March Madness: How's Your Bracket Doing?

Despite near-meltdowns by Memphis and UCLA, there have been no huge surprises (unless you're an Illinois fan) so far in the first round of the 2009 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament (check out March Madness On Demand ). As I predicted in our GameSpot's 2009 March Madness Predictions feature, I thought Memphis would have a tough time with Cal State Northridge, still, with minutes to go in the game and my entire bracket riding on the outcome of that game, I was pretty sick to my stomach watching the Tigers barely fend off CSN.

As for the other March Madness predictions from our feature, a lack of surprises means that the Final Fours of all our contributors is still intact. In addition, the tournament sim run by EA Sports in NCAA Basketball 09: March Madness Edition is still in the game as well. As of 3:30 (PDT) on Friday, EA Sports' sim had managed to correctly predict 18 of 22 first round match-ups. Not bad at all, especially considering the game correctly picked Dayton over West Virginia and Maryland over Cal.

So that's the picks from our GameSpot feature but what about some reader picks? Here's a choice sampling of some of the comments we've seen so far:

penguins227 must be a Pennsylvania resident:

Pittsburgh!
You know, it is funny... most all of them have all of the 1 seeds in the final four. A good way to tell if you have good lower seeds (6,7,8,etc.) is to look at all of the 5 seeds. Do any of them have a good chance to get to the final four/ championship? I would say no... therefore there is a great chance of the higher seeds going all of the way. Not many upsets this year in comparison to last year...

Lostboy1224 doesn't believe in Memphis:

Who ever picked Memphis might have their heart broken since they came close to blowing it in the first round today. But it figures eveyone either goes for NC or the Cards. I can't wait for some big time upsets this year, cause it gets a little too boring if all the big teams make it to the Elite eight every year.

Darthnaevus must not know that they play basketball in Greece. And Italy. And China. And Croatia. And Argentina. And… oh you get the picture.

gamespot is getting worser than ever, cmon, we dont care about basketball, dont you know A LOT of your readers ARE FROM OUTSIDE THE US? AND that the us is the sole place where basketball is that popular? in short, we dont care

haloonsteroids2 puts in for Pitt:

This year tournament is one of the hardest to predict, there are so many good teams. My champions are Pitt. I think that Lavance Fields, Dejuan Blair, and Sam Young are too much for any team to handle. The losing team in the championship is Louisville they are extermely talented, but there inside play will not match Pittsburgh's. So there you go!

So who do you like in the 2009 Men's Tournament? How's your tourney bracket doing? Let me know in the comments below.