Yeah we lost, but life goes on.  Particularly for those of you looking to further your financial interests so you can simply enjoy the remainder of the tournament. Hopefully you got in on these picks last night, which came in at a not surprising 3-1 ATS.

Just to recap

Sam Houston St + 10.5   - Baylor 68, SHSU -59 - WIN

Lehigh + 26.5 - Kansas 90, Lehigh 74 - WIN

Murray State + 3   Murray St 66, Vandy 65 - WIN

Take North Texas + 16  K State 82, N Texas, 62 LOSS

Want more, you ask?  No time for detailed analysis, since the games are about to tip, but here are today's underdog locks.

Take VERMONT + 16 @ Cuse  - i mean, if ohio why not Vermont, right? Cuse is the same team that lost to us last week and LeMoyne to start the year

Take the UNDER of 142 in the Clemson Mizzou game.  Clemson has no business in the tournament

Take SIENNA + 4 1/2 vs Purdue. Sienna should win straight up.

Take HOUSTON + 9 1/2.  Houston and Maryland will score a lot of points - the total is a whopping 157 - Although I think Maryland will win, Houston and Tommy Penders will keep it close from long range - they shoot nearly 25 3s a game... 

Love or hate Jay Wright and his fancy suits, there's a pretty good puff piece on him in today's NYT.  The article is worth reading if only because Scottie Reynolds confirms, verbatim, what we Hoya fans have known for years.

"...I feel like I’ve been here five or six years.”

- Scottie Reynolds, PG, Villanova University, The New York Times, March 18, 2010.

Now on to today's picks- or, as i prefer to call them, an irrational smattering of random data points with little to no analysis - like my college thesis:

Sam Houston State has some serious guards who can score and get up and down the court. Couple that with the fact that a lot of sportswriters have Baylor as their new sleeper darling - tells me to run the other way.

Take Sam Houston St + 10.5

Kansas will not run Lehigh out of the gym. this will be a 10 point game with Lehigh keeping it surprisingly close until the 4 minute mark.

Take Lehigh + 26.5

Murray State is for real. Couple that with the fact that my uncle coached at Murray State when they beat NC State in a classic 14 v 3 upset in 1988 - the Racers will keep it close.

I'd rather have the opener of Murray State + 4 1/2, but I'll settle for the current line of Murray State + 3

One more for the road, you ask? Certainly.

Take North Texas + 16 vs. Kansas State. K-State is not that good and one of these 2-15 games is going down to the wire. Frank Martin IS NOT A SERIOUS BASKETBALL COACH.   This guy could not get past a Bo Ryan Coached Wisconsin team with Michael Beasley and Bill Walker in the '08 Tourney. I think North Texas could win this thing straight up.

Happy bracketing....

While there's still a lot of basketball left to be played before the final NCAA seedings - Eric Prisbell of the Washington Post (or what remains of it) has us penciled in for a Four Seed in his latest updated field. 

Look at the potential pairings - To be honest, I would rather play Temple or Wisconsin  (I fear Vasquez) than ANY of those projected 13s.

No. 4s
Wisconsin
Temple (Atlantic 10)
Georgetown
Maryland

No. 13s
Murray State (Ohio Valley) - they are a whopping 30-4, with their only losses coming to to Cal, La Tech, Western Kentucky, and Morehead State - we have much more glaring bad losses, lets just leave it at that. And they have this guy, Isaiah Canaan who can hit shots from his knees at half court

Kent State (MAC)  - Odds on favorite to win the MAC tourney - maybe they're not that good but they have a guy named Tyree Evans which is too close to Tyreke Evans for my liking

Siena (Metro Atlantic) - 26-6 and provided they beat Fairfield tomorrow , the champs of the MAC- they have no bad losses, all on the road or at neutral sites - @ Butler, @ Northern Iowa, @ Ga Tech, @ Temple, neutral-St. Johns, and @ Niagara . Furthermore, they've won their first round game in the NCAAs as an underdog each of the past two years (losing to Lville last year and Nova the year before). 

Cornell (Ivy) - The fear of a probable program-crippling first round loss to Cornell has already been discussed at length on this blog - it is real and need not be discussed further.

In spite of constantly shooting blanks for the first 10 minutes we ended up shooting 46% from the field, and 50% from 3. It certainly helps to have a hot hand from 3 when Monroe via Wright is opening up the perimeter through the inside game.

The three point shot used to be firmly associated with Pitino's Cardinals, Notre Dame, GerryMac/Devendorf or Nova with their three/four guard rotation.

Going out on a limb, without any empirical evidence to back me up, I'll say our best three point shooter ever, or at least since the introduction of the three point arc in '87, was Irvin Church in the early 90's.

However, we've become, to our credit, I believe, much more capable from three in the past several years.

In fact, here are some mind-numbing statistics to support what most of you already know about this season on an otherwise slow workday. 

Year to date, we’re averaging 40% from outside the arc. We’ve held our our opponents to a respectable 32.8% However, in what I’d refer to as our ‘signature’ (games we coulda/shoulda lost on paper) wins, our percentages from ‘way downtown’ were as follows ;

vs Butler, 46.2%
@ Pitt, 70.0%,
 vs Duke, 46.2%,
vs Nova, 52.6%
@ Lville, 50.0%

Avg = 53.0%

Each instance is clearly above our season average. (Note:I would lump the Washington victory in Anaheim with these games, but we shot an atrocious 16.7% – and I’m certainly one to rapidly discard statistics when they stand in the way of my facts. That, and the Pac-10 blows this year)

In our losses, we have shot, from three,:

vs. ODU – 29.4%
@ Marq – 33.3%
@ Nova – 33.3%
@ Cuse – 38.1%
vs. USF – 31.3%
@ Rutgers 30.8%
vs Cuse 25%

Avg = 31.6%

I’m too lazy to take the time to draw any meaningful conclusions - such as:

a)  seeing how this correlates to Monroe’s production inside the paint (in order to open up the outside) or

b)  interestingly, looking at Wright/Clark pct. from 3 during these games vs. Freeman’s

c)  or looking at Wright's assist to TO ratio in each of these games to reveal any correlation with our success from three

Should anyone want to do that work, feel free.  This analysis, regrettably, reveals nothing more than the fact that it pays to have the hot hand from outside the arc.

Always, take the points.

A little primer for those of you who have not had the pleasure of visiting lovely Syracuse, NY.  Really, the only thing missing the attached entry on Syracuse is the author crowning the University as the one true unfettered glory hole of upstate New York.

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Syracuse

One such nugget from the link :

It was decided in 1831 that the Erie Canal would run through the city of Syracuse. Syracuse would now proudly brag it was home to the world's second most useless waterway. In 1886, the city decided to begin an official "Fuck up Onondaga Lake Campaign". Over the next 100 years, chemicals, raw sewage, Billy Fuccilo's hair, and Hoffman's white hotdogs were dumped into the lake. The campaign was an overwhelming success. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Syracuse experienced an influx of Irish immigrants. This gave city officials an excuse to turn a traffic light upside down in the Irish neighborhood of Tipperary Hill, "just to fuck with everyone." The traffic light remains upside down to this day.

Hoyas in a Romp tonight

ESPN now places us as a projected 3-seed in the Midwest. I rarely care about these projections ,but would you want to wake up in a few weeks and see us with this opening pairing? 

Cremins, Cornell, and the team who vanquished this SAME TEAM (minus Summers plus Hollis/Benimon) in the NIT last year.  I mean, COME ON.

(6) Baylor
(11) Cornell

(3) Georgetown
(14) College of Charleston

And, apparently, I need 75 words to post, so I, like my man Varmint in Vegas, like Nova -10 tonight against the Huskies.

Nova is 15-5 ATS and averaging an astounding 85 points per game, while only giving up 70 per contest.

We are ..... 9-8 ATS, averaging 72 per game, allowing 63.

How do we bounce back in the eyes of Vegas? does the blizzard affect the opening line and total? Do the Headbands??

Last month, Nova opened as a 4.5 favorite, closing around 3, I believe and covered comfortably at  Wachovia.   That was prior to us getting waxed by 'Cuse and USF...and long ago Duke win..

The call?  Nova -3 for the opener, with a total of 146. 

Last year, Duke was a 8 1/2 point favorite in Cameron, squeaking by with a half point victory, to win by 9 as a home fav in Cameron.  This season, we're better and Duke's better. Duke has played poorly on the road, and we are only 8-7 ATS for the year.

That said, even after the 'cuse debacle, i think we'll open up as a 2 point HOME FAVORITE (CAN YOU SAY "HOYA CHALK")    Opening TOTAL will be 142.

Thoughts?

Pat Forde puts us in his top 10 to win the whole damn thing - in spite of 35 minutes of basketball that looked worse than Sonia Sotomayor's ass  - yes, you know its there, you can't imagine how (hairy/nasty/<<insert your term of choice>>) it is, but once you've seen it, you'll never be able to get it out of your head.

Georgetown (9). Why the Hoyas can win it: Greg Monroe is playing like the budding star he was billed to be out of high school in 2008. He didn't play well against Syracuse, but the 6-11 sophomore is a solid scorer, an aggressive rebounder and an underrated passer. Monroe has capable co-stars in leading scorer Austin Freeman and fellow guard Chris Wright. The Hoyas take good shots and make them -- and John Thompson III has loosened the reins a bit. His team scored more than 70 points in five straight Big East games before Monday, something it hasn't done since 2007, when Georgetown made the Final Four.

Why they might not: This is a six-man rotation -- if someone gets hurt, the Hoyas are toast. Thompson might be too dogmatic for his own good, often refusing to alter the system to fit the situation. The Hoyas don't foul much, but they don't get to the line much, either, averaging just 19 free-throw attempts per game. The way they played at Syracuse on Monday -- at least in the final 35 minutes -- didn't inspire visions of April splendor in Indianapolis.

Record against RPI top 50: 4-3.

Record against RPI top 100: 8-4.

For the record, I like UNC laying 1 @ NC State tonight.

However, my guess is Hoyas - 12 1/2 for the opener... any thoughts?

For anyone keeping score at home, I love Yale +2 1/2 tonight @ Brown... opened at 5 and moving steadily down ever since.

As always, take the points.

For some reason this thing has to be seventy five words longs to be published.  So i will have to make yet another recommendation.  In this case, I like a Bobby Cremins coached College of Charleston laying 1.5 at Wofford tonight. 

Bet til your balls hurt...

At a mid-sized private school in April of 1985 would you rather:

a) lose to a conference rival, with a coked-up star star guard, in the title game in the greatest upset in NCAA Championship history, or

b) have your program rocked by a massive point shaving scandal involving a coked-up John "Hot Rod" Williams?

Well the Hoyas and Tulane have more in common than you might think,  sharing segments of Sports Illustrated  in this link from April 8, 1985.   Please ignore the cover of Ed Pickney grabbing a rebound over all five of our players on the court. In fact, I'd argue that Hot Rod had a better pro career than Pickney, but that's another matter.

That aside historical intersection aside, lets talk about money, easy money. Now for those of you with long memories, I'm not talking about the kind of easy money one could make by simply betting against the Hoyas in big games during the Gerald Riley era, but I am talking about early season college basketball opportunities, where the mismatches are not as mismatched as you would think as the talent differentials are not fully realized , at the teams have yet to gel. (See Old Dominion at McDonough winning straight up a few years back, or Garner Webb- Kentucky at the Garden)

Our Hoyas are getting 10 points AT TULANE tonight.  It's not much of a stretch to envision us getting out to a slow start, on the road, early season, still working out the kinks and the rotation, AT TULANE of all places.  If the team arrived last night, we're certainly in trouble.  Hopefully, Coach doesn't bring the team down until sometime today. 

But let's be frank, you can envision quite a lot of turnovers, and what I think, will be some pretty sloppy play on both sides. Tulane's got a few guys who can chuck up some 3's, which, if falling, will keep this game within the line.  I doubt they have an answer for Monroe. However, you can see Monroe trying to overreach a bit  in front of his hometown crowd and family.  I think the Hoyas might get a little bit of a scare in this one, but should win comfortably down the stretch.  The pick: Georgetown 72 Tulane 64.   Three stars (out of a possible five).

Any thoughts on the final margin tonight out there?

Also of note,down in Dallas tonight,  love South Florida -1 1/2 on the road at Matt Doherty's SMU Mustangs.  Five Star LOCK.