Multiply 365 Day 78 - Busted

What can I say, other than I don't have to watch college basketball for the rest of spring.  As I mentioned before, I was involved in two tournaments, emphasizing the past tense on both of them.  One I was required to make one pick each round against the point spread, the other I was required to pick all of the games, down to a national champion. It only took one day of basketball to make both of those contests irrelevant, though one was solely the fault of the people running the tournament.

In the one where I shall remain blameless, like I said we were required to pick one game in each round of the tournament against the point spread.  I did well the first day, had UNC -14 and they won by 15, it was close but I had snagged my first win.  So I waited to be able to put in my second pick.  And waited.  And waited.  When I finally went to bed somewhere around 2:30am last night they still hadn't posted any point spreads for the Saturday/Sunday games.  So i did what I always do on Saturday, went to breakfast and then work and when I got home to log in and make a pick for the Saturday/Sunday games I was told that I was too late and thereby couldn't enter a pick at all.  hell, even when I logged in they still didn't have point spreads on 8 of the 16 games that were to be played.  Of the 8 that were left, I wanted to take Richmond (a 4 point favorite) so I emailed them with my pick and the problems I had with the app (the Richmond game hadn't started yet, it wouldn't begin for another 5 hours or so) and of course nothing was done about it.  It was little consolation that in fact Richmond did end up winning and covering the 4 point margin, I was fucked anyway.

The other contest, where I had to pick the entire tourney, again I was doing okay starting off with a 25-7 record through the first 32 games and picking two upsets in the first round correctly.  And as the day progressed it continued to look good, again it was Richmond who I had making the round of 16, being the most pleasant surprise but all in all I was doing okay on most of my picks.  Then came the Pitt game.  Yeah, the sort of homer pick, the team I had winning the entire tournament, the team that spent most of the year in the top 5 of the polls, the team that earned a #1 seed in the tournament.  That Pitt team.  And they did what they always do, which is fail to live up to expectations.  But even better they did it in spectacular fashion.  Down by 13 at one point and 8 at the half, Pitt managed to take a lead late in the game, albeit a 1 point one and had that lead with less than 10 seconds to go with Butler having the ball.  But a driving missed layup, followed by a put back by Butler gave them the lead by 1 with about 3 seconds remaining.  Pitt manages to inbound the ball and attempt a half court shot with around 1 second left.  The shot was nowhere close but amazingly the Pitt player was fouled on the shot and would go to the line for two free throws and a chance at the lead.  The first one goes through and we are tied.  The second bounces off of the back iron and Butler rebounds with .8 seconds left and are fouled on the rebound, 90 feet from their basket, but being in the double bonus, the foul resulted in two shots for Butler, they hit one and won 71-70, thereby making my bracket all but useless. 

I am going to go drink heavily now.