Sports

[Rev. Powell]

I had Iowa facing Kentucky in the championship game.  Well, looks like Kentucky's not going to that game either now.

John Calipari built perennial contenders at Kentucky with the very best amateur basketball players in America. He shunned experience for one-and-dones. He took in high school All-Americans and churned out lottery picks. He won championships and hundreds of games along the way, and then, in 2021, he scrapped that model for an entirely new approach.

In 2022, on Thursday in Indianapolis, it backfired.

Kentucky's oldest team in six decades, a diverse group of transfers and upperclassmen and non-top-10 recruits, entered the NCAA tournament eyeing a national title. Instead, it fell to No. 15 seed Saint Peter's in overtime, 85-79.

It's Calipari's first opening-round NCAA tournament loss at Kentucky. And it was ugly.

An Iowa-Kentucky championship is pretty much the worst possible picks you could make, lol. Sorry, that's spectacular bracket busting! (I have a vanilla Gonzaga-Arizona).

[ER]

Louisville, Duke, UConn, Kentucky, and Kansas used to seem safe picks. Are those schools still powerhouses?

My dad tranforms during March Madness and becomes a man obsessed.

I tried to see if he wanted to come hang out with us last night and it was: "Can't. Watching basketball."

Well skewz me...

[Alex]

Louisville, Duke, UConn, Kentucky, and Kansas used to seem safe picks. Are those schools still powerhouses?

My dad tranforms during March Madness and becomes a man obsessed.

I tried to see if he wanted to come hang out with us last night and it was: "Can't. Watching basketball."

Well skewz me...

Got to have your priorites.

[Rev. Powell]

Louisville, Duke, UConn, Kentucky, and Kansas used to seem safe picks. Are those schools still powerhouses?

Louisville: at our lowest point ever, about to start a rebuild with a new coach.
Duke: still good but Coach K retires after this year
UConn: decent, no longer a sure thing every year
Kentucky: a bit down. Only won 9 games last year (shortened Covd schedule), #2 seed this year upset in the shocker of the tournament.
Kansas: still good.

New hot schools: Villanova, Baylor (!), Gonzaga

[HappyGilmore]

As a kid, me and my friends in the old neighborhood would play street variants on different sports: football, hockey, baseball, etc.

I was on a little league football team, but I didn't like that it was so organized.  Had more fun on the street with friends.

I used to skateboard a bit, and in the 90s it was huge with Tony Hawk, the X Games, etc.

I follow my local teams as best I can.  Phillies for baseball, Flyers for hockey and Eagles for football, but I'm not much into basketball.  I will pop it on occasionally but not as much as I used to.

[The Burgomaster]

I never played organized sports (mostly because they required after school and/or weekend commitments and I preferred to hang around with my friends and do other things). However, as a spectator:

* I love pro football (American) and baseball. I watch a lot of games and play fantasy sports (including FanDuel and sometimes Draft Kings). Massachusetts does not have legalized sports gambling yet (but the state seems to be heading that way because residents can easily go across the border and place bets in New Hampshire or other states).

* I'll watch pro hockey and basketball occasionally, but I'm not a huge fan.

* I loved to watch boxing on TV when I was a kid. Ali, Hagler, Frazier, Foreman, Sugar Ray Leonard . . . but I've lost interest over the years.

* I played a lot of sports games in my Playstation 2, X-Box and X-Box 360 days, but I haven't played any recently.

* I've played tabletop sports games since the 1970s. Strat-O-Matic, APBA, Dynasty League, Replay and several others. I don't play as frequently as I used to.