I went 1-1 for the Sweet Sixteen round which takes my overall record to a healthy 11-7 against the odds. Only one game of the four in the Elite Eight meets my three point delta criteria. The bookies have installed North Carolina as a 6.5 favorite. My power rating has them at only a 1.8 point favorite. That 4.7 point difference says book Louisville.

• North Carlina over Louisville by 6.5 - pick Louisville (4.7) - loss

I’ve continued on my hot streak:

• 16-0 on the first day
• 10-6 on day two
• 14-2 in the Round of 32
• 7-1 for the Sweet Sixteen
• 47-9 overall

My predictions for the rest of the weekend:

the scheduling hole that PSU has been digging for themselves, that is. He it’s on the problem in his column for the CDT today.

Non-conference teams not helping Penn State via kwout

Proof that Jeff gets it comes from this part of his article, where he concludes, much as I have in the past, that PSU would have needed at least 22 wins to go dancing this year.

And when selection time rolls around, unless you had won your conference tournament, you had better have a solid RPI. In the last 10 years, the average RPI ranking of the last at-large team in the field has been 61. New Mexico (74 in 1999) and Air Force (70 in 2004) are the only teams in that span to make the field with a ranking worse than 65.

The average RPI of those 10 teams was .5647, a number very close to that of this year’s last at-large team in, Oregon. The Ducks had an RPI of .5658, which put them 58th in the country.

Which brings us back to Penn State. The Nittany Lions finished the season at 15-16, with an RPI of .5061 and a ranking of 157. To catch Oregon’s RPI, the Nittany Lions would have needed at least seven more wins.

Props to you Jeff. Here’s hoping ED reads and understands your column.

I’m just as thrilled with my predictions against the spread as I am with my pure winners picks. So far my predictions are 10-6 against the spread. I arbitrarily chose a three point delta between my projection and the Vegas spread to be the point at which I would elect to make a call on the game. While 10-6 is quite successful, what’s particularly interesting is that I am 4-1 when my prediction is four points better than the spread. Perhaps that should have been my cutoff (I could call them my “UncleLar Locks”). That’s worth keeping an additional eye on this weekend.

Two games meet my aforementioned three point criteria.

They are:

• Kansas over Villanova by 12.0 - pick Kansas (3.8) - win
• Wisconsin over Davidson by 5.0 - pick Wisconsin (3.7) - loss

I’m absolutely thrilled the way the predictions have gone so far.

• 16-0 on the first day
• 10-6 on day two
• 14-2 in the Round of 32
• 40-8 overall

I’m looking forward to seeing how the Sweet Sixteen play out.

Here are the picks: