Madness

The madness has begun. I’ve filled out my brackets and taken a few chances. Again, I haven’t followed the sport or any teams all season and I am relying on team stats and history to make my educated guesses (or picks as some call it). I’m bucking the trend on a few of the calls I made. I think Kansas and UNC are over-hyped. I think Memphis and Tennessee are under-rated and there are a few silent-but-deadly hunters out there looking for a Sweet 16 run. My bucking the trend picks for the first round are: George Mason, Butler, Temple and Baylor. My Sweet 16 surprises are: Drake and WV. UNC and Memphis are my scariest predictions. Both look vulnerable, but I’m counting on UNC being too confident and peaking too soon, while Memphis needs to prove something and wants it bad enough to fight their way through. I think both will make final four just barely, but Memphis will survive to the championship game. I also think this will be the year of Hibbert and Ewing Jr. UCLA looks impressive except that their out-of-conference matchups weren’t that big of a deal. Look at who Tennessee, Memphis and UNC played for comparison – way tougher schedules. UCLA isn’t as battle-tested and will succumb to the varied play, plus I think they are peaking too soon as well.

In other news, we are getting a new desktop computer. I already got the new video card, and now I need the rest of the computer. I got a Geforce 8800GT for about half price through Amazon (hard to pass up the deal when it’s on sale and $70 off in rebates and credits). I’m either going to get a base model Dell and slap it in there, or build a computer. I’m leaning towards building except that the software is more of a pain that way. If I buy a Dell it comes with the OS. That’s a big bonus. I don’t know. I’ll let you know what I’ve decided once I have it in hand.