The 2026 Tournament of Art part 2

 One weekend done, two more to go.  When some people fill out their brackets, they always pick by seeds, higher over lower.   This is also sometimes known as 'chalk'.  Most of the time I pick the higher seeds, as the reason they are higher seeds is that they are the better team.  Sometimes I will pick upsets, a lower seed beating a higher seed in my opinion.  In these cases, I truly believe the lower team has the best shot to win the game.  Sometimes these upset picks work out, and sometimes they don't.  Of course, sometimes the higher seed from a power conference doesn't win, and this happened a lot this year.   It's probably what makes the process of filling out a bracket and watching the games fun.  Just picking chalk is not so much fun. 

This all works out good and bad for my art schools.  For example, Villanova as an 8 seed lost its first round game to #9 Utah State.  (8/9 games really can go either way, and this year all the #9's won their games)  On the other hand, a school of interest that I had, VCU, rose above their 11 seed to beat powerhouse North Carolina (a #6) from the ACC, a conference that often gets more bids than it deserves.  Northern Iowa, from my old home conference of the Missouri Valley and one of my art schools was given a #12 seed and had the bad luck to draw St John's, a #5 with a chip on its shoulder for getting what it (and I as well) consider a relatively low seed for a team that won the Big East, both for the season and its conference tournament.  Not surprisingly, St John's dominated the game and won its next to get into the Sweet 16.

So what that leaves me with is Illinois, which beat VCU in the second game. also achieving the Sweet 16.  It was at Illinois that I had my first showing of the whole Fourth of July series, in 1994 I think.  So two of my art schools are gone, as well as my school of interest, leaving me just one of my art schools for the second weekend.  I don't expect them to survive those games, but you never know.  That is part of the fun of the tournament.  Whatever happens, I'll be back her next week to report it.