March Madness 2023

[Quintillus]

Anyone watching some hoops this month? It's that time of year again!

I caught some of the Fairleigh-Dickinson vs Purdue game tonight. One of my friends had picked Purdue to win the whole tournament, and was doing quite well in his office bracket early on, so the rest of us had much fun reveling in FDU's lead for most of the game, and eventual victory.

I don't have any horses in the tournament this year, so I'll mostly be rooting for the underdogs.

 

[Bamspeedy]

FD caught my eye on the bracket and I thought if I was going to pick one huge upset, I'd pick them. Sadly, I didn't fill out any brackets or make any wagers.

Couple years ago I tried entering a bunch of online sweepstakes by filling out brackets. Lost interest when found out most prizes are non cash prizes (trips, tickets, etc, and of course non-transferable). Wouldn't have won anyways, not that good since I dont follow basketball that much. That year, out of millions of submissions in the sweepstakes I was like top 2% after 2.5 rounds, then it all came crumbling down and dont think I finished in top 50%.

 

[Quintillus]

If I were to ever enter a bracket and have it do well, it would be purely by chance. Then again, one could argue chance is a large factor even for someone who follows basketball much more closely.

It was a fun tournament to root for underdogs. Didn't catch a ton but did see most of FAU over Tennessee, and the latter part of SDSU over Alabama, as well as SDSU over FAU, what a buzzer beater!

I watched the entirety of the women's championship game and the last 7 minutes of the men's. I think I chose the right one to watch the whole game, that LSU-Iowa game was a three-pointer frenzy and even when it wasn't that close it felt like it could swing pretty quickly until late, and at times did. And at 102-85 I believe it was the highest-scoring game of both tournaments - not so much because the defense wasn't good, as because the field goal percentage was outrageous. At one point LSU was shooting 75% from three-point range, scoring 59 points before halftime, and Iowa was about 50% overall, usually shooting from well outside the arc.