Borrrrrring

The NCAA Tournament was amazing in 2006 - #13 Bradley in the Sweet 16, a #14 (Northwestern State) pulling a last-second upset over a #3, and of course George Mason's historic run to the Final Four, the standard against which all future Cinderellas will be measured. As if to make sure no one got too excited, the 2007 tournament poured water over March Madness, bringing it pretty much to a state of dull calm by the second weekend. How boring was it? Well, let's see: the lowest seed in the Sweet 16 was a #7 (the last time no double-digit seed made the second weekend was 1995, for crying out loud! And at least that year made up for it with one of the classic upsets, #14 Old Dominion's three-overtime ousting of #3 Villanova); the Final Four was two one-seeds and two two-seeds, while the Elite Eight was 1-2, 1-2, 1-2, 1-3; only two double-digit seeds even won games (#11s Winthrop and VCU, one win each); and the team that everyone expected to repeat as champions, Florida, did. All that and it's not like the regional final games (or any that came after) were all that good, besides Georgetown/UNC. I mean, if I have to deal with boring seed lines, at least have them play the good games against each other you might expect out of that. But no. Brutal.

Well, this year hasn't started much differently. It's not just the lack of upsets - although the lowest seed to win today was an underseeded #11 Kansas State - it's how one-sided all the games have been. I mean, if you're not going to give me upsets, at least give me shit I can watch. Instead, we got the following:

Xavier by 12
Kansas by 24
Michigan State by 11
Marquette by 8
UNLV by 13
Pitt by 19
Purdue by 11
Stanford by 24
Kansas State by 13
Duke by 1
Washington State by 31
Texas A&M by 5
Notre Dame by 18
Wisconsin by 15
West Virginia by 10
UCLA by 41

Hell, at least half those games were over by halftime. Even some that weren't turned into jokes; Washington State was actually tied at the half with Winthrop, before outscoring the Eagles 42-11 in the second. UCLA held Mississippi Valley State to 29 total points. Kansas, UNLV, Pitt, Stanford, and UCLA all led by 20+ at halftime; Purdue led by 19. Only the Duke game actually came down to the final seconds, when Belmont deprived us of just the fifth 2/15 upset in history thanks to a lousy lob pass underneath their basket (to say nothing of the matador defense they put on Gerald Henderson).

So we only had two seed upsets, one of which barely counts since we all knew K-State was probably not an 11, and the other of which definitely doesn't count since it was 9 over 8 and the 9s win more often anyway. And tomorrow doesn't look much more promising, what with two more 1-16 games and three 2-15 games. That's five right there where you're all but guaranteed not to see an upset (I think it was the 2.7% winning percentage from 1985-2007 that tipped me off). The only serious upset that seems terribly likely is Siena over Vanderbilt, and upsets aren't that fun if you can see them coming. So I guess we can hope for one that we don't see coming (UMBC over Georgetown? Uh, probably not), but I won't hold my breath.

Maybe I should have done a pool this year and just picked full chalk. Not knowing anything wouldn't have made much difference.