Sunday, March 12th, 2017

Today is "Selection Sunday".  In my opinion, this is one of the greatest days of the year.  All the anticipation from the college basketball season leads up to this day when the NCAA tournament brackets are revealed.  For the sixth year in a row, my Iowa State Cyclones are part of that tournament field.  Specifically, the Cyclones earned the #5 seed in the Midwest region, and they will face the Nevada Wolf Pack on Thursday.  Nevada won the Mountain West Conference this year, and they are now "public enemy #1".

If Iowa State advances past Nevada, they would play the winner of the Purdue vs. Vermont game.

The release of the NCAA tournament brackets was not the only thing to get me excited this weekend.  Yesterday, Iowa State defeated the West Virginia Mountaineers in the Big 12 tournament title game to claim their 3rd tournament championship in four years!  Today Elizabeth and I took the kids out to Hickory Park to celebrate (I had a half chicken dinner, or as the phrase goes "winner-winner, chicken dinner").

To summarize my attendance of basketball games this season: I went to 14 home games, and Iowa State had 11 wins and 3 losses in that time.
 
Wins:

• Savannah State
• Mount St. Mary's
• The Citadel
• Omaha
• Mississippi Valley State
• Texas Tech
• Texas
• Kansas State
• TCU
• Baylor
• Oklahoma State

Losses:

• Cincinnati
• Kansas
• West Virginia

Of those teams, seven made the NCAA tournament: Mount St. Mary's (16-seed), Kansas State (11-seed), Baylor (3-seed), Oklahoma State (10-seed), Cincinnati (6-seed), West Virginia (4-seed), and Kansas (1-seed).

Sunday, March 5th, 2017

This weekend Elizabeth & I drove the kids out to Omaha so that they could meet their new cousin!  We drove out Saturday morning and came back after lunch today, so it was a pretty short trip.  Still it was fun to meet the newest member of our family :)

Elizabeth holding Logan for the first time.

Logan was so happy to meet me that he had to "dab".

All three cousins together (with Amy & Elizabeth too).