With the NCAA Men’s Final Four field determined, there’s not much of a point in recapping the weekend’s action, because with the exception of Saturday’s early game – Louisville 72, Florida 68 – there wasn’t a great deal of suspense to break down and analyze with fart jokes and pictures of kittens dressed like Harry Potter. Although, in retrospect, I totally should have done that.

But that’s not to say that yesterday’s UNC-Kansas game – Jayhawks defeated the Tar Heels 80-67 – doesn’t at least qualify for instant classic consideration, because it was everything that we’ve come to expect from timeless rivals, despite what the score suggests. Even Tyler Zeller channeled his inner Tyler Hanbrough a few times, much to my delight.

And it has also now given us the above image that I am just going to deposit over here into my trusty “Future Memes” folder and let it incubate with the hopes that it can develop into its beautiful GIF form.

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Welcome back, everyone. I hope you enjoyed last night’s first installment of the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 and our Dummy’s Guide to sounding somewhat intelligent in the company of people who watch more college basketball than you. I went 2-for-4 with my picks from last night, as Syracuse and Florida won their games and Cincinnati and Michigan State really took massive horse dumps in their respective matchups. But I also technically rode the fence on each game enough that I can say I was 4-for-4.

What can I say, I’m an expert.

We’re back at it tonight, and I know it’s a Friday and all, but I’ll still be live chatting the action up from the handy dandy portable intelligent telephone. I’ll be at the Orlando Magic game, per the usual, which will make it all more fun. Make your predictions, quips and witticisms in the comments and there will be free t-shirts and possibly other surprises to be given out.

Admit it, you’re excited.

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As I most often point out as to avoid being called a hack – my feelings get hurt easy, y’all – I do not profess to be a sports expert, like ol’ Dick Vitale up there. I’m simply a guy who has a big TV and 12 web browser windows open at all times to follow multiple games until smoke starts to spray out of my ears. And watching all of those games, I develop opinions that I like to share with all of you. I believe that Mufasa or Pumba called it the “Circle of Life.”

So my point is that there are people out there who might be flipping through channels tonight, and they’ll be all like, “Hey, these guys are playing basketball, but I don’t know a thing about them.” Even worse, you could be a dude on a date with a hot girl and she’ll be like, “Why don’t we go back to your place and watch NCAA Tournament basketball and maybe I’ll take my shirt off if you know a lot about the games.” But you’re all like, “Snap, I haven’t watched anything.”

That’s why I created this handy-dandy guide to enjoying the Sweet 16, and to keep with the time-honored tradition of UPROXX live-blogging, I’ll be hanging out tonight to chat and make jokes about things that I notice. I invite you to join me, mainly because it’s fun, but also because I’ll be giving out free shirts at random to people who tell me why I’m wrong.

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With Brandon out gallivanting around Austin for SXSW, living the rock star life, and me back here at home watching the baby, I realized that I forgot to do a ROFLMNBAO post last week, and for that I can’t apologize enough. But I also figured that we could take a breather from Dwight Howard’s flip-flopping, Chris Bosh’s squawking, Blake Griffin’s air balling and Derrick Rose’s back injuring and celebrate some of the stars of the weekend’s NCAA Tournament action for this week’s edition.

After all, there were some great games that none of us expected as the Sweet 16 field presented itself. And to tie the NBA and NCAA ends together, I got to wondering what would have happened if Florida Gators coach Billy Donovan would have taken the Orlando Magic head coach position a few years ago, instead of backing out and returning to UF. And I don’t imaging it would be much different, as Otis Smith would have still traded for the worst contract in basketball and I’d still have the liver of a 63-year old.

On with the celebration and mockery of America’s student-athletes!

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All four No. 1 teams remain as the Sweet 16 is ready for Thursday’s NCAA Tournament action, and I’d say that’s pretty remarkable considering how crazy these games have been. Two 2-seeds and two 3-seeds have been booted, and a few of them were heavy favorites to win it all – especially by one certain jackass, who had Missouri defeating Florida State in the National Championship game. Ha, I mean who could be that stupid? *loosens tie, looks around nervously*

But you guys, you’re the real prognosticators, as there were 8 freaking upsets on Friday and 22 commenters correctly guessed 5 of them. Well, 22 people guessed the winners and 2 people didn’t bother including scores, so *fart noise* to them. Unfortunately, the rules only permitted 5 winners. Hmmm, 5 upsets and just 5 t-shirts, I wonder if that means that the prediction with the closest score from each upset wins a t-shirt. Yes, that’s exactly what it means.

Without further ado, Friday’s big swag winners are:

NC State 79, SDSU 65: “Guest” (71-67)
Ohio 65, Michigan 60: “Starks” (64-58)
Purdue 72, St. Mary’s 69: “SenatorThimble” (74-66)
USF 58, Temple 44: “UFGrad” (60-53)
Xavier 67, ND 63: “Mighty914″ (69-65)
UPDATE: “Mattox” had Lehigh over Duke. And “Codename Duchess” also had the closer score on Xavier over ND, so you two email me addresses and shirt sizes. Apologies.

(Disclaimer: Previous shirt winners were excluded, not that it really mattered.)

Congrats, you Miss Cleos, and email me your addresses and shirt sizes to BurnsyWL@gmail.com. All you other disenfranchised and discouraged Nostradamuses, keep your chins up, because we’ll be back Thursday with another giveaway. There will be t-shirts (including the most limited edition vintage style) and possibly much, much more, pending the results of my robot that was designed to steal Kate Upton’s underwear. Oh no, why did I give it the ability to sniff?

Leave your expressions of rage, rotten produce and stories of bracket pool grief in the comments.

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I’m not one for conspiracy theories, especially when it comes to sports. The effort it would take to orchestrate a fix on an institutional level, combined with the cover-up afterwards to keep everybody quiet, would be monumental. All it takes is one person looking to cash in on a salacious story and the whole house of cards would come tumbling down. And for what? To advance one team one round in a tournament? You’re going to risk the integrity of your entire sport for that? It’s just not worth it.

BUT, I am one to point out a horribly blown call, especially when it prevents something potentially awesome from happening. Something, for example, like a 16-seed upsetting a 1-seed in the NCAA Tournament. That’s why I’ve helpfully screencapped this moment from yesterday’s Syracuse vs. UNC-Asheville game. With about 30 seconds left, and a 66-63 lead, Syracuse was inbounding the ball from under their own basket, and the ball clearly bounced off one of their player’s hands before going out of bounds. Despite this, they were awarded possession, and promptly locked the game up with free throws.

Now, you could certainly point out that there was a pretty obvious foul committed by the UNC-Asheville player on the play, but that is besides the point for our purposes. If the referee wasn’t going to call the foul, for whatever reason, then the play needed to be treated like the foul didn’t happen. The point is that, during a live play, the ball went out of bounds after touching a Syracuse player, and the referee blew the call. Saying “Yeah, but if the foul would have been called …” gets us nowhere because, to quote the lead singer of the band Crucial Taunt, if a frog had wings, it wouldn’t bump its ass when it hops.

The main reason I’m so upset about this is because it cost us something so potentially cool. A 16-seed has never upset a 1-seed, and it was *thisclose* to happening yesterday. There’s no guarantee that UNC-Asheville would have hit a tying three, or even cut the lead to one with a quick basket, but it would have been a blast to watch them try. Hell, maybe they would have just thrown the ball right to Syracuse, tripped over their shoelaces in unison, and flubbed the game away anyway, but at least then they would have done it on their own. It’s tough enough for David to take out Goliath as it is. Goliath doesn’t need a crowbar.

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