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Thursday, February 16, 2006
BracketBusters buzz
They are in full court pressure mode about the BracketBusters over at WWLIS.com.

Start out by making some predictions in their pick the winners poll. While you are having fun clicking the little buttons to make your poll choices, cast a vote for which games you are looking forward most to watching, which team is most likely to win a game in the Big Dance, which team has the most to gain from the BB and predict an All BracketBusters team. You can participate in all four of those polls with one click on the mouse.

Not sure who to choose in all those polls? Bone up on the BracketBusters by reading Kyle's BracketBusters breakdown.

Also, if you missed Thursday afternoon's chat with Bucknell's Charles Lee and other BB participants, you can read a transcript of the whole session.

SO-CALLED EXPERTS: We like a lot of the stuff found on the WWLIS site, but occasionally you have to wonder if they actually have a clue.

Today's example comes from Andy Glockner's Bubble Watch column on ESPN.com.

Glockner writes that Bucknell should be in the NCAA Tournament as an at-large team should the Bison stumble in the Patriot League tournament.

Nothing wrong with that.

But read his reasoning:
Bucknell [20-3 (12-0), RPI: 40, SOS: 187] Congrats to the ranked Bison for getting past last significant PL hurdle. Win at Northern Iowa in BracketBusters would be nice insurance in case something screwy happens in the league tournament, but it's hard to imagine the Bison would get shafted at this point. "Marquee" win at Syracuse is losing some glitz.
We added the italics for emphasis.

Glockner probably was referring to the Bison's win Saturday at Holy Cross. A significant hurdle, sure. But with Lehigh, which is actually ahead of Holy Cross in the league standings, coming to Sojka Pavilion next week for a showdown, it is hard to figure how Holy Cross could be considered the "last significant hurdle."

Lehigh's 10-1 mark is one of the best through 11 games in league history. The Mountain Hawks only conference loss was by 5 points against Bucknell. The last three games between these two have all gone down to the wire. If that is not a significant league hurdle, we're not sure what is.

SOME SURPRISE: Here's a formula that is almost certain to make a kind gesture seem calculated and contrived. Decide to repay a favor with a nice surprise. Then issue a press release ahead of time with a headline saying you have prepared a surprise.

By the way, the release says the Bucknell pep band is taking 26 musicians. They might want to wear name tags since we are pretty certain this will be the first time this season they have all played at the same game.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: Here's some of what we are working on for Friday:
  • One of the storylines you will hear heading into Saturday's BracketBusters is bound to be about Rick Hartzell, the former Bucknell Athletics Director who now has that job at Northern Iowa. Hartzell is the guy who hired both team's coaches. As Paul Harvey would say, we'll have the rest of the story.
  • Also, we'll take a look at Northern Iowa, including a quick scouting report from Bucknell coach Pat Flannery
  • And, of course, we will have links to all the news about the Bucknell-UNI game and the rest of the Patriot League.
    We'll post stuff throughout the day, so be sure to check back often.
    • Published at 9:47 PM by Hoop Time.
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