In case you haven’t heard, 8th-seed Robert Morris University knocked off the defending national champion Kentucky Wildcats, 59-57, in the first round of the National Invitational Tournament. No, seriously. Here, look.

Still don’t believe it? Here’s the YouTube description.

Robert Morris beats Kentucky
Robert Morris beats Kentucky
Robert Morris beats Kentucky

It was pretty incredible, despite Kentucky having to basically give up the spoils of being a top seed to play the game on the road. That’s outweighed by the hilarious tininess of Robert Morris, who didn’t bring in enough fans in an entire season to match one of the Wildcats’ home games.

Although the Wildcats were the top seed in the tournament, they had to travel to Robert Morris because Rupp Arena is being used for NCAA Tournament games. The total attendance for all of Robert Morris’s home games was 15,692. The attendance for Kentucky’s final home game was 24,294.

Robert Morris moves on to face the winner of the Providence/Charlotte game, and while a second round appearance is really all they’re guaranteed — they aren’t getting a giant new stadium for a bunch of new crazy bandwagon Colonials fans or anything — they’ve already enjoyed one unexpected perk.

Via Reddit comes the best possible edit to the Robert Morris Wikipedia page. It encapsulates everything you need to know about the upset in one beautiful reference to English-American history. Boom:

Read the rest of this entry »

The majority of the national media picked the Indiana Pacers to beat the Orlando Magic in 4 games, and the Florida sports media is so convinced that the Magic are going to lose quickly that they just stuck to making up news about Dwight Howard instead of predicting the series outcome. But on Saturday night, the Magic had other ideas, as they defeated the Indiana Pacers 81-77 in the first game of their incredibly boring first round matchup.

The Magic went on an 11-0 run to close out the game, and the victory was sealed when Indiana’s Danny Granger traveled with less than 8 seconds left and down by just 3. And all the way at the end of the Magic bench, Chris Duhon, of all people, turned Granger’s one stupid play into the weekend’s best sports meme not involving Dontari Poe trying to make out with Roger Goodell.

So of course the crafty minds of the Interwebs took some musical liberties with the original video of Duhon’s travel dance. And if they get in trouble for using unlicensed music, maybe Duhon can help them out with the bills with his $3.5 million salary.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »