After the first round, it looks like I had some great picks. One of my ESPN Tournament Challenge entries (labelled “Whimsical”) is in the 100th percentile, just outside the top 10,000, of nearly 3 million entries.

I wrote “looks like” above. It would be more impressive if that entry didn’t have Syracuse in the Final Four. Which is to say, I have nowhere to go but down, and with Gonzaga’s loss, I’m already headed that way. And you can see from the copy below my entries, there were nearly 7,000 people with perfect brackets after the first round. Unbelievable! There were 3, 4, 5, and 6 seeds that were upset, and those are hard to call, let alone all of them.

Though I kind of wonder, with almost three million entries, if that isn’t the equivalent of a million monkeys banging on typewriters. Somebody somewhere has to end up with a perfect bracket, right?

Not me, not this year…

Just so I post these before any results are in:

• Illinois is overrated; I’ve picked them to go deep in the past, and always regretted it. Of course, they have a new coach this year, so maybe that’ll change. But I have Oklahoma St. in the Final Four.

• Speaking of coaches that have let me down, I don’t have Kansas going very far.

• On the other hand, I think this is Roy Williams’s year, and predict UNC to win it all.

• If it isn’t North Carolina, it’ll be Connecticut.

• I’ll be rooting for Duke in every game, but I’m afraid they probably aren’t deep enough to really go as far as I’ve picked them.

• If Duke and Kentucky meet up in the regional final, well, that would be cool.

• Is this Gonzaga’s year to reach the Final Four? I’ll definitely take them over Wake Forest (yet another team that has busted my brackets in the past, by losing way before they are supposed to).

• My biggest upset pick is West Virginia over Wake. My 12-over-5 is Old Dominion over Michigan St.

• I dunno about Washington. A #1 seed from the Pac 10 that’s not Arizona? I just haven’t seen them play enough to think this is a good thing.

• I expect that East Coast basketball fans are hoping for a Washington-GT matchup in the third round, so they can watch the ACC deliver a good thumping.

• I definitely expect GT to beat out Louisville. Conference USA teams are consistently overrated. Cincinnati, I’m looking at you.

• Texas, Stanford, and Cincinnati all out in the first round.

• I like UCLA over Texas Tech…but not enough to bet on it.

Let’s play!