It was the best of times.....

It was the worst of times.

That pretty much wraps up my bracket right now. My Final Four is intact, 7 of my 8 Elite 8 teams are still alive and I got 13 of 16 teams in the Sweet 16. I'm trailing my Buddy Tom by 5 games. The Dukies are still alive, so I'm hanging in there. My performance hasn't been great, almost every game that I picked and got wrong I quickly second guessed. After being very successful bracketwise the last 3 years I knew that I was in for trouble this year, also because this is just a wide open year in my opinion. My past performances indicate that I might still be in for a solid finish. My past performances indicate that my later round picks are better than my early picks and while peoples picks are going down in flames and mine are surviving I keep picking the bones that are the Final Four games.

From this past extended weekend of games, there are teams that looked great in one of their two games (Duke, Oklahoma, Michigan State, Louisville, PITT and North Carolina) and then there is the only team that really looked good in both (UCONN). How is this going to transfer to the round of 16? It's hard to tell, the next 3 days are an amazing thing, some teams that looked like they might get knocked out in the second round(Duke, Louisiville, Pitt and Missouri) could very easily come back hot on Thursday.

I will be back this week with game by game predictions, before I head to Fort Myers for the end of Red Sox and Twins Spring Training on Thursday.

Coming next week, my annual Grading the Sox column from Fort Myers.

Sterling Pingree