Field narrowed from 64 to 32 teams:
First and foremost, draft night went smoothly
despite adding a couple more teams from last year. The draft ended
around 11pm so it took about an hour longer than the 2017 draft.
In 2015 there were no
12 seeded teams winning their first round games against the 5 seed.
In 2016, 2 won, Arkansas Little Rock over Purdue and Yale beating
Baylor. In 2017, # 12 Middle Tennessee beat a pretty good Minnesota team.
This year there were not any 12 seeded teams winning however it was
worse than that.
History was made
Friday night with # 16 seed University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC),
not only beating the overall # 1 seeded team in the tournament, Virginia
Cavaliers, but beating them bad 74-54. After being tied with
Virginia at halftime 21-21, UMBC exploded for 53 points in the second
half led by Jarius Lyles 28 points. Lyles, a 6'2 senior guard, was
the 21st round pick for Team Noffke.
Prior to Friday, in
Thursday's opening round game, # 13 seeded Buffalo Bulls defeated a very
distracted, uninterested Arizona Wildcat team 89-68. Again the
case, this was a 2 point game at halftime then Buffalo blew them out in
the second half. I'm certain with all that has hovered over the
Arizona team the past couple of months and with an expected hammer hit
to them coming up, Arizona didn't care to be even included in the
tournament. During the postgame media meeting, Alonzo Trier and
Deandre Ayton felt the need to declare their decision to turn pro.
One would think, after dropping the stink bomb they did, these two
idiots would picked a better time and place to do this.
Incidentally, these 2 future "pros" scored 24 points combined in the
game, nice job boys the commissioner hopes the way these two played
affects the way any NBA GM looks at them.
There was another #
13 seed team knocking off a # 5 seeded team on Friday 03/16. The
Thundering Herd of Marshall University beat Wichita State 81-75.
The game was close but Marshall knocked down a key 3 pointer with a
couple minutes left to ward off the Shockers. "Old Man" Conner
Frankamp drafted by "old man" Dave Eccles in the 12th round kept the
Shockers in the game by scoring a career high 27 points.
In our draft game
after game 1,
there were 2 picks that scored more than 30 points. Team Kremer's
5th round pick of Rob Gray (Houston) scored 39 points more than double
his 18 pts per game regular season average and Houston beat 12 seeded
San Diego St to move on to the 2nd round. NC State's Allerik
Freeman poured in 36 points for Team Noffke's 13th round selection.
This total was over 2.5 times greater than Freeman's 14 points per game
regular season average. # 9 NC State ended up losing the game to
Seton Hall 94-83.
In the 2017 draft, only 2 draft picks selected prior to the
9th draft round, lost in their first game played. This year there
were 12 draft selections that were out before seeing a 2nd game.
As admitted with the release of the opening round file, the Commish had
a bad draft and had 4 picks selected prior to the 9th draft round get
eliminated after game 1. Team Noffke with 3 players and Dave
Eccles with 2 made up the bulk of the 12 draft picks. Team Kremer,
SID, Alan Foresta and Team Lehman were fortunate to not lose anybody
drafter in the first 8 rounds.
Projection for
standings after Game 2:
The following is our
current positions after 1st game and then projected points after game 2
using regular season averages. Team Kremer is out to an early lead
but should be caught and passed by Team Snyder after the 2nd game.
|