Field of 68 Prediction (One Week Out)

We are actually less than a week out, but I figured I would go ahead and keep a similar title to my last post. There isn’t much to say that I didn’t say last time, only that there are some teams that have already earned a spot in the tournament by winning their own conference’s tourney. Those schools will be in bold to make things easy.

I am again going to simply list them in alphabetical order. I strongly considered listing them with their seeding this time, but that would have involved figuring out which schools would be in the four play-in games, which didn’t sound very appealing. Either way, I will again be providing my “last four in” at the bottom.

Check out the list of 68 after the jump.

Field of 68 Prediction (Two Weeks Out)

Well, it’s been about nine months since I’ve posted anything on this lovely blog, though I have engaged in some discussion via the comments section of one of my old posts since then. Either way, with Selection Sunday just under two weeks away, I thought I would go ahead and put up my initial prediction for the Field of 68.

I try to do at least one of these every year, even if it’s a last-minute one that I put up within an hour or so before the Selection Committee actually announces the teams. This year, however, I’m going to try to put up three or four in these two weeks leading up to Selection Sunday. The first one is obviously this one, the last one will be right before they’re actually announced, and then there will hopefully be one or two others somewhere in between, and I will of course be revisiting my predictions after the field is actually announced to see how I did.

For this first prediction, I’m going to list them in alphabetical order. Next week I might start actually seeding them, but at the very least I will provide seeding predictions with my last one.

Check out the list after the jump:

NCAA Men’s National Championship

Tonight in the Final of the 2010 NCAA Men’s Basketball National Tournament, the Butler Bulldogs take on the Duke Blue Devils. I’m going to go ahead and be honest and say that I don’t really care about this game. I’m cheering for the Bulldogs. It’d be a good story. They’re the David facing Goliath and they’re from Indianapolis (where the Championship is being played) and their campus is located about five miles from Lucas Oil Stadium (the venue in which the game is being held – also the home stadium for my Colts) and  it’s really just a straight shot down North Capitol Avenue to get there.

Final Field of 65 Prediction

I am currently in a car riding from Montana to Colorado so this is gonna be quick and to the point. I’m simply going to list the 65 teams in no particular order. I had planned on this being another full prediction with seedings and all but unfortunately the circumstances won’t really allow that to happen. Here’s the list of 65 teams that I think will make the NCAA tournament this year:

WMD – March Madness

No, not Weapons of Mass Destruction. This obviously stands for Weller’s Musing and Divination. I have no idea if this will become a frequent type of post or not, but this one will be similar to the Bracketology that Joe Lunardi does for ESPN. And of course by similar, I mean that I will be doing exactly what he does: predicting the field of 65 and their seedings in each region. Don’t fool yourself though, Mr. Lunardi knows significantly more about college basketball than I do. In fact, I haven’t hardly followed college basketball at all this year but this seemed like a fun idea and thought I’d give it a shot. Feel free to tear it apart:

ESPYs

As many of you know, and probably saw, the ESPYs were on last night. For those of you that don’t know, the ESPYs is an annual awards show hosted by ESPN. This year Samuel L. Jackson hosted the show and did a pretty good job. There were funny parts and on the whole it went well but I think there have definitely been better ESPY nights in the past. We did get a small glimpse at what a day in the life of Peyton Manning is like, which was obviously my favorite part of the night. We also had some eye-candy on hand with two of my top three favorite super models being in attendance; Miranda Kerr and Marisa Miller. I would also like to add that Marisa Miller is a Vols fan, just to throw that out there.

On to the results:

Weller’s Picks for Day 3 of the NCAA Tournament

With the final games of day 2 having finished up with a pair of thrilling overtime games, I am now putting up my picks for day 3. I was doing really well after the first day with only three wrong picks, and I didn’t have any of the teams that I had picked incorrectly moving beyond the second round. Day 2 wasn’t as good to me though. I now have ten incorrect games, and one of my Elite 8 teams has lost as well as another one of my Sweet 16 teams. I was really nervous about all of the upsets I had picked for today and rightfully so. Of the nine upsets I picked for Friday, I only got four of them right. Things are going to be a little tricky from here on out because there are games that the team I originally had winning has already lost. I was originally going to try to find a way to put up my original picks as well as my picks for the teams that actually are playing. I couldn’t come up with a way to do this that looked organized and wasn’t confusing so I’m just going to pick the actual games. Oddly enough, I have zero upsets picked for day 3. Here are the picks:

Weller’s Picks for Day 2 of the NCAA Tournament

Now that day 1 has come to a close with a Western Kentucky victory over Illinois, I thought I would go ahead and put up my picks for day 2. I’m 13 of 16 so far, or 14 of 17 if you include the play-in game. I’m happy with that and hope I can keep that pace for day 2. In 9 of the 16 games scheduled for Friday I picked the lower seed. That is a ton of upsets so I’m a little more nervous about the day 2 games than I was for the day 1 games,  but if I’m right about most of them, it should help me out a lot. All I can do now is cross my fingers and wait. The games where I picked a lower seed a marked with an asterisk. Here are my picks for day 2:

Weller’s Picks for Day 1 of the NCAA Tournament

Just for kicks I’m tossing my opening day picks up here.

UPDATE: I’ve decided I’m going to update this letting you know if I got the game right or wrong. I’m also going to put an asterisk next to games where I picked the lower seed, which today only happens to be Western Kentucky over Illinois. There will be many more asterisks for my day 2 picks, maybe too many. Let me know what you think in a comment.

What a PlayStation 3 thinks of the NCAA Tournament

As a semi-unemployed kind of fresh out of college kid, I have lots of free time on my hands. Since the NCAA Tournament field was announced on Sunday, I’ve spent some of my free time doing a fun Spring favorite of mine. That is, simulating the NCAA bracket on the latest college basketball video game – which this year is EA Sports NCAA Basketball 09.

My PlayStation 3 sure came up with some odd scenarios, but that is why I chose to do 40 simulations. I figure that is the best way to get a feel for the way the gaming system feels about the brackets overall. So, take the results at whatever value you feel they deserve. Here is the breakdown of what happened.