{"id":7193,"date":"2009-03-18T13:00:05","date_gmt":"2009-03-18T13:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/18\/hunches\/"},"modified":"2009-03-18T13:00:05","modified_gmt":"2009-03-18T13:00:05","slug":"hunches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/18\/hunches\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunches"},"content":{"rendered":"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> < 1<\/span> min<\/span><\/span>

The tournament
\npool<\/a> is up to a record 20 participants. Over the past five years,
\nparticipation has gone from 7 to 7 to 11 to 17 to 18. Now 20. It’s still
\nyour option to
\n
\nfill out a bracket<\/a> through noon tomorrow.<\/p>\n

I have listened to the ESPN gurus tell me who they like: #13 Cleveland State
\nover #4 Wake Forest, #13 Mississippi State over #4 Washington, #11 Utah
\nState over #6 Marquette. Surprises, upsets, these. In years past, I
\nlet this chatter seep into my thinking about who to pick. Wake Forest was
\nawful late in the season; Washington…the only thing I know about Washington is
\nthat they wear purple and yellow; and Marquette is down a senior guard. In other
\nwords, these are upset picks that seem reasonable to me, which means they’ll
\nprobably be wrong.<\/p>\n

So, I look for other unexpected teams to advance to the Sweet Sixteen because
\n1.) I have not noticed them and 2.) I am not picking them in my bracket: #10 USC,
\n#14 American, #11 Temple. These teams are invisible to me. Are they in the
\ntournament? Seems so. Thus, even though I have not picked them, I have come to
\nexpect that one such team will arrive in the Sweet Sixteen. Why not
\nAmerican?<\/p>\n

I have eight first-round upset picks and two second-round upset picks. My
\nhunch is that it would be cowardly to have fewer and reckless to have more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> < 1<\/span> min<\/span><\/span>The tournament pool is up to a record 20 participants. Over the past five years, participation has gone from 7 to 7 to 11 to 17 to 18. Now 20. It’s still your option to fill out a bracket through noon tomorrow. I have listened to the ESPN gurus tell me who they like: #13…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[188,2180,1110,2189,2190,2181,1311,2191],"class_list":["post-7193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sport","tag-basketball","tag-bracket","tag-hunch","tag-ncaa","tag-picks","tag-pool","tag-selection","tag-upset"],"yoast_head":"\nHunches - Earth Wide Moth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/18\/hunches\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hunches - Earth Wide Moth\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: < 1 minThe tournament pool is up to a record 20 participants. 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