March Madness

I have emerged from the shadows. Despite my mediocre performance making predictions last night, I am back, ready to shake, rattle, and possibly roll. I did all the typical "prelude to a great evening of predictions" activities including walking my dog, eating a bowl of knockoff fruit loops, and purchasing the season's first six-pack of Summer Shandy- it's game time. A few thoughts before the games get going- due to my neglect of the Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and THE Dapper Dan Man (at least Donovan's hair isn't as bad as Lavin's) last night, I am going to give more respect to coaches I deem worthy of it- also, an elaborate broadcasting prediction pertaining to Tu Holloway is coming up... read on.

Ohio State and Florida joined Big East powers Syracuse and Louisville in advancing to the regional finals of the 2012 NCAA tournament on Thursday. Here’s a recap of Thursday’s NCAA tournament games:

One week ago, the greatest weekend of the year occurred, and out of an initial field of 68 teams (who am I kidding, we only care about 64), we are now down to the "Sweet 16," only three games away from a national champion. There being no games to write about for the past few days, there is a chance you have forgotten what this whole semi-expert picking thing is all about. In a nutshell, I have no expertise in basketball other than my distinction for watching quite a bit of it, my bench-warming prowess on a high school varsity team, the honorary captain title for a freshman team, and the heavily-laden-in-street-cred-6th-grade-nickname "Downtown."

All four top regional seeds — Kentucky, North Carolina, Syracuse and Michigan State— remain alive as the 2012 NCAA tournament begins the regional semifinal round on Thursday. An NCAA record four schools from Ohio have advanced to the round of 16. Here’s a preview of the next round of NCAA tournament games:

Ohio, Cincinnati and Xavier all won on Sunday to join Ohio State in the NCAA basketball tournament round of 16. Top-seeded North Carolina and Michigan State also won to advance to the regional semi-finals. Here’s a full recap of the day’s action in the NCAA tournament:

The first 16 games are in the bag and after Day 1, I went 13-3, with three games boasting correctly predicted margin of victory. The pessimistic side of me says that I will probably proceed to go 8-8 and be nowhere near accurate with my score predictions- but as the day goes, we shall see. In order of their tip-off times, here are today's games, complete with my predicted scores, and small explanations of why I made the picks:

Higher-seeded teams won all but two games during Thursday’s play in the second round of the NCAA basketball tournament. VCU and Colorado were the only lower-seeded teams to record victories. Here’s a recap of all of the day’s action in the NCAA tournament:

As an avid fan, pick-up enthusiast, prolific television watcher and former MVP from a 5th-6th grade basketball team, I consider myself the perfect person to help you make picks through this year's NCAA Division 1, Men's Basketball Tournament. In order of the games to be played today, here are my picks, complete with scores: