whew.

Y’all doing OK? Breathing again?

Me too.

We’ve seen some excellent games so far, but without question, the heart-stopper of the first day-and-a-half was this afternoon’s Pitt-East Tennessee matchup in Dayton. I don’t care much about Pitt one way or another, but in the Fourth Annual Uncle Crappy NCAA Final four Challenge, a Pitt loss would have been a disaster, for me and for most of you.

This is why getting tie-breakers outta you people is going to be important: a whopping 18 of the 25 contestants picked Pitt to reach the Final Four. And that underscores the disaster a Pitt loss would have been. Basketball scorched earth, if you will.

A pretty good number of us also had reason to be concerned last night, as Memphis struggled to beat Cal State-Northridge. Twelve of us also had Memphis reaching the Final Four — and Uncle Crappy is one of a couple of us to pick them to win the whole freaking thing.

Those minor hiccups aside, we’re doing pretty well so far. Just one of us — Gina (or, rather, Gina’s dog) — lost one of our Final Four picks; Gina’s WVU Mountaineers let her down earlier today, but she’s still got her championship game intact.

Actually, there’s another player who is in a bit more trouble. The penny was not kind to Juan; Cal, Minnesota and Radford — his championship pick — all have exited already. Maybe Utah can make a run and make his entry at least respectable.

OK, kids — the Friday night games are underway. I’m certain I’ll be watching Ohio State and Sienna on the computer, as the Pittsburgh region will be forced to watch Robert Morris get drawn and quartered by Michigan State. No matter — if I’m sitting in front of the computer, I’m sure I’ll have a few things to say later tonight.