Day 1 of the tourney is complete with a number of relatively modest upsets (10/7 Florida, 12/5 Murray St, 9/8 Baylor and10/7 Minnesota), the Murray St 12 seed victory being the most notable so far. That is unless you are a big fan of Old Dominion and considered them to be the favorite – then you were among the notable 2 such entries whose first day was crushed by Purdue, the home town favorite of up to one of your pool MCs. One of your other pool hosts WAS hoping for an upset win by the hockey powerhouse Northeastern fightin’ Huskies, but we take solace in only having made one entry backing the underdog dogs.
Given the relatively few monumental upsets on day one in the tourney it’s not shocking that there are a number of entries that made it through the day with near perfect records: 2 entries (Savage Rocco and Petey1) only missed one game each (notably not “Purdue over Old D”), with an additional 5 entries have only 2 blots on their slate. Congratulations for the great results – but don’t get comfortable quite yet at the top of the pool!!
However, there WAS one significant entry performance for the day: “TripstersMatilda” was chucked a wobbly and exited the day with a stunningly interesting result of batting just .250 for the effort, a respectable batting average for American cricket but not so good pool prognostication. A Brandy award shoe-in? Too early for us to call the match, but TM IS well placed for the honor. For context, the best possible score for TM is 173 points (i.e. EVERY SINGLE GAME from now going forward falls Matilda’s way), a score that would have failed to win in 3 of the last 4 pools.
Tomorrow, being Friday, should be even more fun. We look forward to sharing our annual homage to the “status sorted by possible points” screed. If that doesn’t get your heart thumping…