Break out your brackets!
It's tournament time! The NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament is ready to go and in just a few short days the opening games of the tournament will start taking place. My brother in law is getting ready to head to Nashville to watch the games with his friends. There aren't actually any games in Music City this year, but they are getting together to remember a friend they lost and enjoy what will likely be some amazing basketball in an awesome atmosphere.
I can't say I am happy with the way we got to the end of the day yesterday. At least not fully. The loss by Michigan State to UCLA in the Big Ten Tournament was a bit of a let down. I guess I should be used to it by now with the Spartans though. They kind of have a habit of doing that. I saw that they were still projecting them to be a number 2 seed in the tournament and I had a hard time believing that.
Turns out they made some adjustments and MSU is now a three seed. Probably still a little higher than they deserve in my opinion, but who knows. I still support them, I've just learned to temper my expectations.
Meanwhile, the tournament championship game between Purdue and Michigan was really good. Purdue seems to have crawled back from their long fall after the beginning of the season. They now find themselves in a two seed in the tournament and that really feels about right.
I spent the majority of the morning getting my bracket ready. I honestly didn't watch as much basketball as I had planned this year. Between the World Baseball Classic and softball, I just haven't had the time that I used to. I feel like that puts me at a disadvantage, but I guess we will see.
I have a friend who I used to work with and every year I share my bracket with her so she can put it into a couple of pools that she plays in. I also have my bracket in two pools of my own. I've honestly had more luck with my friends pools than I have my own over the years. She usually splits the winnings with me 50/50. I think her family gives her a hard time that she doesn't even do her own bracket, but a win is a win right?
So this is the upper half of my bracket. I am not going to go into all of my reasons. Just know that I spent a lot of time thinking about this between last night and this morning. I am working really hard on not letting my emotional attachment to certain teams or conferences get the better of me. It was a hard decision to leave Michigan State out of the later rounds, but they just haven't proven to me they can play cohesively on a consistent basis. Every now and then yes, but this is go time, I need them to be 100% all the time.
Unfortunately, I can't count on that.
Here is the second half of my bracket. As much as it pains me, Duke is a really good team, so I ultimately had to have them winning it all. 78 to 70 if you are interested in my final score prediction.
I've got some baseball and softball to get through the beginning of this week, but check back towards the end of the week for all of the tournament updates. I'm looking forward to seeing just how mad March can get this year!
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