Day 373 -- Day Two of the Tournament

• And let the threats begin:  The police have been called for online threats against Ohio State's E.J. Liddell after Ohio State's shock NCAA Tournament elimination.
• Isaiah Wilson is probably done in the NFL, waived by the Dolphins after the trade.
• At least two low-round draft picks have been stripped by the NFL:  The Saints lose a 6th for COVID violations, and another team loses a 7th for a minor salary-cap violation with respect to a practice-squad player.
• It's official:  No foreign fans at the Tokyo Olympics.  Probably the last real gasp at holding them at all.   
• And speaking of Japan:  A 7.0 earthquake was felt off the northeast coast of the country, briefly disrupting many events, including New Japan Pro Wrestling's New Japan Cup semifinals.
• There is apparently only ONE perfect CBS Bracket Challenge which survived Day One -- he has been located by friends on Reddit.
• And it looks like Georgetown completely laying an egg in the 12-5 against Colorado will take care of that.
• And apparently, on top of the only about 100 perfect ESPN brackets, only about another 4,000 went 15-1 -- out of 14.7 million!
• And now, after the first two Saturday results, we have only 66 perfect brackets among the top three bracket games -- 63 ESPN, 2 Yahoo, 1 NCAA.
• You can follow along at this spreadsheet.
• 23 after the first four games today -- 20 ESPN, 2 Yahoo, 1 NCAA -- and I don't hold much hope out for at least one of them.  One of the 23 has picked Texas Southern as a 16!
• And now remove that Texas Southern bracket from the list.  Now, if Iona upsets Alabama (and that 15 is down 1 at the half), that's it.
• And Creighton survives a LAST-SECOND MISSED LAYUP by UCSB, or we'd only have four perfect brackets left.  As it is, those four ESPN brackets fall, and we're down to 18 -- 15 ESPN, etc.
• Iona scared Alabama for a while, and all of the remaining perfects, but they stand.
• And now halfway through Day Two, Drake losing to USC has felled the last NCAA bracket and one of the last two Yahoo brackets.  Down to 12 perfects, 11 of them on ESPN.
• And we have our first cancellation.  The final game of the day, Oregon vs. Virginia Commonwealth, has been called off due to COVID protocols in the VCU program.  Oregon advances.
• And now later word that there are at least three positives in the VCU program -- one was found Wednesday, two more last night.
• And there is now unconfirmed thought that the VCU program may have gotten the virus from one of the officials of their conference championship game, who tested positive earlier in the week.
• That busts four of the remaining 12 brackets.  Eight remain.  (I am assuming the rules basically work that way.)  (Those four brackets would've busted with Virginia's loss anyway.)
• A perfect first-round bracket is, in fact, quite rare!  The record, before "Center Road"'s making it to the Sweet 16 (for which he was sent to Anaheim for one of the four 2019 Regionals as a special prize), was the last game of Day Three -- 39 correct, according to the NCAA.  And in 2016 AND 2018, no brackets survived the first two days.  And in 2015, Yahoo reported it's first perfect First Round bracket ever -- and then two years later, reported over three dozen.
• Two years ago, we had 15 make it through the First Round.  Someone has computed that the only three possibilities left after tonight (through Game 28*) are three perfect brackets, one perfect bracket, or no perfect brackets.
• Barring a large-scale Connecticut comeback, we could be down to one bracket perfect at the end of the 3rd set of games (Ohio would finish the job completely if they win, and they're up 5 late).  One ESPN and one Yahoo bracket picked Maryland, who is up double-digits at halftime.  They split on Oklahoma-Missouri, and also on Texas-Abiliene Christian.
• Sounds like the NBA is going to have to make a decision soon on whether it wants to direct this season to a given champion:  LeBron James is out 3-8 weeks with a high ankle sprain.
• A 13-4 upset by Ohio over Virginia took out the remaining Maryland perfects, so now Connecticut has to make up a 7-point deficit or we hit no perfect brackets at about 30 games.  That would take us down to 3, all on ESPN...
• And Maryland has beaten Connecticut -- AND THAT IS ALL.  The 3 remaining ESPN brackets all had UConn, and for the third time in five tournaments, no bracket (ESPN, NCAA, CBS, SI, Yahoo) makes it through the first round perfect.