Game 1 of 162 tonight – Angels @ Twins

Go Halos!

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.

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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.

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

I plan on creating a review in the next week, so look for that and if you haven’t yet, go thrash up Paradise!

Official Candidate Site

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.

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.