We Are Human

Yes, despite our greatness and uncanny abilities, we do make errors in judgement. Today was a perfect example of our immortality as we are only 74% correct in our predictions. NOTE: we strive to be 90% correct each day.

1. Florida: Mississppi does not beat top-ranked teams on the road. Florida keeps on winning. We were right on with this one, but Mississippi tried to win by outscoring the Gators by 10 in the second half. Is this a sign of things to come??

2. UCLA: now this game at home against #12 Ariziona will be interesting, to say the least. While they struggled early in the season against top-ranked teams, the Bruins are rolling. And they will roll over the Wildcats. The Bruins did not "roll" but they did win, as we said they would.

3. Wisconsin: Illinois will have to work hard to win this game at home. The Fighting Illini (what they hell is an "Illini"?) have to rebound and finish. They won't. Wisconsin chalks up another win. We may as well call them Win-consin. They are hard to beat. This was a sensational game!! Despite playing at Illinois (one of the toughest venues in college basketball) Wisonsin was able to stay focused and pull out a tough win. Win-consin.

4. North Carolina: faces a young, but pretty darn talented, Georgia Tech team at home. We watched some of the UNC loss to the Yellow Jackets in the 1993 ACC championship game today (on ESPN Classic). Tech won that game, but they will not win on Saturday. The Heels will just run the Jackets into the ground. And the Heels did just that, as their defense just shut down the Yellow Jackets. Passing the ball within Carolina's defense is like passing into a swarm of bees.

5. Kansas: the Jayhawks away at Texas Tech. Bobby Knight will fire up his team for this game, but they will have to get more players involved to win. The Red Raiders have only 3 players averaging double figures, and the fourth only gets a whopping 5.2 points a game. This makes it easy to defend Knight's team. Kansas will shut down Jackson and Zeno while Rush has a great game to lead the Jayhawks to a win. We like to be right, but hand it to Bobby Knight who got 19 points from reserve Darryl Dora (who averages 5.2 points a game) to pull out the win. Knight didn't even have to hit any of his players in this win.

7. Ohio State: lack of depth and woeful rebounding will kill Iowa as the Buckeyes win at home. We were right, and how about Greg Oden? He must have read our blog about him being underrated and gotten fired up. 29 points and 10 rebounds. The giant awakes.

8. Texas A&M: tough game at home with #14 Oklahoma State. Have we mentioned we like this Oklahoma State team? We do, and the Cowboys will beat the Aggies. Oklahoma State just has too much bench for A&M. OK, so we were wrong. Oklahoma State loses this game and scores only 49 points. Were they worn out from their triple OT win earlier this week against Texas? We can only assume.

9. Alabama: while Georgia has talent, the Tide will bounce back from a loss to Vandy to win this game at home. What a great game! Georgia scored 50 points and looked like Superman in the first half, but Bama calmly outscored the Bulldogs in the second half to win, like we predicted.

10. Oregon: the Ducks are awesome! No problem with California at home. They did have a little more competion from California than we thought, but, as good teams do, they stuck to their game plan of teamwork to finish off the Golden Bears. WARNING: Oregon is good, but not deep, and this will be their downfall come Tourney-time.

11. Air Force: at home against San Diego State. Coming off a tough loss to Utah, the Falcons should win this game, but the Aztecs are no joke. Air Force will need to control the boards to prevail--and they will. Both teams shot under 40% (bad, bad, bad) but Air Force managed to prevail, despite a strong second half by San Diego State. It is the Falcons' 26th straight win at home.

13. Nevada: no problem with New Mexico State. What happened?? Well, New Mexico State connected on 86% of their free-throws to hand Nevada their second loss.

15. Butler: home game with Wisconsin-Green Bay. No cake walk here, but Butler will win. OK, it was not a cake-walk, whatever that is. But, Butler won by 11.

16. Clemson: host Boston College. B-C is not that bad, and the Tigers will have to shoot better from the outside to beat the Eagles. This will be a nail-bitter for all of the IPTAY boosters, but Clemson will prevail. The Tigers dominated the Eagles, especially in the second half, to win this ACC game. Only the first loss in the ACC for B-C.

17. Duke: at NC State. The Wolfpack is not all that bad (just kidding--they suck) but the Blue Devils are not that good. Upset city. Duke suffers another loss. We were way wrong on this one. We have to admit that the Blue Devils are getting stronger each game. They shot 52.5% in this outing. Again, we note that NC State does indeed suck.

18. Memphis: at East Carolina. The Pirates are 5-11. They lost to Tulane for goodness sakes. No contest. Memphis wins big. They did win big, as we said.

19. LSU: at Arkansas. The Razorbacks, coming off three straight losses, will shock the Tigers. This will be a battle of two teams with no depth, but Arkansas wins. We called this one. Arkansas won big. LSU has fallen completely out of favor with us with mediocre play. They have the talent, so why can't they win. We are mystified.

21. Washington State: will beat Washington at home. Washington State dominated their in-state rivals, as we said they would.

23. Texas: playing Villanova at Villanova. The Wildcats are riding high after killing Notre Dame, but Kevin Durrant and company will help the Longhorns get their 14th win. They are hurting from a triple OT loss at Oklahoma State. We assume Texas was also still reeling from that triple overtime loss to Oklahoma State as Villanova outplayed the Longhorns in the second half. We were wrong. That happens sometimes.

24. Tennessee: playing South Carolina in Knoxville. The Volunteers rebound from 3 straight losses (they should NOT be in the top-25) to beat the so-so Gamecocks. Tennessee proved that they are not a good team by beating the Gamecocks by only 3 at home. Say good-bye to the top-25 in Knoxville. UT is struggling.

Thankfully for us, there are only 3 top-25 teams in action tomorrow. Here's what we think:

6. Pitt: they host a decent Marquette team at home. Both teams are deep. Marquette has beaten more top-ranked teams (especially in the past 2 weeks) than Pitt, and they are ranked #24 in the AP poll. This is a hard game to call. But, we pick Pitt only because they are the home team. We concede that we may very well be wrong.

20. Notre Dame: they get South Florida at home. Again we wonder why South Florida is in the Big East. They are 1-4 in conference this season, and had a 4 game losing streak earlier to bad teams. Notre Dame should win big.

22. Maryland: play a tough Virginia Tech team away. The Terrapins got whipped by Virginia earlier in the week, so they will be up for this game. Virginia Tech is ranked 25 and is no joke. We think the Hokies (what is a Hokie?) will win. They need to win after a loss to Florida State on Wednesday.

That's it. See you on Sunday.