Sunday, April 01, 2007 - 12:52 AM

F4 Update

We should have known it would come to this. With more gimmes than a round of golf with your grandpa, the Buckeyes roll into the F4, and on to the Championship game. Meanwhile, the Gators set their course for the championship game in Atlanta only moments after cutting down the nets last year. So why should we have known it would come to this?? Is it so all the sports hacks from here to Hoboken can talk about the repeat of the BCS Bowl? Is it to tickle typewriters from coast to coast with talk of the Gators chances of three-peating National Championships across sports? Yes and probably...but that isn't why we should have seen it coming. The reason is as simple as three little words. Xavier. Fouls. Florida.

MM07: Pre-F4 Update

Saturday, March 31, 2007 - 01:59 PM

Pre-F4 Update

At this time of year, the F4 usually means just that...or darn near close. But in this year, the year of the over-dog, it means that and a whole lot more. From the "supremely confident" Coach KK to the mass-time musings of Father D and his little altar boy Suess, this year, a lot more that four will be paying attention to the final score.

MM07: Round IV Final

Sunday, March 25, 2007 - 11:57 PM

Round IV Final

This is the stuff of the tournament. Coming in to this thing, we figured there was a better-than-average chance that it was gunne be great. We guess it could be one of the best Regional Finals weekends in recent memory. In fact, we assumed that, given the absence of underdogs at this years dance. Ot at least I did. What that meant here was that every game was critical to your chances…you had to have them all if your were to cling to any chance of glory. No more compromises and more no rooting for the path of greatest resistance against your opponents. To each and every one of them. And for those of us who were Carolina Blue after the final tilt on Sunday, those lost chances –that lost chance- will rattle our cages like every single shot the UNC took in the overtime frame of the late contest. Well, someone told me that they actually made a three-pointer in the OT, but for me and all the other UNC swimmers that rolled the Tarheel bandwagon to poolside, it wasn’t our cages that were rattled…it was our brains. So, no, I can’t say as I saw that make. The one fukcing make that UNC dropped in in the overtime. I guess I missed it. But there’s always the flip side….and if you picked Georgetown to romp NC, yer probably feeling pretty good about yerself right now.

MM07: Round IV Update

Sunday, March 25, 2007 - 12:38 AM

Round IV Update

And away we go…..

We talked about what this weekend would mean…will mean…the ramifications of match-ups between high-seeded squads…and the result of each game with regard to would-be champions and wanna-be runners-up. And on the flip side of each of these square-offs, each victorious team and all the coat-tails riding poolers that dubbed them each to advance. The feeling of edginess as you watch your chances at glory slip away…from top ten to topped out. Cuz from every tip-off to each final whistle, what happens in between is the stuff that makes the edge of your seat warm and your sweat run cold. All you can do is sit back and watch, hope and pray. For there’s nothing you can do from where you sit to make it all come true…and worse yet, the same, ominous fact is true when it all starts to slip away

MM07: Round III Final

Saturday, March 24, 2007 - 02:54 AM

Round III Final

There’s always a lot of talk in this place about glory. We talk about what makes a bracket good and what recipes to make a bracket so boring…so soft, that a baby could sleep on it. And after 10 years, there’s never been a bracket that got close, got some pub, or got any notoriety unless it had the chance to be great…to be hung in the rafters with the likes of Carmelo, ufcker and Cockless of old. You know, the types of brackets that carried them to the top of the Big Board and kept them there, paced by the glory-invoking power of the UDog and a Cinderella (or two). You see, even though the UDog bonus points end after the first weekend, the real UDogs…the Cinderellas….they play on. They are the things that solidify your glory…or cement your position in the bottom half. They can be the rescue tube or a cinderblock thrown on your head after hours of treading in the deep end. But this year, the ‘dogs did nothing except follow a script that was seemingly laid out for them the Hughes brothers. And everybody knows…from the opening scene at the Korean market…nobody loves (an) O-Dog. He’s a menace.

MM07: Round III Update

Friday, March 23, 2007 - 02:20 AM

Round III Update

One thing we know after being exposed to the water for this long is that if you want any chance of winning it and you’re not in the top few, you need points. You need them in order to catch and you need the chase-e to be more like a chaise than anything with wheels. Problem is, in order for that to happen, you need your teams to win. Good thing for all of us who aren’t in the top spot that….outside of Kansas, the night carried guarantees like Rasheed Wallace.

MM07: Round II Final

Sunday, March 18, 2007 - 10:33 PM

Round II Final

Who wanted the upsets? Huh?!?! Who’s with me here?? Who said the Big Ten was tough?? Who said that Winthrop was a lock for the Sweet 16?!? And who invited Ashes and Thax-man?!? On a day of days, the last now of the first weekend brought us the house-rocking upsets and the bracket crashing blowouts we were seeking. Well, boys and girls, the fix is in!

MM07: Round II Update

Saturday, March 17, 2007 - 11:40 PM

Round II Update

The day tipped off with an epic battle between two teams with more ties than a CPA convention and more drama than TNT. In the end, the heavily favored Buckeyes of OSU pulled out the win…to everyone’s relief, except ORG. It’s not that the pick itself is so brutal, at least not in the same vain as selections such as Stanford and guesses like GW, but it wasn’t correct…and ORG finds himself in a minority so small that it barely matters. And don’t try to give me the “every minority matters” speech, cuz we know that shit ain’t the truth. If it were, we wouldn’t still be talking about Obama like he wasn’t in the room…or looking over our shoulders before telling a joke about his picks.

MM07: Round I Final

Saturday, March 17, 2007 - 03:07 AM

Round I Final

The night time came and a calm fell upon the pool. Rudy was perfect, the upsets were mostly upset and the other slipper was yet to drop. The W-trifecta was just over the rise, yet we had to wait. A mere turn of the Earth and over the set would bring us today, a new now. Day Two.

Wisconsin, Winthrop, and the Wolf Pack kicked in the day, and depending on where you sat and how many you gat, it had the making to get real nice out, or real ugly. And I don’t mean just beer goggles ugly. Cuz if that’s all we were talking about, most of your brackets would have become waterlogged ashes at the bottom of the pool by now. We’re talking full-on, three bag stlye. One for you, one for your picks, and one for the webcam. Good or bad!

MM07: Round I Update

Friday, March 16, 2007 - 02:55 AM

Round I Update

It’s only when this thing kicks in that you remember the beauty of it all. But what defines that beauty, the purity of the thing? Cuz it turns on a UDog. It always does.

Do you play for the upset or armed with forensic chalk? You grab the paper, comb the web, and tune in to the talk shows everywhere as if to replace porn…unmistakably realizing that somewhere in the pretiptual plotting it grew from fetal to fetish. Either way, you know fer damn sure that when this thing kicks off, your bracket is the beauty. But even then, what matters most in all the pomp and posturing, the expertise that spews forward from you and all pundits and the unblemished bracketed beginnings is tomorrow. And tomorrow is today. Or so, as the not-so-immortal Howard Jones put it, Tomorrow is Now. And what matters now is….how beautiful does it look after it kicks in?

Category: MM07