With the NIT quarterfinals halfway finished, Josh Rubin sits in first place in the 6th annual Living Room Times NIT Pool. Seven contestants, including Rubin, are still mathematically alive to win the pool. Anywhere between two and five more contestants will be eliminated tomorrow, when Illinois plays Dayton and Virginia Tech plays Rhode Island in the last two quarterfinals. After… Read more »
Twenty years ago today, I became a college basketball fan. No, really. That’s not an exaggeration. The Sweet 16 game between UConn and Clemson in 1990, ending in the Burrell-to-George miracle shown above, was literally the first basketball game I ever watched in anything close to its entirety. As I recalled some years ago, tracing my history as a March… Read more »
Rather than allow my homepage to be overrun by tweets again today, I’m going to funnel everything into this window. To comment, either click “Make a comment,” or tweet something @brendanloy. In addition to my tweets, any tweets from a bunch of Gonzaga bloggers, and other college-hoops bloggers, will also auto-post. P.S. Loyette says, “Go Zags!” UPDATE: I’m changing the… Read more »
In March 2006, Becky and I went to St. Louis to watch “Arch Madness,” a.k.a. the Missouri Valley Conference tournament. Two weeks later, a pair of MVC teams that we saw play in a semifinal — Wichita State and Bradley — made the Sweet Sixteen. In February 2007, Becky and I went to the BracketBusters game at Hinkle Fieldhouse between… Read more »
Now underway, with Gus Johnson announcing! Live coverage via my Twitter list:
OMG #snowpocalypse!!! Better just stay inside and watch basketball. (That’d be one game on the TV, one on my computer, and one on my iPod Touch, courtesy of the MMOD app. I heart technology.) Yup… it’s a snowy, sleepy afternoon in the Loy household.
After 1 1/4 crazy days of basketball, your bracket is probably busted. Yeah, so is just about everyone else’s. But I have two pieces of good news. First of all, busted brackets are what make the Tournament great, so stop complaining. (Yeah, easy for me to say.) Second of all, you have a chance at redemption: Enter the women’s pool!… Read more »
My Cinderella anthem, recycled for another year, with a couple of new teams added to the roster. More appropriate than ever this year: Mine eyes have seen the glory of a bracket freshly made And prognosticators certain that the seeds will be obeyed But like clockwork, underdogs emerge and favorites are waylaid The Madness marches on! Glory, glory, Cinderella! Glory,… Read more »
Because it’s worth another look (or ten), here again is the greatest shot on “one of the greatest days in the history of the NCAA Tournament.” What makes that shot so great? First of all, as I mentioned yesterday, it was a true buzzer-beater, leaving the player’s hands before 0:00 and swishing through the hoop after 0:00. No time left… Read more »
Boy, am I glad I made that last-minute change to picking Northern Iowa over UNLV.