Raleigh's Bracket Blog 1

Thursday, 2:37

This past fall, I went to Tower Records on West End to pick up some discount cd’s, as Tower was shutting down. The sweet old man in front of me that pestered the lady at the counter about CD-R’s was Belmont’s fiery—but sweet—hoops coach Rick Byrd. Currently he is yelling at his Bruins in the locker room of Wake Forest’s Joel Coliseum.
The Bruins, who led early 11-4, have fallen behind 38-25 at the half to the East’s 2 seed Georgetown. Belmont can’t find any good looks against the physical, stingy, athletic Hoya defense, who have stifled post men Andrew Preston and Boomer Herndon and forced the Bruin guards into multiple silly turnovers.
Georgetown’s athletic wings and size advantage (not only down low but around the perimeter) should become more of a factor in the second half as they move forward towards what should be an easy victory. I would love to see the home-town boys win, especially having played with three of them (Harpeth grads Shane Dansby and my boy, Josh Goodwin, and DCA’s Boomer Herndon), but Belmont will have to box out better and make everything to have a chance in the second half.

After the early afternoon games (during which Lipscomb was on lockdown because of a prison escapee in the area), my record stood at 2-1, although none of those games involved teams advancing past my Sweet 16. Maryland held on late to defeat Davidson 82-70, although I would have loved to have seen an upset despite the Terps’ presence in my Sweet. 16. Bob Knight’s Texas Tech squad fell to Boston College 84-75, after leading most of the way through, officially knocking me out of the chase for the perfect bracket. Soon after, Louisville—who is suddenly looking very dangerous playing in front of their unfair Lexington home crowd—hammered Stanford, potentially setting up a matchup that could spell doom for my runners-up, Texas A&M.

Mostly, I feel pretty good about today. The last two years I have lost a Final Four team on Day 1, and I don’t sense that happening on this cloudy Thursday. But I also didn’t expect to see a man in an orange jumpsuit with shackles on his feet hobbling down Granny White Pike this morning, either.