The NCAA Tournament: Crushing Dreams One Game At A Time

No, I'm not talking about Wichita St. Although yes, that sucks for them too.

Sorry, boys.

I'm talking about the actual 1st weekend of the NCAA Tournament, where the increased parody of college basketball makes filling out your bracket nearly impossible. Who agrees? Quicken Loans for one, who only had to sweat-out there billion dollar perfect bracket challenge until about midway through the 2nd day of the Round of 64 (when the last registered perfect bracket on their site already crapped-out).

Case in point was the bracket of yours truly, who slogged away through the 1st round (yes, I refuse to call the play-in games Round 1) with a very mediocre 22-10 record. However, I was able to accomplish the secondary goal of having a successful early round bracket. 1st, you want to pick correctly (obviously). 2nd, if you do pick wrong, you want to try to pick wrong with teams you had losing fairly quickly anyway. 10 misses in the Round of 64 is bad, but only 1 incorrect pick (Duke) who I had advancing past the Round of 32 is something I could live with.

That was followed by a glorious Saturday where I went a perfect 8-for-8 on the day, and I actually found myself at or near the top of the pools I am in. Then, unfortunately, yesterday happened.

Ugghhh...

Sunday's games were a cruel reminder of how quickly your bracket can take a turn for the worse. The day begin with 1 Elite 8 team, Kansas, gagging against Stanford. Then, the wheels really fell off when Kentucky played their best game of the season and beat my national runner-up, Wichita St. The day's cherry on top of my s*** Sunday was Creighton getting its doors blown off by an athletically superior Baylor team. Add that to my Duke pick from Friday, and I ended Sunday 4-4.

That made me 12-4 overall in the Round of 32, which is actually pretty decent...but I'm down to only 4 possible Elite 8 teams before the games even tip-off this Thursday. Currently, I'm still hovering around the top spot in all of my pools, but the maximum number of potential points I can score took a huge hit as well, and I will be lucky to remain within shouting distance of the money in any of those pools: all in day's work when it comes to bracketology.