Well, folks, that’s the end of round one. After more than 5,000 votes, we’ve cut our field from 64 to 32. Most of our top seeds went through, but, much like the actual NCAA tournament, we had some exciting upsets as well. In news that I like the most, under-rated guard, and current coach Ricky Moore upset Marcus Williams. Rudy Gay fell to Big Jake Voskuhl, and the Lamb Shake put Jeremy Lamb over Mike McKay.
Donyell Marshall almost pulled off a shut out, giving up only one vote to Tim Coles. And given how pissed UConn fans still are at Alex Oriakhi, it’s amazing he got the one vote he did.
Fellow coaches Kevin Freeman and Kevin Ollie both made it past their first round opponents. But Karl Hobbs didn’t, losing his match up with Wild Wes Bialosuknia.
We also lost some great players. Super Tone, we hardly knew you. Donny Marshall, Tate George, Travis Knight, Nadav Hennefeld, Josh Boone, Ryan Boatright and Stanley Robinson didn’t survive the first round, either.
Click here to view the full bracket updated with Round 1 winners – brackets are always available on the Ultimate UConn Challenge page.
Coming up, we have some tough matches. First among them, Kevin Ollie is facing 2011 NCAA Tourney hero Kemba Walker. That one makes my head hurt. In the battle of National Champ point guards, Khalid El-Amin and Taliek Brown face off this round. Slash Anderson, who blew away Denhan Brown in the first round, goes up against one-seed Donyell Marshall. Keep an eye on Marshall, who is on a collision course with fifth-overal seed Rip Hamilton. The two could potentially meet in our Elite Eight.
Round Two, which starts later today, will feature two match ups per day for the next week. This means we’ll be blowing up your Twitter and Facebook feeds a little less. But only a little. Look out for (5)Corny Thompson v. (4)Doron Sheffer and (3)Art Quimby v. (6)AJ Price this evening. Stick with us; this train goes all the way to the end of the NCAA Tournament.
