It's Christmas in March!

I get really excited for the NCAA tournament. I love the first 2 rounds... the upsets fuel me and sustain me. Am I a little pissed off that Virginia Tech won't be one of those teams vying for an upset? Definitely. But I'm not going to let it ruin the most wonderful time of the year. I went ultra-conservative on my bracket this year, and I feel a little ashamed about that. I didn't pick many upsets in the first round, and the ones I did pick, I didn't take too far into the tournament. Here are some of the moves I made:

• San Diego State over Tennessee. SDSU is riding a hot streak that carried them through a relatively packed Mountain West Conference tournament with wins over NCAA 3-seed New Mexico and 8-seed UNLV. Tennessee has the ability to play up to any team in the country with wins over Kansas and Kentucky, but I'm willing to bet they also play down to teams like SDSU and might be overlooking this one.
• Siena over Purdue. A lot of people are calling for this one since Purdue has been sliding ever since losing Robbie Hummel, and Siena is an experienced team that has had success in the NCAA tournament recently. I'm going with the underdog, too.
• Missouri over Clemson. This is only a 10-7 upset, but Missouri played in a much more competitive conference and managed to rack up some good wins against K-State, Texas, and OK State. Basically, I don't like Clemson's guard-play, and guards are the key to winning in the NCAA tournament.
• I didn't take any 12-5 upsets this year. I'm a little nervous about that because as we all know, there is almost always a 12-5 upset, but this season I really do like all of the 5-seeds to win. If I missed one, I am guessing it's UTEP over Butler. Butler needs to shoot well to win... if they don't shoot well, they have nothing else to fall back on.
• I took Ohio State to win it all, and I have them playing against West Virginia. The only 1-seed that I considered taking all the way was Kansas, but I like how OSU matches up against Kansas, and I feel more confident about Evan Turner carrying his team to victory than Sherron Collins. My other two in the Final Four are Syracuse and Duke. I feel pretty confident that Duke will make it out of the South region, but I am having second thoughts about taking Syracuse in the West. I wouldn't be surprised to see any seed numbered 1-8 come out of the West... if I had more guts, I'd have taken Xavier.

In other news, Virginia Tech slapped down Quinnipiac in the first round of the NIT, winning 81-61. Malcolm Delaney had a nice bounce-back game after crapping the bed against Miami. He was 4-8 on his 3-point shots and finished with 25 points on 9-15 shooting. He also grabbed 7 rebounds and dished out 6 assists. Victor Davila showed once again that he can be dominant against a small frontcourt, hitting 4-5 from the field. Too bad he can't seem to do that when it counts. He did have 4 offensive rebounds against a team that is skilled at rebounding the ball. w00t! The Hokies completely shut down James Feldeine, the Bobcats' leading scorer. He had zero points in the game. Not even whiff. Nicely done Hokies. Now it's time to put on your man-pants for a matchup against UConn.