Obsessedsportsnut's Blog

This has been one of the craziest 1st days of the college basketball tournament in recent memory. Here’s a recap of these day’s events.

Shocking Upsets of the 1st day
– #14 Ohio manhandles #3 Georgetown, 97-83.
– #13 Murray State shocks #4 Vanderbilt at the buzzer, 66-65.
– #11 Old Dominion beats #6 Notre Dame, 51-50.
– #11 Washington beats #6 Marquette, 80-78.
– #10 Saint Mary’s beats #7 Richmond, 80-71.

Interesting story lines/stats
– #2 Villanova narrowly beating #15 Robert Morris in OT, even after RM had a 9 point lead at one point.
– 7 out of 16 games were decided by 3 points or less.
– In 3 games, the contest was won on a shot taken taken with less than 2 seconds left in the game.
– Only 5 games were won by more than 10 points (#1 Kentucky by 29, #2 Kansas State by 20, #1 Kansas by 16, #14 Ohio by 14, #5 Butler by 18).
– There were 3 games (out of 16) that went to Overtime. In the past 9 years, there have never been more than 2 OT games in the 1st round (out of 32 games).

Last week, my friend, Howard Lio, posted a comment on my Pac-10 post regarding my idea of parity.

“And Jon, equality is a terrible idea-for a NCAA Season. Where are your upsets now? Where are the cinderella stories? Who is the Goliath in the David story?

A season without a dominant force, just does not generate buzz. This season has only been driven by individual players like John wall, Evan Turner, or Demarcus Cousins.

All i can say is that when i watch the March madness tourney, I can’t say i will be passionately watching, because i cant expect a UNC to be in the Final Four; or cheer for a cinderella story since everyone is on an equal level.

This March madness, the brackets will be very boring to me”

The first day of the 2010 NCAA Tournament just proved that you don’t need a Cinderella story or a dominant team to create an exciting tournament. It also proved that parity across all conferences is very good for the game.

Personally, I would rather see competitive games across the board any day over dominant teams and a handful of Cinderella teams. I had a friend who didn’t follow college basketball at all follow the games intently to see who would etch out the win. Following all these close games down to the wire proved to be extremely exciting for myself and scores of fans across the country.

In a system with parity, every single game will be a good game. Today, 7 out of the 16 games were decided by 3 points or less, and11/16 were decided by 10 points or less. Almost every single game was a competitive game, and caught the attention of fans across the country.

Up until recently, the top 4 seeds would normally always roll over the #13-#16 seeds, winning by double digit margins. Now, even the #13-#16 seeds will fight hard against the top seeds and keep games close. This year we saw a #3 seed and a #4 seed get taken down and saw a #2 seed almost upset. In a couple years, I predict that even #1-#16 match-ups wont be gimme games anymore. I would predict the first #16 upset for a #1 team within the next decade.

Parity is good for the game. We see lower ranked teams play the games of their life, which forces higher ranked teams to answer the challenge. We see closer games won in the last seconds, as opposed to uncompetitive blowouts.

My Official Bracket after Day 1

Round 1: 9/16 Correct

One way to see how you’re doing is to see the maximum possible teams left you have making future rounds. For example, if for some reason you had, Georgetown, Texas, Vanderbilt and Notre Dame all make the Final Four, your max possible score for that round would now by 0/4, since all teams lost today.

Final 4: 4/4
Elite 8: 8/8
Sweet 16: 14/16

I had Georgetown and Vanderbilt making the Sweet 16.