Water Cooler Talk - Recapping Rounds 1 & 2

Ok, so, you've made it through the first two rounds, now you're going back to work and must face...the water cooler. Or, at least the proverbial water cooler since, I know we don't have water coolers at our offices.

Anyway, for the most part, the hot guys and even the not-so-hot guys, will be talking about all the highlights and anything noteworthy or weird that happened, so we have decided to dissect two ESPN recap articles. Now, I know ESPN articles can be intimidating, but have no fear, we've marked them up and explained the weirder, sports-geekier things mentioned in each so you can now participate in the water cooler conversations with all of your hot co-workers. And that's the whole point anyway, right?

We'll also give a rundown of the basic upsets during the course of the tournament. Without further ado, the carnage from Rounds 1 and 2:

The Midwest Region was hit hardest:

In round 1
#4 Wake Forest was upset by #13 Cleveland State
#6 West Virginia was upset by #11 Dayton and
#7 Boston College was upset by #10 USC
#8 Ohio State was upset by #9 Siena

The West Region

In round 1
#7 California was upset by #10 Maryland
#8 BYU upset by #9 Texas A&M

The East Region

In round 1
#5 Florida State was upset by #12 Wisconsin (There's your 5-12 upset!)

The South Region

In round 1
#5 Illinois was upset by #12 West Kentucky (another 5-12)
#7 Clemson was upset by #10 Michigan (YAY, but we're not biased)

Round 2 didn't really have any upsets, hence why everyone is talking about a chalk filled Sweet 16 which we will get to when dissecting your articles :)

So, the first article is from ESPN's March to Motown Blog and written by Mark Schlabach. It mostly talks about Sunday's games, but it will help you when reading anything else about the games. You can find the original article here: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?entryID=4006995&name=marchmadness

I cut the article off at the end because nothing important occurs on the last page :)



And finally, some bulleted highlights from an article by ESPN sportscaster, Andy Katz. Original article can be found here: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/ncaatourney09/columns/story?columnist=katz_andy&id=4007346



So, you are now fully equipped to trash talk and win, flirt at the water cooler and decipher the geeky sports talk spewed by the Sportscasters. Whew.

And tomorrow, look for something fun to amuse yourself as we head into the Sweet 16 because this is when the guys actually start watching the games :)