NCAA Sunday Knight Knews & Knotes

Sooooooooo....Sunday night. I have had some bad Sunday nights in March. returning from Vegas after the first few days. Feeling broke. being broke. Brackets broke. Heart...broke. So I am reasonable comfortable with March Madness Desolation Effect (MMDE) though it has hit me pretty hard this year. MMDE is an insidious disease with no known cure. It manifests itself with depression and exhaustion and a general loss of a will to live. For many who play the KUBE Brackets, sadly these symptoms cannot be distinguished from your every day life but many (several) of the 400 plus KUBE players are reasonable high functioning, non-drooling, in school or have jobs and (arguably) productive members of society. For them seeing their brackets burn (and I just finally did actually burn mine) is devastating.

For me this year has been a very difficult one and today particularly cruel. The initial Mizzou loss was a disaster but it was cleaned up for me by Duke and Notre Dame losing coupled with a Billiken win. I thought I had something going perhaps with Vandy and the future while not being bright was at least not a the relentless, vast wasteland of turnovers, airballs and the steady, inexorable advance of the hated number 1 seeds. This situation not being bad enough it is exacerbated by the asinine, insufferable and unjustifiable Miller 64 commercials. I would rather watch Charlie Sheen hit 3 pointers all day long for Ohio State and I hate Charlie Sheen and hate Ohio State.

When I woke up this morning my 5 brackets (three wantonbeckers, a big boy and one for mom (Doris Mae though I misspelled her name) were merely a disaster. My average on those 5... wait for it...298! My wife was in at 217 and my daughter, though she picked Mizzou was at 10. But, I thought, perhaps today would be better....NOT! not a lot of upsets. I guess I am heartened for Ohio since they are not Ohio State. My Billiken loss was really crushing and to see Majerus rearing up was a little bit of a nightmare. Not sure how much more I can stand this evening.

My advice for you, my fellow KUBITES is to make sure you are not alone. Dring a few solid glasses of bourbon. Soak in a hot tub. If you have any weed you definitely need to smoke it. Grab Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", use it to balance the wobbly table in the kitchen, and go to bed.

I will leave you with an excerpt from Bernie who quoted a teary Conklin (very hard to watch): "Coach has done so much," Conklin said. "Being his first recruiting class, he told me that we were going to help him build something special here. And it felt like this year it really came together. We were able to take what Coach taught us.
"He’s a great coach. I couldn’t imagine playing for a better coach, a better person. He doesn’t just teach you about basketball; it’s about life. And he’s a great figure for the community and for the city, and he’s really brought St. Louis basketball to where it is right now, bringing in great guys.
"We all love each other in that locker room. And he just knows how to read a person and he brings us all together and we buy into his system because it works, and it brought us this far this year. And you know they’ve got a great nucleus coming back next year and they’re going to be a really tough team."


Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/miklasz-billikens-make-majerus-proud/article_2fcf3fd2-715e-11e1-b339-001a4bcf6878.html#ixzz1pWTaPIlA

First Round Analysis: Kube-Ku

Dave Kowert 412
Jon Becker 411
Music to my ears

5:30 A.M.....KUBE Knotes...Despair...

I wish I had put my brackets in Kukla's car (pictured here).





Sooooo..... 5:30 A.M. tends to be an introspective time even for those of us who do not "spect" much. I come here not to praise my brackets...but to bury them. My pick percentage resembles a really, really good baseball players batting average. I am sure that I could have done a worse job at bracketology but it is hard, even for me to imagine. What is so embarrassing looking at my brackets is that there are almost no upsets (that I picked). Certainly I had upsets happen on teams that I picked. The nicest thing I can say about my success in picking underdogs is that I had marquette on ONE of my brackets.

Today is a DARK, DARK day for the KUBE. Even with the hope of Saturday and Sunday Basketball there is very little optimism in KUBE Central. KUDOS again to KUBE Koordinator Don Kukla. Serving his final term in office from a hospital bed at a secure and undisclosed location he has once again unfailingly updated the brackets, denying himself the sleep needed to recover from the fireball that was his former German high performance driving machine.

But on to the long dark tea time that has become the KUBE. Duh...WINNING! That would be the unlikely duo of Johnny (Chco) Wienstroer and Jon Becker, both of whom had the audacity to steal the brackets of one Barrack HUSSEIN Obama. I am going to save Becker the Wrecker the later morning phone call to me and ask all of you what he will be asking me (pardon as I paraphrase Tea Party Speak but the conversation will go like this:
Me: Hello
Wrecker: Have you seen the brackets?
Me: Yes, I blogged about them at 5:30 but i always forget that you can't read.
Wrecker: Well I cannot believe Barrack HUSSEIN Obama is undermining our brackets too? Isn't it enough that he is tanking our economy, undermining our country abroad and causing Tsunami's and nuclear meltdowns in Japan?
Me: Milka what?
Wrecker: Shouldn't he be spending his time being the President rather than filling out brackets?
Me: Probably but cant the same be said about all of us in our jobs?
*click*
Seriously. How sick will I be before today is over hearing people talk about the Presidents pick....REALLY SICK.
It might go like that. Both Wienstroer and Jon Becker live with their parents. I think that is about the meanest thing I can say so I will leave them alone other than to say that my son has contributed one meaningful thing to society at least with the site http://www.bathtubtuna.com/. For a lot of us this could erase the need for Kukla's people at Moneta altogether and althopugh I am not a licensed financial planner i would urge all of you to get out your wallets and invest. This investment opportunity perfectly mimics the crazy, socialistic values of "going green" "eating locally" and most unAmerican of all..."eating fish" values of our current President. Another key difference between Becker and Johnny Chico is that Becker is...engaged.

Johnny Chico seen here in "happier" times.




A quick look at other people who are suffering like myself:
1. John de Penaloza dropping 127 spots to 154. My real brother Aaron Becker dropping even hard 137 to be tied with him. A metaphor for your lives? Think on it.
2. BJ Pupillo who has the highest ranked "Louisville" as Champion pick. Excellent work BJ...excellent. At least you married well.
3. Hunter Michalak with a 39% pick percentage. Home schooled? On the other hand Hunter has a possible point total over 500.
4. Andrew Hume with total possible points of 182? Seriously Andrew... the first minority President already has 148. For 100 bucks I will have Kukla eliminate your entry but he needs the check before 5:00 today.
5. The Louisville Cardinals and just one time for everyone who picked them, like me...HOW ABOUT THOSE HOYAS!?

So it is a sad day. A thoughtful day and yet hope springs eternal. If Wisconsin, San Diego State and Purdue go deep there might be some redemption for my brackets. But in saying that, surely I have cursed them. But for the rest of you, do not lose hope. Do not lose faith. The KUBE is a right of Spring. Quoting the great American aloscent lit author S.E. Hinton..."Stay stupid pony boy".