Day one thoughts

1) Only real surprise to me was Oklahoma St getting stomped on. I didn't think Oregon was that good to win that convincingly. I concede they had a good shot to win (as do most teams), but not the 43% they were getting from ESPN's public (log5 had them at 38% though, so it was close).

2) Pitt losing to Wichita was annoying, but I managed to talk myself out of a Zags upset because Pitt didn't average much in the way of scoring. Which is risky in the tournament. Missing a couple first round games isn't as important to trying to win any pools as picking up potential elite eight teams.

3) New Mexico, had they been playing Davidson, or even Northwestern St, I would have picked against them in a heartbeat for the first round (I did have Arizona beating them in the second). It's possible those wouldn't have worked out and Harvard had a better matchup to win, but nevertheless, I did identify New Mexico as very weak 3. Marquette also was losing most of the second half and managed by some device of error to pull out a win. I feel pretty good about going against these two, even if I missed both for the first round the way I ended up picking them. Davidson had an absurdly high chance by the log5 metric for a 14 seed, about 1 in 3 odds, but Harvard was pulling about 3-4 times what the public thought was the case, about 17%. Clearly the public thought New Mexico was supposed to be pretty good for some reason. Clearly they haven't watched many MWC games.

3a) The line for NM was also 12 in that game. Which seemed absurdly high. New Mexico only won 10 games by more than that all year (and only a home win against NMSU was against anyone of Harvard's caliber). Apparently the Vegas thinks the public thinks 3 seeds are supposed to be good, but don't observe that they're not always. They should probably have set their lines a little more in line with the quality and style of the two teams involved first.

4) No idea why Colorado St wasn't favored in that Mizzou game. Haidt's not a very good coach, they were undersized, playing on the road, and Colorado St was actually pretty good (almost as good as New Mexico, and better than UNLV or San Diego St). Whatever. Thanks for the pot odds value.

5) Memphis barely won. Had St Mary's not played a day and a half earlier (and had travel delays before that), I think they should have won that game. I'd still pick this one again as either MTSU/St Mary's winning when the public was picking Memphis at an 88% clip.

6) Cal upset was pretty obvious, thanks to the committee. UNLV was a poor road team and the game was less than 50 miles from Cal. That was just a poor bracket setup. Then again, only the top 4 are supposed to be "protected" seeds anyway, but it helps to make the first round upsets easy to call.

7) Wow VCU is crazy on defence. That and Akron could have used a couple of extra players.

8) I am mildly surprised that Arizona won so handily, but not surprised they advanced. They're pretty talented for a 6 seed when all the other 6s are overrated. And the focus on their 3pt defence overshadowed that Belmont's wasn't very good and Arizona's 3pt% offence was in fact pretty good.

9) I'm curious if the RPI will get another pass to re-evaluate it after this season, but I doubt it will. When (if) the MWC ends up 1-5 in the tournament (San Diego St can win today, and could beat Georgetown on Sunday, but will probably not), the idea that somehow it was the best conference in the country should be taken as an absurdity that no decent system should have produced and be seen as a need for reform.