My compliments to whoever made this thing:
The Big 10 entered this year’s tournament sitting real pretty, with a whopping EIGHT teams in the Field of 64, including two #1 seeds (Michigan & Illinois), two #2’s (Ohio State & Iowa), a #4 (Purdue), a #9 (Wisconsin), and two #10’s (Maryland & Rutgers).
And now, after a mere 2 rounds? Michigan, who were 86-78 winners over #8 LSU last night, are the conference’s sole surviving team.
Michigan, after surveying the rest of the conference
This, of course, is music to the ears of our pool’s most noted Michigan fans, the Peraino family. Well, 3 of the 4 of them anyways. They don’t like to speak of daughter Rosie’s decision to attend Ohio State … or “The Great Betrayal” as it came to be known as in family circles. Son Dominick even bribed me with a $5 contribution to “The Commish’s Beer Fund” this year just to keep me from picking his beloved Wolverines, apparently afraid I would jinx them if I did. In retrospect, given my track record, it was probably a smart move on his part.
Heading home instead of joining the Wolverines in the Sweet 16 are #2 Iowa, who were upset by #7 Oregon 95-80, and #10 Maryland, who fell to #2 Alabama 96-77.
That Maryland score shouldn’t have really surprised anyone though, since I imagine BIG 10 schools are pretty used to losing to Alabama by now.
As you can probably imagine, social media was an absolute hell-scape for the conference yesterday, with Jeopardy grandmaster James Holzhauer dunking on both the BIG 10 and the equally misnamed Big 12 conference, as well:
BAZINGA!
Checking out the standings, we find Jordan Smith (brother of my co-worker, Josh) in sole possession of 1st place, followed close behind by 1st round winner Tanner Erpenbeck, and reigning champion of the famed International Festival de Badminton, Jon “Sloop Jon B” Boise:
So, I know I’ve ranted quite a bit already this year about the catastrophic changes CBS made to their bracket hosting site, well, better buckle up buttercup … because here comes some more.
Hey, relax, lady … it’s been a long week at GAMM Central
Another major, major inconvenience with the new CBS site is that I no longer have the ability to scrub a list of participants off of the “Standings” page or the “Manage Players” page (only visible to me). In years past, I could just hit “select all” + copy, and then paste the list of participants into a spreadsheet, which would then allow me to sort it however I wanted and use that to compare who had or hadn’t paid their entry fees. Nope, not anymore! You can’t save or export any information of their site. Okay, I’m sure NSA hacker types could do it in 20 seconds, but me? I’m just flying blind here. I’ve got a list of everyone who’s paid, but no easy way to compare to who entered brackets. So make your beloved Commish’s life a little easier, and Venmo me your money, okay?
Look, lady, you are getting on my last nerve over here!
I also used to be able to grab everyone’s email address off the site so I could then use my Gmail account to send out pool updates. Nope, not anymore! Now, I’m limited to using CBS’ built-in “Send Message” option which, as you may have noticed, shows up in your inbox as being from CBS Sports, and not necessarily from me. Or at least so I’m told … as their programmers or whoever didn’t think to include the sender on the distribution list.
I mean, did it though, dude? Like, really?
Well, that’s all I got for today, folks. The Sweet 16 kicks off on Saturday. See ya then!
The Commish