Mannhandled
March 17th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Thanks to my esteemed colleague Dave Mann for that hatchet job he did on my Tourney preview. Apparently predicting that 15 seed Texas A&M-Corpus Christi would lose to Wisconsin, the #1-ranked team in the country at one point, precluded me from rooting for the upset. As if brackets mattered more than basketball.
I was also unaware that being born in Corpus Christi indebted me for life to the town’s teams. Mann is correct that, despite spending my first five years in Corpus, I hadn’t seen A&MCC play — it was a conscious snub, what with their games on CBS and ESPN so frequently. I’m sure he’ll be eager to bankroll a trip to atone for the oversight, maybe by driving seven hours round trip with my naive ramblings to catch a minor league Hooks game at Whataburger Field.
In the end, I was as bummed as anyone that the Islanders couldn’t maintain their incredible start. They certainly looked better than any 15 seed I can remember (although a nod is due here to UNT’s Mean Green, who put a fright into title contender Memphis this weekend). And if Kammron Taylor hadn’t caught fire for Wisconsin in the second half, I think A&MCC would have had ‘em. I’ll be rooting for center Chris Daniels to get drafted this June. He reminds me of the Lakers’ Andrew Bynum, whom NBA types love, although Daniels is a few years older.
But, quickly, back to my colleague’s alleged credibility. How’s picking with your heart working out? “I’m getting hammered in my tourney pool,” he said in an email. This author humbly notes that he picked 27 out of 32 first-round games correctly, good for the 95th percentile of all brackets, according to Yahoo. Maybe you should stick to scoops and not hoops, Mann. (Maybe that’s true for our blog, too.)
