Congrats!

Congratulations to G. Hardy and S. Bhaskar for winning our ESPN tourney challenge group. It was a good tourney until the Final Four which was one of the worst in memory. In the next couple days we'll post our picks for next year's Final Four and our upcoming plans.

Questions After a Great Two Nights of Games

How in the world did Rashad Anderson hit that shot?

How quickly is Marcus Williams moving up draft boards?

Has anyone seen Rudy Gay...anyone?....anyone?

How is Brandon Roy not a Naismith finalist (and Gay is)?

Why didn't Ryan Appleby just put up a shot after that steal?

How did UConn let him get such a good look at the buzzer?

Will the real UConn ever show up?

How do you stop Joakim Noah?

Who's man was Will Sheridan?

How many turnovers could Boston College possibly have in big spots?

Is there a bigger pest in college basketball than Kyle Lowry? A more underrated player?

How ridiculous would a Washington-George Mason regional final have sounded?

Can the Patriots keep this miracle going?

Who played worse down the stretch...Duke or Gonzaga?

Who were you happier to see lose...Redick or Morrison?

What was a better finish...UCLA-Gonzaga or Texas-WVU?

Is Memphis really this good or are their opponents no good?

When was the last time Duke looked so bad at the end of a game and just seemed to pack it in with a couple minutes to go?

Can Friday's games possibly top tonight's?

Ranking the Conferences

Here's how we would rank the multiple bid conferences after the first weekend of the Tourney...

1. Big East (9-4, 4 teams left)
2. ACC (6-2, 2 teams left)
3. SEC (7-4, 2 teams left)
4. Pac-10 (5-2, 2 teams left)
5. MVC (4-2, 2 teams left)
6. Big 12 (3-3, 1 team left)
7. Colonial (2-1, 1 team left)
8. C-USA (2-1, 1 team left)
9. Big Ten (3-6, 0 teams left)
10. A-10 (1-2, 0 teams left)
11. MWC (0-2)
12. WAC (0-2)

It was apparent this weekend that Utah State and Air Force did not deserve bids based upon their own performance and their conference performance. Cincinnati, Hofstra, Missouri State, Creighton, or Florida State all would have been better choices.

Our Thoughts on the Bracket

Our final thoughts on the bracket before the Tourney starts...

We ended up correctly picking 62 out of the 65 teams in the tourney field. We missed Utah State, Air Force and George Mason. We correctly seeded 31 teams and we got 50 teams within one line of their seed. To see how we stacked up against the competition go to http://bracketproject.atspace.com/comparison.htm/.

We were the best site out there in terms of seeding. Our biggest regret with this bracket was taking out George Mason, who we had in the whole last week, and replacing them with Hofstra on Sunday. We placed too much stock in the Skinn suspension and not enough in the fact that their AD was on the Selection Committee. Maybe when we saw Lunardi change his bracket just before the selection show to include George Mason we should have changed ours as well. I think it's safe to say that he got some inside information and made that change.

We have expressed our thoughts about the Selection Committee through our comments this week so we won't go into that anymore. But basically they gave bids to conferences rather then teams.

As for the Tourney itself Chris and Craig both believe that UConn, Duke, Villanova, and UCLA will make the Final Four with Duke and UConn meeting in the Final and UConn winning it all. To see our whole bracket just go to the ESPN tourney challenge group once the tourney starts this afternoon.

Thanks to everyone for a great year. We'll still be updating the site periodically in the coming weeks as the Tourney progresses.