Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

At some point last year, my work computer decided that all "blogger.com" web addresses were bad and must be blocked. So I was unable to update this blog from my work computer. I finally got a new personal computer so I'm able to update this site again.  Most of my updates are on March Madness trips. In 2024, I did not go anywhere for March Madness. On Thursday I went out to a local bar and on Friday I stayed at home and hosted some of my friends on my 4 TV setup in the basement.

 I keep updating these posts every year as I take off work for the first couple days of the men's NCAA basketball tournament. Here's what I posted through 2022: https://mattholthe.blogspot.com/2022/04/march-madness-2001-through-2022.html In 2023, I went on a trip to Iowa to watch the games. We chose Iowa because we could be closer to home, we could meet some people there, and the state of Illinois has restrictions on betting in-state teams. If we stayed in Illinois, we couldn't bet on Northwestern or Illinois. We did discover that Iowa has restrictions on betting individual players, so we couldn't bet certain players to go over or under point totals, for example. Now, keeping everything updated, here is what I have done for the first weekend of March Madness every year going back to 2001: 2001 - at home in Colorado 2002 - trip to Illinois 2003 - trip to Las Vegas 2004 - trip to Las Vegas 2005 - trip to Illinois 2006 - trip to Las Vegas 2007 - trip to Las Vegas 2008 - tr...

We finally planned our first camping trip of 2022. Normally by the middle of May I'd have a few camping trips figured out. I don't know what it is about this year, but everyone seems to be rather busy and summer is coming up quick. Hopefully it doesn't completely get away from us this year.

Tonight in the NCAA National Championship game featuring North Carolina (an 8 seed who beat 2-seeded Duke in the semifinals and ended the coaching career of Coach K) against Kansas (a 1 seed who beat 2-seeded Villanova in the semifinals). This year, after tonight of course, I will have managed to watch at least part of every single tournament game, including all "first four" games. I think that's a first for me. I was at home for most of the games and I now have a 4 TV setup that I can use in the basement to watch all the games on Thursday and Friday.  I need to update my history of trips going back to 2001 for watching the first and second round games of March Madness. I have several posts that go back to 2001 for the history: 2001 through 2009 2010 through 2012 2013 and 2014 2015 through 2019 The last post states "In 2020, I will be going to Tunica, MS, to watch and bet on the games." Well, that was before the pandemic. The 2020 tournament was canceled and did...

 This coming up Saturday will feature Kansas against Villanova in the Final Four, followed by Duke against North Carolina. The winners will play Monday for the national championship. Duke and North Carolina is by far the best rivalry in college basketball. It might be the best rivalry in all of sports. In the last 99 games (since coach K took over, who will be coaching his last rivalry game this Saturday) the teams are 50-49 and the total number of points is nearly identical. All time the records and points are close as well.  I can't possibly imagine how a fan of either program is feeling. For Duke, they made it to the final four in coach K's last season. For North Carolina, they made it to the final four in Hubert Davis' first season. Each school would be thinking reaching the final four would make for a tremendously successful season. But, one of these teams is going to lose to their arch-rival and then have to watch their arch-rival potentially win the national champion...

Illinois beat Iowa last night on the final night of the regular season to end up tied with Wisconsin for the Big Ten Conference championship. It's their first conference regular season title since 2005. Wisconsin opened the door earlier in the day by losing at home to Nebraska. Illinois won the tie-breaker with Wisconsin and will have the top seed in the Big Ten Tournament which starts Wednesday. Illinois will play their first game Friday at 10:30 AM Central time against either Indiana or Michigan.

I had my best single day sports betting in terms of victories last night. The "big" one was a 5 team parlay that I won. I have won bigger parlays in the past, but those were always money line parlays on big favorites, so the favorites only had to win and not cover. Last night was 5 line bets where teams had to cover. I did 4 favorites and 1 underdog, and they all came through for me. In addition to that 5 team parlay, I also went 5-0 on other straight bets. There were 2 additional line bets, 1 team total bet (one NHL team getting under 2.5 goals, without regards to the team they were playing), 1 player bet on their points (over 16.5 points), and 1 combination player bet (points + assists + rebounds over 40.5). All of them winners. Can't say that I did all these on my own. The parlay was on my own, but the 5 straight bets came directly from a show called Daily Wager on ESPN where they talk about sports betting. I like that show, and when I watch it, I try to bet along with...

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, w...

 I got an email to explore my Google Maps timeline. I checked it out and noticed there was a "dot" out in the ocean west of Oregon. Decided to check it out. Apparently, according to Google, back in August of 2017 I "drove" 1,993 miles in 21 minutes to that location. Coming home was even more impressive - 1,986 miles in 3 minutes. That's 39,720 miles per hour or a little over Mach 51 (speed of sound - Mach 1 - is 767.269 miles per hour)

This happened a couple of days ago, but today is my first chance to write about it. Wisconsin beat Nebraska in a thrilling 5-set match to win the NCAA Women's Volleyball championship. The thing that was strange to me was an eerie familiarity in the national semifinals. In 2015 I went to the men's Final Four in Indianapolis. That year, in the semifinals, Wisconsin beat undefeated and top-ranked Kentucky to move to the championship. This year, Wisconsin beat undefeated and top-ranked Louisville (from the state of Kentucky) to move to the championship. The similarities end there, though - in 2015 the men's team couldn't take home the championship after falling to Duke. This was Wisconsin's first NCAA Women's Volleyball championship, which is cool to see. The Big Ten is normally pretty dominant in women's volleyball, which makes it kind of difficult for a different team from the conference to become champion.

If I'm not mistaken, this the first time in the history of the AP poll that Purdue has been ranked 1. And it was unanimous as well. They are really good this year, so it is well deserved. There are the only Big Ten team in the top 15, but there are 3 other teams ranked towards the bottom of the top 25 with Illinois just on the outside looking in.  And Colorado State (a team I follow since I lived in that area for 10 years) is just on the outside of the AP poll at 26. 

The college basketball season started last night. Fans were in the stands, as opposed to the COVID year last year with few or no fans. Although COVID is still around, things are starting to get back to normal now.  Illinois won its season opener against Jackson State. Illinois State won a tight game against North Carolina Wilmington. Northern Illinois shocked a lot of people by winning at Washington as a 19.5 point underdog. As far as ranked teams go, 15th ranked Houston needed overtime to beat Hofstra, Mercer was leading 16th ranked Arkansas in the second half before Arkansas pulled away, 17th ranked Ohio State needed a last second bucket to beat Akron, and 25th ranked Virginia lost to Navy at home.

 I had the idea this year of going on 1 or 2 college basketball road trips. The whole purpose is to see multiple games over a weekend. We established some loose rules about the trip: They had to be on a weekend when my friend didn't have his kids The locations have to be driving distance to central Illinois We have to see at least 3 games in the trip - at least 2 on Saturday and then one either Friday or Sunday (or both, if it works out). Division 1 teams are the priority, but if there's room in the schedule, we aren't against seeing a D2/D3/NAIA game or two. After looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 275 schedules, here's the possibilities we came up with: December 17-18-19: Friday 12/17: Franklin College (D3, Indiana) 7:00 Saturday 12/18: Cincinnati vs Texas Southern 12:00, Xavier vs Marquette 4:00 Sunday 12/19: Illinois-Chicago vs Northern Illinois 1:00 January 14-15-16: Friday 1/14: Purdue vs Nebraska 6:30 Saturday 1/15: Marquette vs Seton Hall 11:00, UW-Milw...

 I just realized that I didn't post a single thing in the month of August. Just really nothing going on noteworthy in my life right now. I went camping in in mid-August, which was nice to get away for a couple of days.

 Last Saturday was my annual golf get-together with friends from High School. It was the first time since the fourth member of our group passed away last September. It was bitter-sweet remembering him and playing golf on a beautiful day. Wish I could say my golf was beautiful. It was the worst round of golf I've played in at least 15 years. I am normally a low 40's per 9 golfer and can sometimes shoot in the 70's for 18, although I'm normally a low to mid 80's. I shot 51 on the front and 50 on the back for a final score of 101. I really couldn't do anything right - drives were mostly horrible, flubbed several easy approach shots, putted terribly (42 putts in 18 holes), and so on. Needless to say, I didn't win the tournament this year - that means I continue the longest streak of the remaining 3 without a victory (2017 was my last win). Next year will be the 30th anniversary of the event, although there was one year it was cancelled, so it will be the 29th pl...

We've seen a lot of rain over the past several days. From Thursday the 24th to Saturday the 26th, there's been anywhere from 7 to 10 inches of rain in a 3 day period (different locations near me had 7.35", 8.6", and 10.57" in official gauges). Our house sits on a little bit of a hill, so we haven't had any issues. The sump pump has kept up, and everything is dry inside the house. Others are not so lucky. Several of the streams and lakes around town are busting at the seams. With the storms over those 3 days, there were 2 different tornado warnings. Fortunately, the tornado warnings were because of doppler radar detecting rotation, rather than actual tornadoes being witnessed by spotters. And there's rain in the forecast (potential) for the next couple of days. Hopefully that rain holds off and we can dry things out a little bit here.

 The US Open concluded yesterday and Sunday started out with a lot of promise. After a few holes, there were several people close to the lead. There was one point where 13 people were within 3 shots of the lead and, of those 15, were all of the top 5 in the world ranking and 2 additional players that had won multiple majors each.  At another point, there were 4 players tied for the lead and 6 players 1 shot behind. But then, one by one, the wheels fell off almost everyone in the back 9. Most players it was early in the back 9, and we were left with just 2 players - Louis Oosthuizen and Jon Rahm. Jon finished at -6 and Louis had a bogey on 17 that dropped him 2 shots back, so it was a pretty anti-climatic finish after the great start of the day. There was a ball in a tree (Mackenzie Hughes), a quadruple-bogey by a contender (Bryson DeChambeau), a drive out of bounds by another contender (Justin Thomas, the #2 player in the world), a double-bogey by the #4 player in the world, a...

 After not camping at all in 2020 due to the pandemic, we've already made 1 trip this year and have 2 more scheduled. Hopefully going to have at least 1 or 2 additional trips before packing it up for the year. It's nice to get the camper out of hibernation and on the road. We even got new tires for the camper this year (just the 2 main tires - didn't do the spare).

Congratulations to Phil Mickelson becoming the oldest player to ever win a golf major by winning the PGA at age 50. He also set the record for the most years between victories at the same major at 16 years (2005 was the last time he won the PGA). The most remarkable stat that I heard was that on a very pivotal hole (the 16th), he had the longest drive of the day at 366 yards. When the pressure was on late in the round not only did he deliver, but he delivered better than anyone else did on Sunday. At 50 years old. After he had a bogey on the first hole Sunday, I thought it was going to be a long day for him. He didn't have a great round, but nobody else in close contention did either, and he ended up winning by 2 stokes.

Congratulations to Baylor winning the NCAA Championship. The game did not even come close to living up to its hype. It featured undefeated #1 Gonzaga and the 2-loss #2 Baylor Bears. It was the highest winning percentage for a championship game ever. The teams were supposed to play in December when they were ranked #1 and #2, but the game was canceled due to COVID-19 issues a couple of hours before the game.  Baylor started the game 9-0 and it was 11-1 at the first media time out. There was only a short period of time in the second half when the margin was under 10 points. Baylor led by 10 at halftime and ended up winning by 16, 86-70. The game was under 159.5 points, which is fitting because the unders dominated this tournament. Out of the 67 games, 40 of them went under. That's 60%. And Gonzaga was the favorite (lost the game outright) which means that underdogs were 35-32 against the spread and underdogs won the game outright 23 times. That's 34%, which is really high for und...