster.