Usually, the shtick for established columnists and up-and-coming bloggers in the sports realm is to highlight their good predictions and ignore the bad misses. Today, I'm going to focus on the misses this season. Let's focus on three misses.
The most obvious miss was Texas A&M. Don't get me wrong, I expected them to make the tournament with a relatively weaker Big XII compared to previous years and a multitude of returning players. I even thought that they had a chance at a 'protected seed' (4 or better). I just wasn't convinced on December 10 when I criticized the embellishing of A&M by one Gary Parrish of CBS Sportsline lore. At the time, I didn't expect Acie Law IV to have 25 great games in a 30+ game season.
Another miss was the Pac-10 conference. At season's start, I viewed it as a 3-4 bid conference with UCLA, Arizona, and Washington being the locks. USC was my 4th team. No Oregon. No Washington State. I knew of Aaron Brooks, but what about Tajuan Porter and Maarty Leunen? Not so much. As for Wazzou, I had no clue. (Yes, I rhymed).
Another Texas A&M-associated miss was the non-inclusion of Acie Law IV in my top three preseason All-America teams. Instead, I included the likes of Ronald Steele, Dominic James, Richard Roby (who?), Sean Singletary, and Brandon Heath at the guard positions ahead of Law. What on earth was I thinking?
While there are other misses that can be harped on (namely, Butler during the NCAA Tournament), those are the ones of the highest magnitude. With that said, some of these misses pale in comparison to those of the real media and higher-profile bloggers.
Tomorrow, we'll have our predictions for the Sweet 16 games as well as other observations pertinent to the NCAA tournament and beyond.
The most obvious miss was Texas A&M. Don't get me wrong, I expected them to make the tournament with a relatively weaker Big XII compared to previous years and a multitude of returning players. I even thought that they had a chance at a 'protected seed' (4 or better). I just wasn't convinced on December 10 when I criticized the embellishing of A&M by one Gary Parrish of CBS Sportsline lore. At the time, I didn't expect Acie Law IV to have 25 great games in a 30+ game season.
Another miss was the Pac-10 conference. At season's start, I viewed it as a 3-4 bid conference with UCLA, Arizona, and Washington being the locks. USC was my 4th team. No Oregon. No Washington State. I knew of Aaron Brooks, but what about Tajuan Porter and Maarty Leunen? Not so much. As for Wazzou, I had no clue. (Yes, I rhymed).
Another Texas A&M-associated miss was the non-inclusion of Acie Law IV in my top three preseason All-America teams. Instead, I included the likes of Ronald Steele, Dominic James, Richard Roby (who?), Sean Singletary, and Brandon Heath at the guard positions ahead of Law. What on earth was I thinking?
While there are other misses that can be harped on (namely, Butler during the NCAA Tournament), those are the ones of the highest magnitude. With that said, some of these misses pale in comparison to those of the real media and higher-profile bloggers.
Tomorrow, we'll have our predictions for the Sweet 16 games as well as other observations pertinent to the NCAA tournament and beyond.
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