Author Archives: Brendan

The Others: UB, Denver & NoCo, oh my!

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As regular readers know, I’ve got three primary college basketball rooting interests: my alma maters, USC and Notre Dame, and the team I’ve randomly followed since just before they became a household name, Gonzaga. There’s also team number four, the UConn Huskies, who I grew up rooting for, but who I now only casually follow, at best. But there are… Read more »

Brave New Bubble: which 5-11 ACC team is more “deserving”?

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The latest bubble update from Mike Scullin’s NIT-ology is instructive, both for thinking about this year’s NCAA Tournament, and for thinking about how an expanded, 96-team field would change the nature of the discussions that we have at this time of year. With respect to the current state of the NCAA bubble, Scullin writes: I’m sure this is a common… Read more »

Jeff Freeze wins Oscar Pool, sets record

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Congratulations to Jeff Freeze, a resident of Burns Harbor, Indiana, and a blog reader since 2005, who won the 6th annual Living Room Times Oscar Pool tonight — and set an all-time record in the process, with 74 out of a possible 80 points. Freeze got only six categories wrong, all worth one point apiece: Best Film Editing, Costume Design,… Read more »

Oscar Live Blog underway!

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My Oscar Live Blog / Live Chat — with live Oscar Pool results — is now underway. UPDATE: The liveblog is over, but you can read the whole thing after the jump. It starts with a cute baby picture!

Final Oscar Pool reminder

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Don’t forget, if you haven’t entered already, the deadline to enter my free Oscar Pool is 5:30 PM Mountain Time tonight. Then at 6:00, we’ll start our Live Blog / Chat (with live pool results). Enter the pool now & stop by tonight!

The Bubble: where things stand

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Here’s how Joe Lunardi assesses the bubble as of now. He’s got 33 teams as “locks,” including Louisville — which closed out historic Freedom Hall in memorable fashion by beating #1 Syracuse today — and Northern Iowa. Lunardi’s “bubble” consists of 22 teams competing for 11 spots, which he lists, in order, thusly: IN (11, in S-Curve order): Marquette, Wake… Read more »

Christmas bomb plot was doomed to fail; plane would have landed safely

A test explosion for a BBC documentary suggests that the “underpants bomber” would have failed to bring down Flight 253 on Christmas Day 2009, even if he’d managed to detonate his trousers. Likely death toll: 2, namely the bomber and the unlucky soul sitting next to him. A controlled blast on a Boeing 747, using the same explosives that Umar… Read more »

Oscar Pool reminder

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At the risk of being spammy, I just wanted to post another reminder to my vast (heh) audience of blog “fans” to enter my 6th annual Oscar Pool! It’s free, so if you don’t know anything about the nominees, no biggie — what do you have to lose? Just your pride, and who cares about that? 🙂 And if you… Read more »