Andrew Penchuk
The College Hoops Kid
@bigs980
“Learned” will be in quotation marks for the entirety of this blog post, because what we “learn” one week in March Madness hardly holds true for the next week. Any expert will tell you, (myself excluded from this list) that the unpredictability of March Madness is probably the only thing you can predict about March Madness. The first week was full of upsets. Most notably Duke, Kansas, Villanova, and Wichita State succumbed to a Cinderella stories in their respective brackets. These top seeds all had their flaws throughout the season, but very few had them exiting the tournament quite so early. This led to their being ZERO perfect brackets remaining. In fact, through only 25 games of the 48 played this weekend there were no perfect brackets remaining. Out of 11 millions submitted to ESPN, none were 100%. That’s just crazy.
As usual, there are a lot of upsets to choose from for discussion in the first weekend. If any team had the most loved upset, it was undoubtedly Mercer. The Mercer Bears defeated the team America loves to hate in the Duke Blue Devils. The fourteenth seeded Bears defeated the third seeded Blue Devils by a final count of 78-71. Yet, what happened after the game made America feel just a little guilty rooting against Duke. Duke’s famed Coach Krzyzewski, better known as Coach K, went into Mercer’s locker room after the game and congratulated the Bears by saying, “If we got beaten, at least we got beaten by a hell of a basketball team.” If that is not class, I do not know what is. Even through the heart-wrenching defeat, the character of a great coach showed its light. Way to go Coach K.
After “learning” so much from week one, it is time to pick an upset for week two. I went one for one in upsets last week, with North Dakota State’s victory over Oklahoma. So I am feeling a little confident, and just a little bit cocky. With this in mind I am going to pick the San Diego State Aztecs over the Arizona Wildcats, to advance to the Elite Eight. San Diego State runs lockdown defense, led by the player with the coolest name in the tournament, Xavier Thames. Their defense should stifle Arizona’s high powered offense and give them one more game in the NCAA tournament. Otherwise, make sure you tune in this weekend because you never know what you can “learn” by watching some great basketball.
