First and foremost, draft night went smoothly, almost too smooth.  It appeared that most every team that I spoke to told me with 8 drafting teams, the night seemed to fly by and when they were looking at a certain player to draft they got him.  We've never been done by 10pm so everybody was very prepared.  Newcomers Rod & Scott were obviously veterans of fantasy drafting as they were really prepared to make their pick when their time to pick was due.

The 8 count for the number of teams drafting this year was the lowest it has been since 1996 when we had 8 teams drafting 26 players for a total of 208 picks.  I expect overall scoring totals to hit a record high this year because of the lower count of drafting teams and the 32 picks per person.  In 2016 Team Trevino set an overall record of total points accumulated of 1070 but last year was the first time we did not have at least 10 teams drafting in over 20 years.

In 2015 there were no 12 seeded teams winning their first round games against the 5 seed.  Last year, 2 won, Arkansas Little Rock over Purdue and Yale beating Baylor.  This year, Middle Tennessee, the team that took down # 2 seeded Michigan State in 2016 beat a pretty good Minnesota team.  Other than that there were not any huge upsets in the first round.

In 2016, 10 teams moved on to a game 2 that were double digit seeds.  This year, the seeding and end results were pretty much true to form with exception being, # 12 Middle Tennessee as mentioned above, defeating # 5 Minnesota, # 11 USC narrowly beating # 6 SMU 66-65.  SMU was a team many of the "experts" predicted would go deep in the tournament.  Other double digit seeds advancing to a second game included 11th seeded Rhode Island & Xavier and 10th seeded Wichita State.

In our draft game after game 1, only one pick scored 30 points and that was Team Kremer's pick of Jaquan Lewis (VCU) who scored 30 in a losing effort against St Mary's.  Lewis was taken in the 17th round, the 133rd player drafted.  Another surprise was Wisconsin's Bronson Koenig whose 28 points (double his season average) helped # 8 Wisconsin defeat 9th seeded Virginia Tech.

Another fact that hasn't happened probably ever, only 2 draft picks selected prior to the 9th round, lost in their first game played.  In what was openly admitted during watching the tournament, the Commissioner unfortunately had both of those picks Semi Ojeleye SMU drafted in the 6th round and T.J. Cromer E Tenn St taken way too early in the draft in the 8th round.  The Commissioner readily admitted he had a brain cramp on for sure the E Tenn State selection.

The draft

We had a number of draft picks who scored considerably more in the first game compared to their regular season average.  These players include Team Kremer's JaQuan Lewis who more than doubled his reg season average with 30 points, Team Snyder's pick of Marial Shayok (Virginia) who tripled his reg season average by scoring 23 vs 8.7 regular season average. 

The following is our current positions after 1st game and then projected points after game 2 using regular season averages.  Team Kremer is out to an early lead but should be caught and passed by Team Snyder after the 2nd game.