What a Fiasco! I’m 5,461st in the NCAA contest I founded!

The ageless Joe Mazzulla and West Virginia had a far better day than I did. (AP photo)

It’s not exactly a great moment when you awake on the second full day of the NCAA tournament to find you rank 5,461st of 5,742 entrants in the contest you founded. But that’s where I, Mark Bradley, stand in Mark Bradley’s Bracket Fiasco after as bad a prediction day as I’ve ever known. (Which is saying something.)

I went 7-9 in Thursday’s games. My two major upsets — Belmont over Wisconsin and Wofford over BYU — never came close to fruition. The two major upsets I chose not to pick — Morehead State over Louisville and Richmond over Vanderbilt — actually happened. The Michigan State comeback against UCLA fizzled. Old Dominion lost to Butler on a last-second putback. Missouri and St. John’s and Clemson all lost, and only Clemson was ever in its game.

To which I say: Rats. But now we move forward. The good news is that I have all my Elite Eight working. (The less-good news is that only three of the eight have actually begun play.) Today I’ve picked two more double-digit seeds — VCU over Georgetown and Georgia over Washington — and I can’t say the doings of (Full) Day 1 have filled me with optimism.

That said … (Full) Day 1 was one heck of a deal. Four last-second winners. Two huge upsets. Morehead State came very close to being the only team from Kentucky still playing. Butler is still doing as Butler does. And the price for hiring Chris Mooney away from Richmond keeps going up, which might not be the best news for Georgia Tech.

And me, I’m near the bottom of my own contest. Just between us, I would not classify that as a major upset.

By Mark Bradley

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