Where Were You When...?

It was 9 years ago yesterday when Illinois knocked off #1 Indiana on this play. I was at Buffalo Wild Wings in Bloomington with a friend watching this game. It got me thinking of where I was for other memorable college basketball moments. Most of these involve my Illini, but there's some from other teams as well.

March 5, 1989. Nick Anderson's buzzer beater against Indiana. I was in the dorms at Illinois watching this game. My roommate was so excited that he ran up and down the hall of the dorms. 

March 12, 2009. UConn vs Syracuse in the Big East Tournament. Six overtimes. The game was close the whole time until UConn ran out of steam in the 6th overtime. I was in my house in Colorado watching the game. Saw the whole thing - couldn't get myself to go to bed until it was over.

December 1, 2004. #3 Illinois destroys #1 Wake Forest. I was at Buffalo Wild Wings in Longmont with some friends. This was the game that made me think this team could win a national championship, which they almost did. If you have an hour and a half, you can watch the full game. 

March 26, 2005. The Illinois comeback against Arizona. I was so mad during this game that this great team blew it before even making the final four, but then they came back from 15 down with 4 minutes to go to send it to overtime and then win in overtime. I was watching at home in Colorado. Again, you can watch the full game. 

March 15, 2001. Hampton upsets Iowa State in NCAA tournament. I was at a bar in Boulder watching this game with a friend, but actually didn't see the end of it. We took the bus to the bar so we wouldn't drink and drive, and the game was on late enough that we had to leave to make the last bus home. Today we would just take an Uber, but that wasn't an option back then. Yet again, you can watch the full game. 

April 4, 2005. Illinois vs North Carolina for the national championship. A couple of my friends were actually at this game - I was so mad that they got to go. I ended up at Buffalo Wild Wings in Longmont with my wife watching this game. I was hoping that Illinois would win, obviously, but I honestly didn't think they would. You can watch the full game here. 

March 12, 1998. Illinois and Illinois St both win in Sacramento in the NCAA tournament. My wife and I had a trip to Lake Tahoe set up for spring break. We were actually flying to Lake Tahoe when the selections for the NCAA tournament came out. The next morning I looked at the paper (long before smart phones) and saw that Illinois was playing in Sacramento. "Who else is playing there? Illinois State? We're going to Sacramento". We drove the 3 hours down to watch the games and saw both teams win. Ironically, I've seen Illinois State's most recent NCAA tournament appearance (and last win) where several friends who have had season tickets for years have not.

April 4, 2015. Wisconsin ends Kentucky's undefeated bid. I was at the Final Four in Indianapolis for this game. Duke beat up on Michigan State in the first semifinal and then Wisconsin took down the undefeated Kentucky Wildcats. You can watch the full game here. I was also there for the National Championship when Duke beat Wisconsin - the stadium was a sea of red for Wisconsin, but they couldn't pull out the win.

March 15, 2007. VCU upsets Duke in NCAA tournament. I was in Las Vegas at the Westgate watching this game. I can't remember if I had a money line bet on VCU or not, but I know I was rooting for them. I also know that there was a lot of money on both sides of the aisle for that game, because the entire sports book was rocking for that game.

April 4, 2016. Villanova wins NCAA championship on last second shot. This one isn't as exciting of a location - I was in my bedroom watching the end of the game since it was on pretty late. I cheered on that last shot, though, despite me not really caring who won the game.

March 16, 2018. UMBC is the first 16 seed to beat a 1 seed. Virginia was just beat down in this game - the 20 point margin of victory is stunning since it was tied at 21 at halftime. I was at a friend's house watching this game (and the others going on during the first round) and we were talking about watching history.

March 18, 2016. 15 Seed Middle Tennessee beats 2 Seed Michigan State. I was at Elroy's in downtown Bloomington for this game. Michigan State never led in this game. I, and many others, had Michigan State as my national champion that year and they lose in the first round.

Comments

  1. UnknownFebruary 8, 2022 at 5:23 PM

    March 26, 2005. The Illinois comeback against Arizona. - Supposed to be at a wedding reception for the daughter of a close friend. Spent most of the 2nd half in a bar attached to the banquet hall watching the game and feeling guilty about missing the reception, until.... I looked to my right with about 30 seconds to go and saw the bride.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tasker: Get Voice Command

The way I decided to set up Tasker is to use some reusable tasks that can be called from other places. The first one I'll talk about is the Get Voice Command. This task listens for some stock commands like "yes", "no", "cancel", or "repeat". It is a quicker listener than the "Get Voice Input" command which I'll talk about in another post. This is meant some some quick one or two word commands. It uses regular expressions to match commands (meaning, you can say "yep" or "yeah" or "yes sir" and it will return "yes"). Being generic like this means that I don't have to duplicate all these regular expressions everywhere. I can just call this task and if it returns "yes", then I know the user (me) said something like "yes" or "yeah" or whatever. There's an input parameter to the task of the message to speak before listening for the answer. The task will re...
Read more

Blackjack Streak House Advantage

One of the side bets you can play at several casinos in Black Hawk is called "streak". This is a bet where you get paid if you win that many hands in a row (2, 3, 4, or 5). How much is the casino advantage on this game? Well, it all depends on the payout. There are several factors in play, but as a general rule you can assume that the odds of winning one hand in blackjack streak is 47.51% (or .4751) - thanks to Wizard of Odds for that. So the odds of winning "x" hands in a row are .4751^x, which is .22572 for 2 hands, .1072396 for 3 hands, .0509495 for 4 hands, and .0242061 for 5 hands. If you take that number, multiply by the amount you get if you win a streak of that size, and then subtract from 1, you will get the casino advantage. A typical streak pay scale is 3, 8, 18, and 38. So, for a streak of 2, the casino advantage is 1-(.22572*4)=0.09712 (9.71%). For a streak of 3, it's 3.48%. For 4, it's 3.196%. For 5, it's 5.596%. So the best bets are strea...
Read more

Picking 87 NCAA Basketball Games

My friend Tim and I picked 87 NCAA basketball games against the spread on Saturday. We alternated picks - first I would pick one, then he would pick one. Once a pick was made, the other person was automatically the "house" for that pick (meaning, you automatically had to take the other side). The way the picks were made, you wanted to make the ones you were most confident about early (before the other person had a chance to pick it). We made the picks in 3 waves - morning games, afternoon games, and night games. There were 24 morning games, 35 afternoon games, and 28 night games based on our breakdowns. In the morning games, Tim was 4-7-1 and I was 8-4. Our "top half" (picks 1 through 6 for this set) were both 2-4, however. That means I was 6-0 in the games lower down the list (ones I was basically guessing). In the afternoon games, Tim was 8-10 and I was 6-11. Our "top half" (1-9) picks were both 2-7. Again, we did better on the ones where we were guessin...
Read more