I'm Brendan Loy, a 26-year-old graduate of USC and Notre Dame now living and working in Knoxville, Tennessee. My wife Becky and I are brand-new parents of a beautiful baby girl, born on New Year's Eve.
I'm a big-time sports fan, a politics, media & law junkie, an astronomy buff, a weather nerd, an Apple aficionado, a Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter fanatic, and an all-around dork. My blog is best-known for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina, but I blog about anything and everything that interests me.
You can contact me at irishtrojan [at] gmail.com, or donate to my "tip jar" by clicking the link below:
Georgia, the last-place team in the SEC East, which won four conference games all year, is 45.5 seconds away from winning its second game today (over a team playing its first game today) and advancing to the SEC championship game! Unbelievable!
UPDATE:GEORGIA WINS!! Woo!! Incredible!! Two upset wins in 11 hours!!
(Specifically, according to ESPN, Georgia/Kentucky tipped off at 12:11 PM; the game ended at 2:30; Georgia/Mississippi State tipped off at 8:45; the game ended at 10:42.)
P.S. Did I mention the first game went to overtime? So they had to play eighty-five minutes of basketball today? All against superior basketball teams? And their best player fouled out of both games? And they won? Amazing!
P.P.S. As I said earlier, if the Bulldogs win tomorrow, this could be the most incredible story in the entire history of Championship Week.
P.P.P.S. The Big Ten and SEC title games are both scheduled to begin at 3:30 PM tomorrow. Both feature teams with no at-large hopes (Illinois, Georgia) playing for an automatic bid. Something I've always wondered: what happens if one of those games goes to overtime, perhaps multiple overtimes, and continues past 6:00 PM, when the Selection Show is supposed to start??
I know it's unlikely, but if SEC East last-place team Georgia -- which beat Kentucky in overtime in this afternoon's tornado-delayed quarterfinal on a game-winning shot by unlikely hero Zac Swansey -- plays its way into the NCAA Tournament with three wins in 30 hours, it will be one of the greatest stories in the entire history of Championship Week, no?
Incidentally, if Georgia wins the Battle of the Bulldogs tonight against Mississippi State (on five hours' rest or whatever it is), the selection committee will have two bubble contingencies to plan for: the aforementioned Big Ten headache, and another headache in the SEC. That's because the SEC title game has been moved from 1:00 to 3:30 PM, in order to give the competitors from tonight's weather-delayed semifinals a little more rest.
But what would Georgia's seed be? They're #141 in the RPI, which puts them below a bunch of teams that Joe Lunardi has estimated as #14, #15 and #16 seeds!
UPDATE: The Bulldogs (15-16 overall, 4-12 SEC) aren't the only sub-.500 major-conference team still alive for a bid. Illinois (16-18 overall, 5-13 Big Ten, RPI #112) just advanced to the Big Ten final. I love it!
The Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals yesterday saw a couple of big upsets: #10-seed Illinois over #2 Purdue, and #6-seed Minnesota over #3 Indiana on a miracle Christian Laettner-esque buzzer-beater:
These upsets mean that today's second semifinal will feature two teams with no shot whatsoever at an NCAA at-large berth: the 20-12, RPI #101 Gophers and the 15-18, RPI #125 Illini. (NIT-ology currently projects Minnesota as a #7-seed in the NIT, and Illinois as not being invited to either the NIT or the CBI.)
The winner of the 4:05 PM semifinal will advance to tomorrow's 3:30 PM title game against either #1 Wisconsin or #4 Michigan State, both of whom are safely in the field of 65. So it's guaranteed that the championship game will be between an at-large lock and at an-large non-contender.
This means the NCAA selection committee will have to create an either/or bracket, dependent on the outcome of the Big Ten title game, which won't be decided until mere minutes before the Selection Show. The "last team in," whoever it is, will instantly become the "last team out" if today's Illinois/Minnesota winner steals a berth tomorrow afternoon.
If that happens, it'll be interesting to see how the Big Ten's surprise winner gets seeded. By rights, based on their RPIs, the Gophers or Illini should be around a #13 or #14 seed (maybe even a #15, if it's Illinois). But in the interest of simplifying the bracketing process, given the timing issues, the committee might simply give them whatever seed the would be "last team in" was going to get, which would-be an #11 or #12.
It'll also be interesting to see whether Ohio State is the bubble team that gets left out if Illinois or Minnesota earns the auto bid. The committee always says it doesn't add up the number of teams per conference, but it's still hard to believe the Big Ten would get six teams (possibly the same as -- or more than?!? -- the Pac-10) -- and with Ohio State squarely on the bubble anyway, it would be awfully convenient for the committee to designate the Buckeyes as the team whose fate is dependent on whether the Illini/Gophers win tomorrow. Regardless, I daresay tOSU fans will be rooting awfully hard for either Wisconsin or Michigan State tomorrow, just in case.
The only other possible major-conference party-crasher still standing is Georgia (14-16, RPI #137), the last-place team in the SEC East, which is still alive in the SEC Tournament. But thanks to the severe weather problems in Atlanta, the Bulldogs would need to win three games in about 27 hours to earn the auto bid.
Yikes: "The Mississippi State/Alabama overtime was already exciting, but it got even more exciting when what was either a hailstorm or a tornado -- referred to here as a 'hailnado' for convenience -- ripped past the Georgia Dome sometime around 9:45 p.m., halting play on the court and scaring the living daylights out of the SEC crowd." In addition to ripping a hole in the Georgia Dome roof and causing a ton of other damage in and near the arena, the storm also damaged CNN Center and caused all sorts of other havoc in downtown Atlanta. (Hat tip: NDLauren.)
They managed to finish the Mississippi State-Alabama game (the Bulldogs won), but the night's final SEC quarterfinal, between Kentucky and Georgia, was postponed till tomorrow morning. The winner will then have to play again tomorrow night, in the semis against Mississippi State. The SEC has no choice in this, really; its title game is on Selection Sunday afternoon, so it's not like they can delay the semifinals by a day.
My other sites