His bracket was perfect through to the Sweet-16. He was 0-4 with his Final Four picks. Still, I can’t really give Alex Herrmann – the 17-year old autistic kid from Chicago – a hard time, I only got one Final Four pick – and it was Duke coming out of the Cupcake Region.

It’s sad to see it end for Alex, but I think I speak for everyone who went roughly 4 for 16 on the first day when I say you had a good run.

And where’s the other bracket boy’s bracket? The Lunardologist has been awful quiet this tourney season.

Here’s the photo of what was once an amazing bracket.

And now for something completely infuriating…

Photos via NBCChicago.com and ESPN.com

The NCAA tournament is roughly 50 hours away – viva la rampant speculation!

I personally did 10 minutes for my peers on how Cornell is not all they’re cracked up to be, and everyone should be considering Temple for the Sweet-16 rather than picking Cornell to upset, because Evan Rodriguez is the real deal and Ryan Wittman is just a garden-variety nerd, thus…

It goes on. Nobody had a good time.

Fact is your friends and office mates want to condone your pontificating as much as they want to blow the whistle on the rampant gambling and implicate themselves.

But we can’t go completely silent, can we?

Therefore, I enlisted a few members of the sports blog intelligentsia to breakdown each region, only stipulation: brevity: get to a Final Four pick – and slip in a few madball Sweet-16ers (Notre Dame) – in 100 words or less.

That said…

East (Jameson LaMarca, Steady Burn):

With guys like John Wall & Demarcus Cousins playing out of their minds, I pick Kentucky going to the Elite 8 after knocking off Texas and Wisconsin. Across from them is Big East Champs West Virginia, who will mow through Morgan State, Clemson, and a tough Marquette.

Who’s in the Final Four? Here’s a big hint: it’s not a #1 seed. While Calipari’s boys have had a phenomenal season, I don’t see them playing on April 3rd. Da’Sean Butler is a beast inside and I think will be too much for the Ashley Judd cheering section.

Midwest (A. Isaac, Guyism):

Consider the Midwest one of the hardest brackets in recent NCAA tourney history.   In Kansas you have the overall #1 seed in the tournament and the best team in the country this year.  In Ohio State, Georgetown, and MSU you have 3 teams who have been ranked in the top 10 several times this season.  In Maryland, you have arguably one of the best players in the country in Greivis Vasquez.  Look for Kansas to get to the Final Four, although, a tough rematch of last year’s Sweet 16 looms with MSU and coach Tom Izzo.

West (Steve Melfi, NY Hoosier):

There are three teams with a shot: Syracuse, Pitt, Kansas St.

Kansas St. is just the wrong Kansas.

As for the other two, Syracuse won’t go 1 for 13 from three-point again against Pitt nor commit 19 second-half fouls.

Onuaku’s knee be damned; Syracuse is too good. Syracuse over Pitt.

Side note: Is it just me or have the past two years been really dull for making picks?  I just don’t see any upsets.  The NCAA is making it too easy for people who don’t follow college basketball to have a shot at winning their office pools.

South (Mike Hayes, Steady Burn):

My pick: Duke, sickening, because I’ll watch three Big East teams fall – penance for screaming “You’re a Klingon!” at Singler, heard mostly by a 10-year-old boy – at Madison Square Garden earlier this year.

Duke beats [insert play-in winner], walkover Louisville, then foil Texas A&M, not there yet under Mark Turgeon.

A melee in the Sweet-16 between Villanova and Notre Dame. A beating, but the opposite type Duke handed, for argument’s sake, Winthrop. Victor, throttled.

Prediction: Duke over worn-down Villanova, advances to Indianapolis. Big East fans who loath Huggins wrestle with rooting on West Virginia.

I’m not the first to say this. But you heard it here early, Brandon Jacobs – if he stays healthy – is going to have a monster year.

Peyton Manning, Meatloaf Mercedes, SNL Commercial (NESW Sports)
ESPN Columnist Opening for Magnetic Fields (Pitchfork)
Our Interview With Chuck Klosterman (Mouthpiece Sports)
NCAA, Newspapers Draw Blogging Battle Lines (via The Big Lead)
Wired.com Readers’ Best Geek Tattoos (via Pop Candy)

This is ridiculous.

He’s even already predicting the last four in and the last four out.

F#$king Lunardo.

At least he’s got UCONN grabbing a two seed

You just got downgraded to supremely massive on my “how massive of tool is Joe Lunardi” scale.

628 comments on this garbage too; you people have way too much free time on your hands.

So I just checked out the NBADraft.net’s 2008 mock draft to see where Derrick Rose’s he-man NCAA tournament had landed him…found something way more entertaining:

Who you think they’re gonna take in the second round? Me?

Apparently, the site was only updated as recently as yesterday, and even then, the 2008 Mock Draft was NOT one of the things that was updated.

Something tells me Mario Chalmers will not be a Grizzly next year.

On a side note, I’d love to see Rose go number one overall. I think he commands the game ridiculously well for as young as he is.

Memphis collapsed.

Remember when Paul Shaffer (Artie Fufkin) demands that Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer kick his ass in This Is Spinal Tap?

Great part of the film. Kind of how you could sum up the last few minutes of last night’s game.

I’m not askin…I’m telling you to kick my ass

John Calipari and his team could not be reached to comment on what exactly went wrong at the end of game. However, long time Memphis fan (and a solid representative of the demo of the team’s fan base) Cletus the slack-jaw yokel had this to say…

I can’t possibly think of anything else that could’ve gone wrong.

Most importantly, we can now move on to strictly baseball season.

After an 18-day, tri-country, du-continent road trip the BoSox open up at home today against the winless-less team in baseball the 0-6 Detroit Tigers. The Sox kick off a 20 game in 20 day stint.

A savage road trip, then 20 games in a row. Is MLB giving them June off or something?

Weekends, like large breasts, never get old.

I’ve been drinking this bottled water lately.

Found it in Rite Aid, it’s called Crystal Geyser, because Salty Mineral Stream was just too darn pornographic.

Cost me a buck and a half for a liter and a half – bo-nice!

By the way, I’ve been working in Soho, the shopping douche capital of New York City, for a little over a month now, and I’ve only been in one store that wasn’t an eatery, Rite Aid.

I think there actually is a store down here called shoes for douches.

Someone’s got to say it, Garfield minus Garfield is completely unfunny.

??????

This blog claims that if you remove Garfield from all the comic strips, John Arbuckle comes off like a hilarious schizo because its all jovially nonsensical.

False. Just because you remove something from something and now it doesn’t make any damn sense doesn’t make it cleverly schizophrenic…It makes it retarded.

Garfield minus Garfield guy, if we were at a dinner party together. I’d get up from the table, thank you for the chivas, and politely ask you to leave.

…and if we met in a dark alley, and I could ensure no legal ramifications whatsoever, I’d unleash the beating of a lifetime on thy.

Debuting a new feature next week called – The Hotness Binge. Let that marinate with ya for a moment.

I’ve got four of eight Elite Eight teams correct, with a chance to pick up a dastardly perfect eight for eight tonight. Here are my dream picks for tonight’s games:

• Wisconsin over Davidson
• Kansas over Villanova
• Memphis over Michigan St.
• Texas over Stanford

If you think that West Virginia is going to beat Xavier tonight, then we can be friends.

I actually picked Xavier (beating Duke) when I filled out my bracket. The two main reasons I think I left WVU out of this equation:

1.) Bob Huggins is just one of those people I look at and hate for no apparent reason. I don’t think we’d be friends in real life.

2.) I was still bitter about Joe Alexander handling UCONN in the Big East Tournament.

Alexander put up 34, and made Conn’s Stanley Robinson look like a herb, in WVU’s dismantling of the Huskies. And Alexander has been on blistering tear ever since.

Most recently, he scored 22 in the Yokels upset of Duke. And we have reason to believe that the Alexander of late (20+ points in six of his last eight games) will show up tonight against Xavier.

At 6′ 8”, 200+ pounds, and whiter than a Trader Joe’s Wine Shop, does Joe Alexander have NBA potential?

NBA Draft Express has him going #18 in the first round of this year’s NBA Draft, ahead of such notables as Stanford’s Robin Lopez, Memphis’ Chris Douglas-Roberts and UCONN’s Hasheem “Good Riddance Thabeet.

NBA Draft.net doesn’t have him getting picked this year, presumably because they don’t think he’ll come out (a definite possibility). They compare Alexander to Tom Gugliotta on his profile page, and they have him listed in the top-10 (#6 overall) picks in the 2009 draft.

In terms of build, he’s best compared to his vanilla compatriots Tyler Hansbrough and Kevin Love. Alexander has shown evidence of a more superior outside game than Hansbrough and Love, but he definitely (without question) gives something up to these other two phenoms in terms of post play.

On a side note, you throw the Lopez brothers into the mix, and we’re looking at one of the finest white boy drafts that I can remember. And as soon as I figure out how to do it without coming off like an overt racist, I’ll post about this.

Call me a sucker for being too high on a guy’s recent performance, but is Shane Battier or Tayshawn Prince too high of a ceiling for Alexander?

I think if a team spent a first round pick and got that in return, they’d consider it a success.

To be fair, before this season Alexander averaged just over 10 ppg. I also can’t help but be reminded another recent West Virginian who had a late season surge and a gutsy NCAA tournament performance – Mike Gansey – who saw himself go undrafted in 2005.

However, if I’m Alexander, I’d come out now while the stock is high and hope I get hooked up with a competitive team where there’s less pressure and more room to grow. Plus with Kevin Love inevitably going much higher in the draft, he shouldn’t have to worry about shouldering too much of white doofus burden.

At the risk of sounding overly conservative, I think Alexander becomes a formidable six-man in the NBA.

Great article from the NYT’s Pete Thamel on Alexander

What the hell is going on over here?

I wouldv’e taken Emmanuelle Chiriqui with the points, teased up in this match-up, and I did in fact predict she’d carry 95% of the vote.

Right now, she’s only carrying a 54 to 46 percent lead? Against a MySpace girl? Are you kidding me?!

And, what exactly is wrong with these people? Don Chavez, against their better judgment, deemed this girl NOT hot, and she’s only received a 3+ star rating.

To clarify, that girl is definitely hot. And furthermore, there are several people, whom I consider friends, that I would off for a chance to get with Emmanuelle.

My picks for tonight’s games:

• Xavier over West Virginia
• UCLA over Western Kentucky
• Louisville over Tennessee
• North Carolina thrubbing Washington St.

Man, it’s been a rough go for me of late.

First, my bracket goddess – Antea Supervista – left me over the weekend for this guy:

WE’VE GOT ALL EIGHT ELITE EIGHT TEAMS LEFT BABY!

I’m a mess without her.

Then, these tattered pictures of my girl Eva popped up on The Daily Mail (via With Leather)

However, things are looking up. Baseball season herself is less than 14 hours away. And I intend to be at the bar at 6 a.m. to kick it off.

Red Sox vs. Oakland, Tuesday Morning, 6:00 a.m. EST, ESPN2