King Kaufman's Sports Daily

NCAA Tournament Day 2: Underdogs hang around, hang around and, finally, a couple of them break through.

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March 18, 2005 | 1:50 p.m. EST: Seth Davis, the Sports Illustrated writer moonlighting on CBS's NCAA Tournament studio show, has bolted to the lead after one day in this column's annual NCAA Tournament Pool o' Experts by picking 15 of 16 games correctly, missing only on the Alabama-Birmingham upset of LSU.

Aside from the NCAA Selection Committee, which got 13 outcomes right, no one else in this year's expanded field got more than 12 of 16.

This year's field has expanded from 12 to 16. Returnees are: Davis; the committee; your humble servant; 2003 champion Tony Mejia of CBS.SportsLine.com; 2004 champ Tim Brando of CBS and the Sporting News, plus his Sporting News colleague Mike DeCourcy; Stewart Mandel, Grant Wahl and Alexander Wolff of Sports Illustrated; the editors of Sports Illustrated, who inspired this contest three years ago; John Salley of Fox Sports; and my son Buster, the coin-flippinest 2-year-old in America.

The four new entries are: CBS.SportsLine's users, whose bracket will serve as the wisdom of the crowd; Kyle Veltrop of the Sporting News, who was in the 2003 pool but not in last year's for some reason; Luke Winn, who writes about college basketball for SI.com; and Yoni Cohen, who has parlayed his college basketball blog into a gig writing columns for Foxsports.com, and who was the first person to volunteer for inclusion in this pool, a request that was granted because he was once my student.

Anybody who's had to listen to me talk about writing deserves a break or two.

I was going to include Marques Johnson of Fox Sports, but his promised bracket has not materialized on the Web site.

Here are the standings after the first half of the first round, with 10 points awarded for each correct pick in the first round, then 20, 40, 80, 120 and 160 in the subsequent rounds. The number in parentheses after a score indicates the number of Sweet 16 picks already eliminated.

1. Seth Davis, Sports Illustrated/CBS: 150 (1)
2. NCAA Selection Committee: 130
3. CBS.SportsLine.com users: 120
3. Yoni Cohen, Yocohoops/Foxsports.com: 120
3. Mike DeCourcy, Sporting News: 120
6. Stewart Mandel, Sports Illustrated: 120 (1)
6. Grant Wahl, Sports Illustrated: 120 (1)
8. King Kaufman, Salon: 120 (2)
9. Tony Mejia, CBS.SportsLine.com: 110
9. Sports Illustrated: 110
9. John Salley, Fox Sports: 110
12. Luke Winn, Sports Illustrated: 110 (2)
12. Alexander Wolff, Sports Illustrated: 110 (2)
14. Kyle Veltrop, Sporting News: 100 (1)
15. Tim Brando, Sporting News/CBS: 100 (3)
16. Buster, Coin Flip the Magazine: 80 (5)

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Friday's early games, all in or just starting the second half at this writing, have been competitive if not always see-saw affairs. Charlotte, 7-seed in the Syracuse Region, looked like it was going to run No. 10 North Carolina State out of the gym early, but the Wolfpack steadied and it's 52-45 with about 13 minutes left, roughly the margin that's held for a while now.

My apparently Big 12-mad part of the country has been watching the entertaining Oklahoma State-Southeast Louisiana tilt, in which the Cowboys have led all the way but the Lions have hung around thanks to their athleticism and defense, especially by Ricky Woods. It's 35-26 as the second half starts.

Iowa State leads Minnesota by 10 at the second-half tip in a less-than-stellar 9-8 matchup in the Syracuse, and in the same bracket No. 4 Florida seems to be handling but not losing No. 13 Ohio. It's 38-28.

It looks like we're going to have three weardowns, plus a close one between the Carolina teams, though Iowa State and Minnesota might tighten up.

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3:10 p.m. EST: So there I am, happily watching the Oklahoma State-Southeastern Louisiana game. It's highly entertaining, though it doesn't look like the 15-seed Lions are going to catch the No. 2 Cowboys and pull the biggest upset since Hampton in 2001.

Oklahoma State being a Big 12 team, I know the St. Louis CBS affiliate isn't going to switch to one of the other games without a fight, but that's OK because those games aren't close. North Carolina State has erased an early double-digit deficit and beaten Charlotte in a mild 10-over-7-seed upset in the Syracuse region, while Iowa State, in the same bracket, is cruising along over Minnesota, leading by 10 or so on the way to a 9-over-8 win.

That just leaves Florida, the 4-seed in the Syracuse, beating up on No. 13 Ohio. Let's see, last time I looked it was a 20-point lead, and now it's -- whoa! It's 60-60! What happened?

Florida has been a poster team for Tournament underachievement these last few years, but this year the Gators have looked different, tougher, more defense-minded. This year, they were looking like a Final Four contender, certainly a reasonable Elite 8 pick.

And they let the Ohio Bobcats come back from 20 points down to tie the game in the dying minutes. It's looking like a choke job when David Lee puts up a 17-foot jumper from beyond the free-throw line and it comes up three feet short. But Anthony Roberson is there to haul it in like a pass, score and get fouled. He makes the free throw, and when the Bobcats turn it over -- unforced -- on their next possession, the threat's over. Florida survives, 67-62, but how's that "Fla" scribbled on your bracket's Elite 8 line looking?

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Best non-game shot of the Tournament so far: Before the second set of games, one of which will be Central Florida vs. UConn, the CBS cameras catch the Central Florida mascot, a Golden Knight, in sparkly armor, climbing up on a pair of folding chairs to lead a cheer, but stepping wrong and tumbling to the ground.

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4:05 p.m. EST: Five of the eight 1 and 2 seeds have played, and we haven't had any of those lopsided blowouts in those games. The lower seeds haven't really come close to winning, but they've at least been competitive.

Until now. Syracuse top-seed North Carolina is leading Oakland, the play-in winner, 59-33 at the half, meaning the Tar Heels are on pace win by seven and a half touchdowns.

No. 2 Connecticut, from the same region, is leading the 15-seed Central Florida Tumbling Knights 47-31 at halftime thanks to Charlie Villanueva's buzzer 3-pointer. Several low seeds have fallen behind by that much and then rallied to make a game of it in the second half, but I doubt UConn's sweating much in the locker room.

Remember when I said a 12 wouldn't beat a 5 this year? Of course you do. You always remember when I say ridiculous things that turn out to be wrong. Well, if I hadn't backed myself into that corner, I'd have picked New Mexico to upset Villanova in the Syracuse region.

And you know what? Instead of writing me e-mails or posting on your blog about how dumb I was for that 5-12 prediction, you'd be writing about how I'd lost my mind by picking New Mexico. 'Nova's leading that game 34-10 in the last two minutes of the half.

In the game I'm watching, one I'd been looking forward to, Southern Illinois is leading St. Mary's 35-26 at the break. This is not just a game between two good medium-conference teams roughly from the last two areas I've called home, it's an intriguing matchup, but the Gaels haven't been able to put anything together. Southern Illinois is the seventh seed in the Chicago Region, St. Mary's the No. 10.

So it looks like the seeds are holding up big-time in this set of games, which goes against my theory that seeds don't mean much, that they're a result of the prejudices and biases of the NCAA Selection Committee, and your own prejudices and biases would serve equally well.

Also going against my theory, according to reader Kevin Kraft: reality in general.

"I have found that, looking at game outcomes averaged over the long long term, the seedings are surprisingly accurate and meaningful," Kraft writes. "I came across this while working on a side-project attempting to define a metric gauging the level of upsets for a given NCAA Tournament (i.e. a number that would indicate whether a given year was a big year for upsets, and how it compared to other years).

"Since defining an 'upset' depends on the relative seedings, I went back and examined the historical data, plotting both seed and seed differential (winning seed minus losing seed) vs. winning percentage," he continues. "The results were beautiful straight lines, indicating a very high correlation between higher seeds, larger seed differentials, and higher winning percentages. So, taken over the long term, the seeding process has proven to be surprisingly accurate."

Shut up, he explained.

Next page: "Oh no! Christian Laettner!" I actually said those words out loud