20060327

Jimmy Chitwood is listed as "questionable" for the game

THE FINAL FOUR

The Great American
March Madness
NCAA Basketball Pool

6:07pm - #11 George Mason vs # 3 Florida

8:47 - #2 UCLA vs #4 LSU

Leader board

Entrant Pts

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Chris Dennehy
Matt Stevens (1)
Matt Stevens (3)
Chris Reilly (2)
Chris McGurrin (2)
Ryan Morgan (1)
Ron Gifford (1)
Lisa Dennehy
Earl Imhoff
Matt Stevens (2)

Three entries in the top10

George Mason - 86, Connecticut - 84 (OT)
Florida - 75, Villanova - 62

Do you believe in miracles??? YESSSS!!! The #11 seeded George Mason team, the Cinderella story of all Cinderella stories, has written another chapter in their startling run through the NCAA tournament. This time the Patriots managed to eliminate the #1 seeded U Conn Huskies in overtime of the Washington Regional to advance to next weekend's Final Four in Indianapolis. George Mason, which is located just outside of Washington DC, played what amounted to a home game against the heavily favored Huskies. And what a game it was. George Mason came clawing back from a double digit deficit and was holding onto a 2 point lead in the waning seconds of regulation. U Conn was forced to foul George Mason's best player, Tony Skinn, with 5 seconds left to stop the clock. Skinn amazingly enough missed his front end free throw attempt and U Conn, with no timeouts left, raced down the court and Denham Brown made a spectacular reverse layup at the buzzer to force overtime. But George Mason didn't wilt under the pressure and again found themselves with a 2 point lead in the final seconds of OT. In a "deja-vu all over again" moment though, George Mason was at the line, and just like at the end of regulation, U Conn grabbed a rebound off a missed free threw and raced down the court and got the ball into the hands of Brown. This time, however, it seemed as if he was unaware that U Conn was only down by 2 as he crossed the three point line on his way to the basket, only to inexplicably stop and step back over it before putting up a missed 3 point attempt. ENNNNNHHH!!!!! Game over. David - 1, Goliath - zip. George Mason now ties the 1986 LSU Tigers as the lowest seeded team ever to reach the Final Four. Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.

If you haven't tried clicking this one yet, give it a shot.
:-)

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Here's where it gets interesting.

Still alive somehow is my older, and apparently smarter, brother Chris who is currently holding down first place. Although he had the U Conn Huskies winning the whole thing over LSU, I believe that as long as LSU merely advances to the finals, either against George Mason or Florida (it doesn't matter which), then he wins the pool. Doesn't matter if LSU wins or loses in the championship game against those teams, as long as they just make it, he wins. Reason being that if George Mason goes to the finals, obviously nobody can pick up points on him there. And if Florida advances and wins, Wade Napier, the only person who has Florida, would pick up 32 points on him. Wade currently trails "mi hermano" by 33 points though. He'd lose by 1.

That's all unofficial by the way. Quite simply, I've got a headache from trying to figure all this out. And Chris? Sorry to jinx ya dude with that phone call Sunday morning. Welcome to my world by the way.

The schedule for next Saturday has been set with George Mason and Florida playing the early game, UCLA and LSU the late one:

SUNDAY, BLOODY SUNDAY!

NCAA POOLS WORLDWIDE
THROWN INTO CHAOS!

Newest member of LSU fan club
(read on)

And then in the day's other game, the Florida Gators knocked off the tourney's other Big East Titan, Villanova, 75-62. Florida lead throughout the contest and fought off a valiant Nova comeback that saw them pull within three points midway though the second half. But that was all they could muster as Florida refused to flinch and built their lead right back up to win it going away.

In terms of our pool (or "this thing of ours" as I like to call it), today's events effectively nuked the chances of many of the surviving entrants. Basically, I have no stinking clue as to how this is all going to unfold and it's times like these when I sure wish I had something like this at home.
We've got a Final Four of George Mason, Florida, UCLA, and LSU. Nobody picked George Mason or LSU to win this thing of course. Two people (Pam "aka Paula" Kobin #2 and Tracy "Brooks" Robinson #1) have UCLA winning the whole ball of wax, and one person (Wade "Boggs" Napier) has Florida.

Now, stay with me on this. Here is how the standings look like as of this morning:

If you missed an update from over the weekend, you can find them here.

And yes, some folks still owe me money. Don't make me get rough witcha.

Finally, as an FYI, I'll be out of town on business Tuesday - Friday, so if I don't respond to your email, it's not that I'm rude. Well, actually, I AM rude. But that's beside the point.

Commissioner Dennehy