Bracketology '14: A No Good, Very Bad Sunday

I actually had hope yesterday.   My bracket was in surprisingly healthy shape yesterday.  The upsets that were screwing me were the same upsets that were more or less screwing everyone equally, so I've been sitting in the high nineties. percentile wise on ESPN.com's Tournament Challenge.

The bad news started yesterday:

Dayton won.  This wasn't really super-bad news for me as I had Ohio State going to the Sweet 16 over 'Cuse anyway- but it was still surprising.  Didn't see this won coming at all.

Villanova lost.   This one I had a feeling about.  Villanova is probably the shakiest of the number 2 seeds in the tourney and they proved it by losing to UCONN- again, a team that I didn't see coming at all.

The bad news was compounded today:

Kansas lost.  I seem to do this every year.   I always buy in to the whole 'Rock, chalk, Jayhawk' mystique and it bites me in the ass.  This year was no exception.

Wichita State lost.  Not unexpected, but still disappointing- but taking them to the Elite 8 was a calculated risk.  The way I saw it was that if they could get past Kentucky and Louisville then they could conceivably win the whole damn thing.   Test #1 was today and needless to say, they didn't pass.

Tennessee won.  I admit that I'm still being fairly chill about Iowa losing to them in the play-in game, but man.  Hard not to contemplate what might have been had they pulled off the win:  beat Tennessee, U Mass and Mercer and we could have been in the Sweet 16 playing Michigan, a team we waxed by 20 points or so at home.   In hindsight, of course, everything is 20-20 and I'm sticking with my position that crawling back out of the pit of darkness and back to relevance and respectability just by making the Big Dance is a win enough.  20+ wins and either NIT or NCAA appearances (though preferably the latter) is the benchmark for what I'd consider minimum standards for success for this program and it's a reasonable expectation for fans to have, I think.  But: bygones, etc, etc.

Creighton lost.  Damn it.

Despite all that, three out of four of my Final Four are still standing as is my national champion pick, so a Sparty Party is still possible and weirdly enough I'm still sitting at 92% in the ESPN Tournament Challenge, which really isn't all that bad when you think about it.