Talking Points: NCAA’s bracket busters

1

It was the quote of the day from the story of the day.

After No. 15 seed Norfolk State knocked off No. 2 seed Missouri 86-84 in the NCAA Tournament, the senior exclaimed: “We messed up some brackets! We messed up some brackets!”

Then he paused and added “We even messed up my bracket!”

Talking Points can see what the story of Saturday will be:

“Lehigh disqualified from NCAA Tournament after a gambling ring is discovered!”

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Actually, it is possible to fill out an NCAA Tournament bracket and not put down any money (which is kind of like non-alcoholic beer or decaffeinated coffee, but that’s another story).

On ESPN.com you can fill out a bracket like that. Just for fun.

According to ESPN, there were 4,728 perfect brackets out of 6.45 million early in the day before the upsets began. After: Not a single one.

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Upset teams like Norfolk State or Lehigh will try to follow in the steps of other March Cinderellas like Butler, VCU or George Mason.

How did those teams get there?

Maybe Lehigh forward John Adams put it best.

“We thought we could match up very well against them,” he said after the win over No. 2 seed Duke. “We all believed it, and we showed it on the floor. Everybody bought into that idea. And the rest is history, as they say.”

Wait a minute. John Adams?

Oh, don’t make the same mistake Talking Points made and confuse Lehigh’s John Adams with the presidential John Adams, who oddly enough also was a No. 2 seed.