Nurse the Hate: Hate The Tournament Day 2

Yesterday worked out very well.  I went 3-0-1 against the spread, pretended to know a few things about college basketball, and had a few Stone Go-To IPAs.  This is what is referred to as “a very successful day” in Western Society for an adult male.  Have I set my sights too low on what success means?  Yes, I probably have, but I won’t let this bring me down.  Instead, I will take the money I won yesterday and chase further triumph by wagering on more games that I really have no rational reason to bet on. 

First up, I am taking Duke -13 over Mercer.  Betting on Duke is sort of like taking Darth Vader over the scrappy loveable Jedi Knights.  I realize it is bad karma to hitch my wagon to these elitist creeps.  However, it seems that there’s a lot of shit talk coming from so called “experts” on sports talk saying that Mercer might win this game.  As far as I can tell, that is because there were a couple of upsets yesterday and these people have caught the fever in trying to predict yet another surprising finish.  Assuming Duke goes out and tries to score a shitload of points and turn this into a scoring contest, I think Mercer hangs in through the first half and then looks dejected on the bench with 8:34 left in the game down by 22.

I am also taking Kentucky -6.5 because of the sheer amount of pre-tournament talk about how disappointing that team has been.  Make no mistake; this team is really a professional team of 19 year olds that will be playing in sparse minutes of forgettable NBA games next year.  The expectations that they would win almost every game they had just by showing up is probably fair.  Today they play Kansas State who my blogger friend pointed out has only won twice (2) games on the road all season.  That doesn’t give me much of a reason to believe that they will suddenly show up on a neutral court that probably traveled 11,000 Wildcat fans and punk Kentucky.  This is also probably a bad karma wager, but what the hell…        

I’m taking Virginia Commonwealth -6 over Stephen F. Austin.  There is no way a guy named Steve can possibly play well enough on his own to beat a team of five motivated college kids from VCU.  Granted, I know nothing about Stephen F. Austin.  There is the slight chance that this might not be an individual that somehow won enough games against full teams to qualify for the tournament and may be an actual university.  I don’t have a lot of time today, so I couldn’t look it up.  Even on the off chance this is a school, I can’t believe a school founded on the guiding principles of The Six Million Dollar Man TV series on ABC in the 1970s could attract top tier basketball talent.