20050403

The Great American
March Madness
NCAA Basketball Pool

Okay. Not as stellar a weekend of games as last weekend, but still fun nonetheless. Both Illinois and North Carolina found themselves locked in competitive games at the half (Illinois lead by 3 and UNC was losing) but poured it on in the second session to win going away. Louisville's Francisco Garcia bears the brunt of the blame for the Cardinals loss as the All American forward could muster only an anemic 4 points against the Fighting Illini. Quite an end to his NCAA career. Not.

153 - Dave "wire to wire?" Allard
146 - Sheryl "Epstein never came this close" Hemphill
143 - Brian "The whole Suth and nothing but the" Suth

Illinois defeats North Carolina

151 - Craig Antas "ipation is making me wait"
- Don "Big Blue" Legere (1)
149 - Brian "no repeat" Farrelly

North Carolina defeats Illinois

"A month ago I thought this year's tourney looked pretty clear-cut. Illinois and North Carolina had both pretty much separated themselves from the rest of the field and it seemed there would be no stopping their eventual matchup in the championship game."
- The Commish 3/17/05

"Personally, I ended up going with both of the original favorites, North Carolina and Illinois, to go to the finals, with the Tar Heels eventually winning the whole thing."
- The Commish 3/17/05

Winner determined by total pts tiebreaker

I still have a few stragglers who haven't paid their entry fees (or at least notified me it's on the way). Don't make me have these guys come see ya:

Yeah. I know what you're thinking. "Hey Nostradamus ... if you're so smart why'd you have Syracuse in the Final Four?!"

Well since the NCAA was a bit of disappointment, the highlight of the weekend was easily Friday night. My daughter, Lauren, had turned 11 last week so my wife in a moment of temporary insanity had allowed her to invite 20 or so of her friends to sleep over our house. Thankfully, it was Spring Break so a lot of them couldn't come. We still ended up with 16 girls though, including Lauren. It was Chaos. Utter chaos. Did I mention that the date by the way was April 1st?

As you probably gathered from previous updates, my family watches American Idol. I admit it. I got suckered in and now I'm hooked. It's actually a pretty good show for the whole family to watch ... no sex, or crude language, or off color stuff, etc., so we make an event of it every week and the kids get a big kick out of rooting for their favorites. Well, it's become a bit of an inside joke with me and Mrs Commish that there is "something going on" between Bo Bice and Carrie Underwood who are two of the finalists this year. It started as a joke but my kids (and by now some of their friends) are absolutely convinced that,something is indeed "going on between them." They watch it each week now and study it to see if they sit next to other, etc. It's almost like they're old school Kremlin-ologists from the Cold War days studying the latest photos from the Moscow May Day Parade for clues as to who was in Stalin's favor or something.

Wait! Where was I going with this again? Oh, right ... Lauren's party fell on April 1st.

So being someone who has been known to fancy a good practical joke, I knew I had to do something with all these girls over the house and I thought, hey ... how about if I was able to convince them that Bo and Carrie actually got engaged! I mean, hey, they ALL have got to watch that show, right? They're all 10-11 years old and aside from 39 year old insurance adjusters, that's THE target demographic. Oh yeah. I was SO going with this!

So here's what I did. In the middle of the party I snuck away for a minute and called my neighbor (and PAID IN FULL pool participant) Jason Cadek and told him to call back in one minute, Lauren would answer the phone and he was to tell her that he just saw on the news that Bo and Carrie got engaged.

Sure enough he calls, she answers, he tells her ... and she is NOT buying it. "No way, you're just trying to get me with an April Fools!" So he tells her "Go check the internet if you don't believe me." Okay, she's gonna go right ahead and do that, buster!

So we all march into the den and I open up the internet and go to our bookmarked American Idol page. Only thing is ... I had changed the bookmark to this:

American Idol (go ahead, it's safe to click)

Well, let me tell ya ... there was such an eardrum splitting scream eminating from the dozen or so girls who had piled into the den with us, that I think it could be heard all the way back in New England. They all came flying out to scream to the others "ITS TRUE! ITS TRUE! OH MY GOD!! OH MY GOD!!" One of them even grabs the phone right away and calls her mom to tell her.

Hook ... line ... sinker.

After about 5 or so minutes they started to see through it and I zinged them with the ol "April Fools!" The final score? Dad - 1 , Kids - zip.

Okay. Done with the story. The only reason I even told you all of that was because I don't have any witty basketball related stuff for you and I had to fluff this update up somehow. So in any event, it all comes down to UNC and Illinois on Monday tonight. Gametime is listed as 9:21. Hopefully I can stay awake. As a reminder, here is who is contention:

Vito Luca

Caio.

The Commish