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| Posted by: Steve on Monday, April 7, 10:51 PM CMT |
What a game! An outstanding first half of play by Syracuse. Down by 18 points in the first have, Kansas fought their way back into the game to get not one, but two 3 point attempts to tie the game. One was blocked and the second attempt was long. Thankfully for me, I was rooting for Texas Longhorns to win it all. Since they were out, I was fairly neutral. However I did find myself rooting for the come back by Kansas as I am sure a lot of you did.
Gerry McNamara's first half 3-point shooting 6 for 6, then shut out in the second half. Carmelo Anthony, what a star this guy should be in the NBA. Played on all star performance against Texas, yet was average tonight hampered with nagging back injuries. However, he was roughed up and double teamed by Kansas as if he was playing 100%. You could tell by the pain in his facial expressions he was not. He did still have his smile :)
You don't think Kansas, the entire team will be kicking themselves over their poor poor free throw shooting? They shot a pitiful 40% from the line. How on earth can you make it to the Championship of the Final Four and only shoot 40% from the free throw line? Ugh! If they shot ONLY 50% that would have been a 3 point difference, a tie game. Just 50% at least? Tough night for the team. My guess it became a mental game or lack of concentration. I have never been in the situation, so I should go easy on them.
Over all, the game was very well played by both teams. Kansas was able to get the inside scoring which many teams have lacked against the Orangemen's 2-3 zone. Langford was the key to the inside scoring for the Jayhawks. I swear, everytime I see Langford I wonder if he is Chris Rock's brother. Last year he had more of his beard and he looked a lot more like him. Maybe it's just me? Side tracked there....The Jayhawks outside shooting was no where to be found until the second half when Kirk Hinrich got some of his touch back. Syracuse was in a fight to the end. Perhaps they thought they had it won and Kansas was just going to roll over and accept defeat? Perhaps they were tired down the stretch? It was a well deserved Championship victory.
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| Posted by: Steve on Sunday, March 30, 12:02 PM CMT |
| I have all the stats updated as of Saturday's games. I'm headed out of town tonight and will return Tuesday, April 1. I will updated the standings for Sunday's games at that time.
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| Posted by: Steve on Saturday, March 29, 1:33 PM CMT |
We are down to the regional finals. Eight teams remain. All four number 1 seeds remain. My guess is one or two of the #1 seeds will fall this round.
All of the stats are now up to date for the office pool contest. I've now added the player scenarios to the menu. They will tell you who you want to root for to get your best place finish or your worst.
I wanted to tell you some of the office pool stats that may be of interest to you.
There are 507 player picks in this years contest
There are 8 teams remaining in the tourney
Number who picked all 8 teams correctly: 0
Number who picked 7 teams correct: 6
Number who picked Kentucky: 460
Number who picked Arizona: 359
Number who picked Texas: 319
Number who picked Oklahoma: 267
Number who picked Syracuse: 243
Number who picked Kansas: 206
Number who picked Marquette: 97
Number who picked Michigan St: 8
Enjoy the games!
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| Posted by: Steve on Sunday, March 23, 10:03 PM CMT |
We have 16 teams remaining in the tournament. Some very close games but all in all, not too many upsets. There was a number 2 seed that lost today, but that is expected. Not sure if everyone expected it to be Wake Forest? I figured they would advace a little further than they did. The Wisconsin 3 pointer to win the game after being down by 13! oh my and double over time win for Arizona over Gonzaga. What a crushing loss for the Zags! That was another great game this weekend! I must comment on one more thing, I never expected the Big Ten to be doing so well at this point. Compared to the past few years, they are on a roll so far.
All the stats are updated for the 2003 OfficePool64 contest and can be found over on the right menu. Hope your still in this one and have a chance at winning. Right now there are 32,000 different scenarious that can affect the outcome, so I will wait till next weekend to post those standings.
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| Posted by: Steve on Friday, March 21, 11:41 PM CMT |
First round has completed. The upsets were minimal at best. No major seeds lost, however a few of them were thanking their lucky stars with the scares they received.
All stats are upated and the links to them are located on the menu to the left.
Hats off to Jeff Quast in the pool with only 2 games picked incorrectly. The best I've ever seen after round one completed.
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| Posted by: Steve on Thursday, March 20, 10:58 PM CMT |
I really hate to use that over used joke, "the luck of the Irish", but come on. Notre Dame Fighting Irish versus Wisconsin-Milwaukee Panthers. That was a game that the wonderful folks who host the tournament beg for. If you knew nothing about either of the teams, you came away after watch the game totally entertained. Naturally you tend to pull for the underdog, I was, I will admit that. I also picked them to win in my bracket so I was really wanting an upset. I picked them on what got them into the tournament. Defense. The full court press they put upon the Irish was tiring. 4:00 minutes left in the game, Thomas was looking a bit tired, however with the season on the line for the entire game, he pressed on.
The lead changes and the ties in this game, simply amazing. Everytime it looked like Notre Dame was pulling away, there was a steal, a turn over, and points score for the Panthers. With the full court press, this did give ND a lot of time at the free throw line. Their shooting percentage, 83% from the line was the determining factor in the battle tonight. That stat alone kept them in the game.
Aside from the Kansas-Utah State game, I hope those of you watching the higher ranked teams play were able to watch some of this one. I know when they showed the poor team shoot percentage and the anouncer's names, some other game was cutting in to watch.
Great game with a crazy finish. 32 seconds on the clock, the Panters with the ball and down by one point decide to play the last shot. They don't call a time out to set some thing up. The put the ball in the hands of Tucker, the play maker who winds the clock down to 7 seconds He makes his move past the defender into the key, divids three players goes under the basket and passes it off to his teammate for an easy 2. I swear that the ball was tipped, just slightly, but enough to change the path and give Notre Dame the victory.
Another loss in my bracket! :)
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| Posted by: Steve on Thursday, March 20, 9:26 PM CMT |
I must say, it has been a bit difficult to get into the basketball games today. There is a lot going on in the world, mainly in Iraq. However, I have been able to sit a watch a little bit of this evenings games. I'm from Minnesota so I'll be getting all of the Big Ten Conference games while they are still alive in the tournament.
Wisconsin faced off tonight against Weber State Wildcats. When this one started, but teams were rolling. Each shooting 71% from the field after the first 6 minutes of play and the score with in 2 points. Both teams playing a man to man defence. It looked like the Big Ten champs would be in for a rough night. Then again, the Badgers didn't win the conference outright because the rest of the Big Ten slacked off. Wisconsin's quickness, defence and rebounded started to shine. The play of Kirk Penny in action was the key factor of the night. The badgers started to pull away from the Wildcats after 10 minutes of play. A switch of the defence for Weber State, going to a zone defence gave Wisconsin a bit of an edge. Then there was the early foul trouble Weber State got into. Wisconsin went into half-time with a 41-26 lead.
Unfortunately, that was about all I was able to watch of the game. CBS did need to get a war update in there and rightfully so. I was worried I would not be able to watch any of the games this evening with the happenings going on in Iraq. I don't have cable TV, so this would be a bit of a problem in watching the games. Then CBS showed some of the other games in progress that were a bit closer than the Badger-Wildcats game. In the end, Wisconsin moves on to face the winner of the Dayton-Tulsa game to be played later this evening.
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| Posted by: Josh on Saturday, March 15, 9:27 PM CMT |
What a way to end the BigEast conference finals tonight at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The two teams that squared off last year in a double overtime game are back at it again. UCONN vs. number 5 ranked Pittsburgh face off once again. The start of this game was even. Both teams put up respectable scores by the 15-min. mark. Close to the 11-min. mark, Pittsburgh began to go on a run. The score was tied 15-15 when this run started. Led by Branden Knight, who is playing with an ankle injury, put up 8 points with 8 min. left in the half. It is sort of dejevue as Knight suffered an injury at the exact same time last year during the Big East tourney. But as the minutes in the 1st half went on, my Huskies…or sorry the Huskies lol, went on a 6-0 run to tie the game at 25. Talike Brown and Ben Gordon put up key shots. The Huskies used their fast paced half court offense to put up points and make the game even. All throughout the first half the game was evenly paced. UCONN shot 59% at the field and Pittsburgh shot 52%. Talike Brown took over the game during the end of the first half. On the defense of end as axpected Omeka Okafor, the nation’s leader in blocked shots in the NCAA helped stop Pittsburgh make a few buckets. As the half came to a close, signs of a classic game appear. The score at the break was 36 UCONN - 37 Pittsburgh.
The second half starts the same way the first left off. Both teams power their way to points. UCONN got into some tiny foul trouble early in the half to give Pittsburgh a little lead. By the 16-min. mark UCONN surged back to tie the game. The announcer said it perfect. He said, "boy is there electricity in the Garden tonight." Throughout the rest of the second half Pittsburgh dominated. They went up as much as 10 points. Around the 4-min. mark UCONN did make a comeback to bring the game within 4 points. A 3 pointer from the top of the key helped. But UCONN got into a turnover phase. This led to Pittsburgh getting ahead by 10 at the 2-min. mark. Late in the second half a Pittsburgh player on the bench got angry and threw water onto the court. A technical foul was given and the player walked off the court. In my opinion the player should have been ejected and a delay of game should have been called in edition to the technical. With 1:31 remaining in the first and a score of 54-69 in favor of Pittsburgh it seems they will go on to win the Big East. Both teams however have won a bid to the big dance so this loss to UCONN isn’t THAT much. The final score was 54 UCONN - 74 Pittsburgh. The score does not reflect the intensity of the game. This was an evenly paced game until UCONN began to turn the ball over on every possession late in the second half. Great games to both teams and we will see how they do in the NCAA tournament.
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| Posted by: Steve on Monday, March 15, 9:05 PM CMT |
We've expanded over here at OfficePool64.com. Help me welcome Josh, aka: Wedge to the OP64 staff. He will be helping out with game reports, insite to the upcoming tournament and whatever else is on his mind. Good to have you here! I'll soon be adding a staff page, but most likely it will be after this busy week ahead.
I updated, added and verified all of the office pool links. There are some new ones that are marked with new! so they are easy to spot. I've also added a couple more pool software programs or sites to look from. On the left hand of the site is a list of websites that have swapped links with officepool64.com. If you would like to become an affiliate send me an email and I'll add you to the list.
Headline News Roundup:
• Kent Gilley's Team Stats Page @ 64teams.com
• Updated projected field of 65 @ TheCollegeHoops.com
• iSportsLink Bracket Tracker @ iSportsLink
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| Posted by: Steve on Saturday, March 8, 9:37 PM CMT |
It's the start of the conference tournaments at last. Today we know five teams that earned automatic bids into the 2003 field of 65. Atlantic Sun's Troy State Trojans (26-5) - Big South's UNC Asheville Bulldogs (14-16) - Ohio Valley's Austin Peay Governors (23-7) - Southern's East Tennessee State Buccaneers (20-10) - Ivy's Pennsylvania Quakers (21-5). We'll know a few more teams that will get automatic bids in the coming days followed by next weekend when all conference tournaments will complete followed by Selection Sunday. It'll be a very busy next two weeks, thus we get the meaning behind march madness.
I'm usually not really good with predicting who will be in the tournament and I usually leave that for the experts. However I would be safe to say that 3 teams will for sure will be named the number 1 seed for their division. Arizona, Kentucky, and Florida would be my safe bets. The fourth spot, hummm....this is a tough. Perhaps Florida is the one team out of my 3 that wont make it to a number 1 seed. But I'll leave them there for the time being. The fourth spot could go to Kansas, Marquette or Texas. I would almost go with a big ten school, Wisconsin. But since I've seen them play so often as I am from Minnesota I might be a little biased. I'd still like to see it though.
In eight days there will be no more guessing. We will know all of the 65 teams and everyone will be scrambling to fill out their brackets. Ahh yes, my favorite time of the year.
I do still need to clean up the dead office pool links and look for some new ones to add. If you'd like to see your pool listed or if you have a great fan page you'd like me to list. I'd be happy to swap links with you. Just send me an email and I'll post it for you ASAP.
Headline News Roundup:
• Troy State, UNC-Asheville lock up first-ever NCAA bids on mercurynews.com
• UNC Asheville Earns First-Ever NCAA Berth with 85-71 Win Over Radford on bigsouth.org
• Austin Peay Headed To The Big Dance on ovcsports.com
• East Tennessee State Wins SoCon Championship & NCAA Birth on soconsports.com
• Penn routs Cornell for Ivy title, NCAA Tournament bid on sportsline.com
• College Basketball - Dissecting the Big Dance on sports-central.org
• Kentucky finishes SEC 16-0 after 69-67 victory at Florida on CNNSI.com
• Wake Forest wins ACC out right with victory at N.C. State on CNNSI.com
Ford sparks No. 4 Texas' rally past Oklahoma on sportsline.com
• From Championship Week to Cinderella story? on ESPN.com
The Lighter Side Of The Internet:
SoundBoards.com - these are so fun to mess around with
Reflections - Great addicting game to play
Joust - Just like the arcade but on the internet
All Out - very tough game to try out
Cell Phone Collection - send photos of you and your cell phone
Totally Off The Record - Read and share anonymous work stories
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| 03.02.2003 || officepool64.com has returned for another year |
It's kind of strange when you run a web site like this for basically 2 months out of the year. Lose track of time and poof, the tournament is nearly hear! I have not even check my email for this web site since May 2002. Oh boy I am so behind. Hopefully by tip off on March 20th I will be ready to go. Here we go! You would think with this being my 7th year now for running an online office pool I would get started sooner than the last 3 weeks. Now that I think of it, this is the lastest I have ever started.
I once again must congratulate the Top Ten from the 2002 tournament:
1. Jesse Fagerhaugh
2. Darren Olson
3. Walker Vance
4. Brandon Rooney
5. Chris Brown
6. Heradio Lopez
7. Jason Johns
8. Kevin Drennen
9. Jim Gialanella
10. Melissa Cuddihy
Good luck in this years office pool.
I'll have to start by checking and updating all of last years office pool links for any sites that are no longer with us. If you'd like to see your tournament listed on my site, please send me an email: steve@officepool64.com
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