Thoughts on the weekend slate of games

The season is underway and the ball really gets rolling with ESPN's 24 hour coverage of nonstop basketball Monday night.  As I scour the first five days of games, just a few quick hitters that jump off the page:

Rider takes down 18th ranked Mississippi St

There is a lot of preseason hubbub about how the SEC will be one of the deepest and most talented conferences in the country this year.  The Bulldogs enter the season proudly wearing last year's SEC Championship belt around their waist and proceed to get smacked in the mouth  by Rider 88-74.  The Broncs from the underrated MAAC conference are no slouches though.  They finished 3rd to Siena and Niagara last year and qualified for the CIT postseason tournament losing to Liberty and Seth Curry.  One game does not make a season obviously but not a great start for a supposed SEC powerhouse either.

Texas A&M Corpus Christi throttles Oregon St 67-43

Granted the game was in Lubbock, TX but this is still quite an inauspicious debut for the Beavers.  Shooting an anemic 32% from the field and committing 25 turnovers, Oregon St was never in the game and scored a mere 10 points in the first half against the Islanders.

Big Red Ruin Crimson Debut for Anthony Grant

Cornell's senior laden crew led by the sharp shooting of Ryan Wittman was too much for an Alabama team still getting acquainted with its new coach Anthony Grant.  Wittman hit five 3 pointers on his way to 23 points as the Big Red held on to bring another SEC power to its knees. 

 

Rules of the Draft

The Draft itself is a simple process between two combatants.  Ren  and Stimpy will take turns making picks until both have 65 teams each.  Any team within Division I Men's Basketball is eligble for the draft.  Currently, you can select from a total of 347 schools.  Also, since Ren is a Michigan St diehard and Stimpy bleeds Texas Longhorns orange, the winner of the Texas/MSU game gets an extra pick at the end of the draft.  Texas won easily this year so Stimpy gets the extra pick. 

SCORING

There are two phases to keeping score: the regular season and the actual NCAA tournament.  

PHASE 1: REGULAR SEASON RULES

To make the regular season more interesting and also add a strategic element to the draft, certain head to head matchups between Ren and Stimpy's teams in conference play are worth a specified number of points. 

1. For the top 6 BCS Conferences (ACC, Big 10, Big East, Big 12, Pac 10, SEC) - each head to head matchup is worth $1.00
2. For all other midmajor conferences - each head to head matchup is worth $2.00
3. Now if during the draft a player decides not to draft a team from a conference, he forfeits that conference to the other guy.  The penalty for forfeit is $4.00 for midmajors and $5.00 for BCS Conferences.
4. Also, the player who drafts the team with the worst overall record at the end of the season (based on won/loss percentage) gets a $5.00 penalty.
   

Phase II : The NCAA Tournament/NIT 

Once the tournament starts, it's all about how many total points your teams score.  We take the total points scored x .10 per point.  The points are added up whether or not your team wins or loses its match.  But obviously the further your teams advance through the tourney, the more points you will accumulate.  In essence, the achievements of the regular season do not matter at this point.  If you pick a team that wins its regular season crown but they get knocked out of the conference tournament and aren't selected for the Big dance, Tough Noogies!  You get Squadoosh for that team. 

OTHER RULES

• To make the NIT relevant, we decided that if your team wins the coveted title of 66th best team in the land, you get to add those points to your tally.  But just the total from the NIT Championship game.

That's it.  But the regular season twist makes the draft quite interesting in terms of who gets picked.  Up next, the actual draft. 

Ren vs Stimpy

Instead of using real names to protect the innocent we'll be using Ren and Stimpy.  Team Ren will be shown in red and Stimpy will be in green the entire season.

The draft spreadsheet has a different color scheme with Ren in yellow and Stimpy in green.

Only 122 Days Until March

Welcome to the March Madness Draft blog. Ever since I discovered the intoxicating world of fantasy sports, I've loved me a good draft. There's something joyous about analyzing a list of options and building a team of dudes based on your own evaluation. While I've participated in many normal fantasy drafts, I've also invented random ones just for the excuse to have a draft with my buddies for bragging rights or chunk change. Some of these ideas include:

• The XFL Fantasy Draft (He Hate Me a top 5 pick w/ consensus #1 pick John Avery)
  
• Strat-O-Matic Baseball Draft (1 guy per team rosters)
  
• HR Derby (w/ one guy only from each team)
• Walks Derby
• Fumbles Derby
  
• Fantasy Winter Olympics (1 guy per country)
  
• Fantasy Curling
  

Okay so those last two I made up but if there were willing participants I'd be game..

March Madness is one if not the greatest sporting events around.  But what sets it apart from all the others?  The BRACKET! We all go kookoo for cocoa puffs over filling out that bracket and hitching our wagons to a set of teams hoping they can survive and advance.  The fact is nobody knows what will happen but it's a helluva fun time finding out.  

Now what if you had to fill out your bracket in November instead of March!???

 That's what my buddy and I decided to do three years ago.  It was an idea so ridiculous and pointless that  you knew it was pure gold . We'd each "draft" a team of the 65 contenders we thought would make the Big Dance.  A veritable "Kenny vs Spenny" of who is better at predicting the upcoming season of college basketball ensued. 

Before doing the draft I was on the same wavelength as a typical college basketball fan:.  I'd  follow my own teams and check out a game here and there.  As football season ended, my interest would gradually rise.  By the time Championship Week rolled into town, I'd try to cram as much college basketball as humanly possible into my memory so I'd be prepared for the illegal office pool the next week.  And of course, I'd be giving my bracket the ol' heave-ho and be mathematically eliminated the next weekend.  All of that changed once we started doing the draft (still not having any success at picking the bracket correctly though) 

So if you're new to this blog (heck I'm new to this blog) to crystallize it down to the core, it's about...  

•  Documenting an irrational competition between friends involving the NCAA tournament
• The planning and strategy for said competition
• Tracking the entire landscape of Division I college basketball from Air Force to Youngstown St
• Any and all things college basketball related

We'll be talking about the draft itself, scoring and strategy in future posts.