Everyone is in 1st place and has all the optimum in the world. What a great time of year.
Game 1 of 162 tonight – Angels @ Twins
Go Halos!
Everyone is in 1st place and has all the optimum in the world. What a great time of year.
Game 1 of 162 tonight – Angels @ Twins
Go Halos!
Vandy lost, upsets galore. Bracket torn to pieces.
Here are my picks. This bracket was created on 3/17/08 at about 9 am. I only fill out one and submit that same bracket to various contests.

Interesting draw. For me, a team that will go far in this thing has to have 3 key elements.
1. Senior leadership – doesn’t even need to be tourney experience, but the older guys can step up and make plays.
2. Outside shooting – with the current 3 point line being as close as it is, it can be the factor that keeps you in games. It also can be what finally puts the other team away. If you can make ‘em you are gonna be set.
3. Great guard play – teams with great guards get the farthest in the tournament. When it is money time, you need guys that will take the big shoot and make the shot.
Find a team that has all of these factors present and you will go along way come the end of the month.
—————————————————————————————————————————-
My Highlights:
Winner – #4 Vanderbilt
Surprise team(s) – #10 Davidson (win in 2nd round over #2 Georgetown), #7 Butler (win over #2 Tennessee)
Biggest upset – #14 Georgia over #3 Xavier (1st round)
Biggest trashing – #1UNC over play in game winner #16 Mt. St. Mary’s
Lowest seed left standing after…
Round 1 – #14 Georgia
Round 2 – #10 Davidson
Sweet Sixteen – #4 Pitt and #4 Vandy
l33t Eight – #4 Vandy
Final Four – #4 Vandy
Championship -#4Vandy

Edit: Has been changed and moved to hang in the right side bar.
Sorry Jeff, but I have to kinda steal this segment from you. Once a week (or so) I am gonna write about the happenings with my Gamerscore and what new achievements I have gotten. Here we go:
Burnout Paradise:

Good deal with this game as I finally got some tough to nab achievements. “Paradise Won” counts as beating the game as the credits began to roll after getting that (along with a cool bumblebee-style car). I knew that I would get “Car in a China Shop” as it just reaching 500 total career Takedowns, but it really became more time consuming than I thought it would be. Anyways, that give me 31 out of 50 achievements in Burnout: Paradise City, for a total of 570 out of 1000 Gamerscore.
Guitar Hero III:

Achievement of the week, no doubt. I never played a GHIII online match because the service had been so bad during the games launch. It was always slow and ended up crashing. For some reason, I tried to play this weekend and it work amazingly as I beat one of the game’s creators in my first match! Very cool. 16 out of 51 achievements for a 130 out of 1000 Gamerscore. This game is so much harder then Guitar Hero II…
Rankings as of 2/18/08
Current Gamerscore: 12,906
Illinois Rank: 126th
Global Rank: 152,820th
Watch out people, I’m breaking 13k very soon
Well, I have been playing more Burnout lately and have really enjoyed it. It was my first game purchase of 2008 and has really been the only thing that I have bought. For me, their really hasn’t been too much out their to spark my interest (though this will change with MLB 2k8, Bully and GTA4), but this game lives up to the hype. It is really enjoyable to just drive around the city exploring and from their doing a race or going online in an instant.
I plan on creating a review in the next week, so look for that and if you haven’t yet, go thrash up Paradise!

I feel kinda bad for writing this after last nights 3-1 victory over the Flames, but I still think that Khabibulin needs to find a new home. I was surprised about how solid he was last night, but it is that false sense of security, that will cause this team to continue to struggle. Sure Khabby makes some unbelievable stops. Yeah and some of those even come at very crucial times. However, he lets in more softies then I ever could have imagined. And once he lets one of those in, the flood gates open and he falls into bad slumps. My main problem is that when the team struggles and has a bad night so does he. When they are taking bad penalties and can’t clear the zone, Khabby looks lost. But when things are good, he plays at a high level. This is the true sign of a role player and not a leader. That goaltender needs to be able to put the team on his back every so often and pitch a shut out. Or at least stop the bleeding when things are bad, not open the cut more.
So to the other 29 NHL teams, make an offer and he is yours. I’d call up Corey Crawford from Rockford and have him at Patty Lalime split the final 2 months and then decide what you have for next season.
I am happy with the way that this thing turned out. The flow looks good and I got the info on the page that I wanted. I expect to post my first real article today. It’ll probably be about how Khabby sucks and that I want him of the team. No single win against the Flamers is gonna make me want to keep that 6 million dollar waste of space.
Edit 1: Today is 2/8/08 and the date graphic on the blog was formated to look like 08 Feb 08. I dunno, but it just looked weird to me.