Raleigh's Bracket Blog 3

Thursday 4:05

I’ve never taken a more nervous shower. I left with Texas A&M, my national runner-up, trailing Penn by two. Fortunately, I’ve returned to find them up 10 with only a few to go. An Aggie loss would have made it three years in a row that I would have lost a Final Four team on day one.
My boys the Commodores are on now against George Washington and they’ve already hit 4-9 3’s en route to a 13-2 early lead. The winner will face Washington State, who defeated Oral Roberts, my pick, earlier in Sacramento 70-54. Butler also won over Old Dominion, another one of my upset picks, to set up a matchup Saturday with Maryland. Georgetown ended up squashing Belmont 80-55. Poor Bruins. However, you would have thought that Belmont center Andrew Preston was Bill Russell listening to Jay Bilas, who must have said “You’ve got to be happy for this kid. Preston is the hardest-working player on this Belmont team…” seven or eight times. Preston is hard-working. He is fun to watch. But do you think Bilas had ever heard of Preston before, say, Wednesday? Doubt it. The Commodores are on, gotta go…