A Life Reset

Tonight the third round of the NCAA Tournament will start with the tip off with Purdue against UConn at 7pm. Other games on the night’s schedule include Pittsburgh vs Xavier, Duke vs Villanova, and Memphis vs Missouri. All in all, a very attractive slate of games unlike the NIT tournament games being shown this week on ESPN. Just never got into the NIT despite some of the quality teams that are there.

As for my brackets, I am not doing too badly actually. Of my top 16, on three of my brackets, I have 13 out of 16. Not too bad of an average and for the office pool, enough to put me into a tie for first place.

The really bummer about the whole thing is that Wake went out in defeat in one of the worst games of the year for them. But I should not be too surprised; the team has exhibited Jekyll and Hyde tendencies in the last half of the season. It is not about talent. Plenty of that but rather it is about leadership on the team and the motivation that flows from that. Against top teams like UNC or Duke, each player is highly motivated to do their best but against lower ranked opposition, the team just could not get it going. That is when a true leader steps to the fore and brings the team along with him. If the team remains intact, that means James Johnson who has shown that he can get the team going through his efforts should be the designated captain even informally and adopt the leadership role that the team needs.

So it looks like a good weekend of basketball. Some excellent games and even though there are no Cinderella teams this year, I do not mind as long as I see some truly competitive games.

Let’s hope my bracket stays intact.

So the first day of the Tournament is now over. As typical for a first round day, there were a few surprising close games and an upset or two but for the most part, not an unsurprising day.

I managed to take in a few games on the web and on television though not any complete games. There were some like the CS Northridge-Memphis game that was interesting for awhile as CS took a lead in the game well into the second half before Memphis found its footing and cruised to the end.Similar thing with the Villanova and American game. But several games were like the Duke Binghampton game where one team that supposed to win, did so and in convincing fashion.

Now the win by Western Kentucky over Illinois would be considered to be an upset if it was not for the fact that a 12th seed team has beaten a 5th seed nearly every year now. My pick was for Arizona over Utah which may still happen.

My real out there pick of 13th seed Mississippi State over Washington did not come through as the Huskies decisively beat the SEC champs.

So my brackets are all 11-16 for the day including my crazy bracket. Not a bad day and the picks that did not work out for me do not have lasting impacts because they were not in my final 16 bracket which is the most important bracket that needs to be considered.

Tonight is the final episode, sort of, for Battlestar Galactica, the SciFi television series. Sort of because there will be a film based on events prior to the miniseries event that kicked off the series as well as a new series that takes place 40 years prior the to current series timeline.

This award winning series has been truly noted for its approach to story telling on television. Unlike the original 1979 series, this was not a simple action oriented series set in space. Rather, the series became a metaphor for events and conditions on our earth. Subjects like racism, terrorism, religion all became the basis of the many interconnected storylines.

Except for a period where I thought the series was just getting too grim, I have been a steady follower of the show and followed the story of the band of human survivors flee the machine race that destroyed their home worlds. Successes were hard to come by. A newly discovered world end up being a concentration camp for the survivors. The much sought after planet of earth was found to be radioactive wasteland destroyed by an earlier human-Cylon wasr Mutinies and rebellions threaten to destroy the fragile coalition of people stuck on all manners of spaceships. Some luxurious like the liner Cloud 9 or rather more often like the prison ship. Yet somehow, realising that all they have was each other, they eventually come back together again.

We have seen many characters come and go. All strongly drawn and memorable. Admiral William Adama, Executive Officers Saul Tigh, Kara Thrace, the Cylon Caprica 6, the various permutations of Cylon 8 (Boomer, Athena), President Roslin and Gaius Baltar all shall be remembered.