March Madness - Round 1 Predictions - Thursday

March Madness 2009

I love basketball. My screen name is NY11399 which is the score of the famous Willis Reed game, Game 7 of the 1969-70 NBA Finals between the Knicks and the Lakers.
I was there at the Garden in the blue seats ($5!!!) behind Marv Albert. I was at the old Garden for the famous college basketball game in the ECAC Holiday festival between Princeton and Michigan, Bill Bradley vs. Cazzie Russell. I remember UCLA winning with Goodrich and Hazzard, Alcindor and Jabbar, Walton and Patterson. I saw Texas Western and I saw Dr. Dunkenstein. I love this game.

Here are Thursday’s picks:

East Regional

VCU over UCLA. Eric Maynor is better than Darren Collison. The Bruins foul constantly and get bailed out at home but may not find the officiating as homerific
in Philly as at Pauley. Last chance to see the future President of the Cameroons, Alfred Aboya, and Josh Shipp, a nothing player who will be doing his nothing in Turkey next year if he’s lucky.

Villanova over American. ‘Nova at home in the cradle of liberty playing American.
How fitting. ‘Nova by 20+.

Texas over Minnesota. How the Big-10 got all these teams in the tournament is beyond me. Maybe the Selection Committee thought it was a hockey tournament. Big 12 over Big 10. By 11.

Duke over Binghamton. This could get ugly. But not quite as ugly as Greg Paulus.

South Regional

North Carolina over Radford. Ty Lawson’s toe woes are more interesting than Radford.
And how many of you thought Ty’s name was Tyrone and not Tywon (not China!).

LSU over Butler. Books will not be written about this match-up.

Western Kentucky over Illinois. I listened to Western win last year on a buzzer-beater while parking at Langer’s Deli on Alvarado in L.A. for the best pastrami outside of Katz’s on Houston St. The Illini’s best guard has a bum hand. And tell me how the Big 10 got all these teams in?

Gonzaga over Akron. The Zips are coached by LeBron’s old high school coach. Their nickname is the Zips. If the Zips could go scoreless that would be so great for headline writers everywhere.

Clemson over Michigan. There will be idiots on CBS and ESPN who think they are cool by shortening Wolverines to Wolves. They are idiots. Wolverines and Wolves are separate and distinct animals. Maybe someone on Michigan can call another time-out they don’t have.

Oklahoma over Morgan State. Blake Griffin is orange. Why didn’t he end up at Syracuse?

Midwest Regional

No games Thursday.

West Regional

UConn over Chattanooga. The UConn Huskies (get it? Yukon? Huskies?) against a team named after a “bend in the Tennessee River”. WTF??? UConn by a million.

Texas A&M over BYU. How can you root for a team from a state that bankrolled the hate of Prop. 8 in California? Not me.

Purdue over Northern Iowa. Almost everyone in Indiana has a Robbie Hummel figurine somewhere on a shelf.

Washington over Mississippi State. Huskies at home. If they can get by Purdue in Round 2 they set up an all-Husky game on March 26th. In the old days Husky was a size in boy’s clothing. Very lame.

Maryland over Cal. Maryland has a Puerto Rican guard named Grievous Vasquez.
The best guard ever out of Puerto Rico was Marquette’s Butch Lee who almost led them to an Olympic win over the US. Question – Puerto Rico’s not a country. How do they have an Olympic team?

Memphis over Cal State Northridge. I say Memphis pulls the Matadors apart like so much pulled pork and wins by 35+ as Calipari wants them to show the world. CSUN,
see lose.