With the completion of the 1st round of games in this year’s NCAA Tournament here are the current standings:
1. Lampazzi 214 points with 12 players left
2. Gannon 211 points with 14 players left
3. Tonsmeire 210 points with 12 players left
4. Zucker 206 points with 9* players left (though Creighton is still playing Kalkbrenner is not)
5. Knight 133 points with 11 players left
Though some are quick to want to call this contest already over, there’s just no way that it is. Certainly getting thru Round 1 with all of your players is an advantage, in no way does it cement a championship. In 2017, there were two teams that got all 14 players thru, (Knight & another team no longer party to this competition). Neither of those two teams won. In fact one finished last and the other ended in a three way tie for third place.
In this writer’s humble opinion, the key for Round 1 is trying to establish a big lead, which no one has done which means it should remain close for another couple of rounds at least. And for those that want to rule out Team Knight, not so fast my friend. You have to go back no further than 2021, where Team Knight found himself in last place after round 1, 61 points out of first place. Though the gap is larger this year and he is playing a bit short handed, it’s not a definite that he can’t win as last year after finishing in last after round 1, he went on to win.
When there aren’t many upsets in Round 1, normally we would expect most teams to get many of their players advancing, and that’s what we saw this year as well. With the exception of really two players (Vermont, UAB), all the others knocked out in Round 1 were due to upsets (Iowa, Kentucky, Uconn, USC, SHU). That dynamic changes in Round 2, however, as within the 8 games on the schedule for today, we have 5 games with guaranteed knockouts and another 3 games on Sunday with guaranteed knockouts. There is a lot of cross team coverage across the five franchises which should also help to keep this somewhat close for a while, which means it will be those unique picks across the teams that should help to allow for some separation.
Anyway, lots more action and excitement to come.
-AttC