The next time you’re feeling unlucky, pause and pour one out for Motoyuki Mabuchi.
In the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event, Mabuchi began a hand with pocket aces. He caught another bullet on the flop. And then another one on the river. With quad aces, one of the most unbeatable hands in poker, Mabuchi understandably bet his entire stack.
There was just one problem: Justin Phillips had a royal flush. The rest of the table, which oddly included actor Ray Romano, loudly gasped when the cards were shown, and with good reason — the odds of those two hands happening at the same time were 1 in 2.7 billion. So we can’t really complain about our much milder bad beat this week, which is the task of identifying the top four seeds in the NCAA Tournament today, 45 days before Selection Sunday. Like Mabuchi, we already have pocket rockets in Purdue and Alabama. But in a season where there are a lot of kings and queens but few true aces, who are the other two No. 1s?
This seemed oh-so-easy a week ago, when Kansas and Houston were safely on the top line. But then the Jayhawks got blasted at home by TCU and fell again Monday night at Baylor for their third straight loss. Houston took on an even more damaging defeat Sunday, dropping a Quad 3 game at home to Temple. Our top No. 2 seed last week, UCLA, lost at Arizona on Saturday and at USC on Thursday night, while then-No. 6 overall seed Kansas State got beat at Iowa State.
So, um … check?
Let’s take a look at the contenders to join the Boilermakers and Crimson Tide on the top line, with the reasons to bet ’em and the reasons to fold ’em (numbers as of Thursday afternoon): Houston
Bet ’em: Like the computer nerds who dominate online poker, the Cougars are algorithmic darlings. Even after the Temple loss, Houston still ranks No. 1 in NET, KenPom, Sagarin and BPI.
Fold ’em: Houston won at Virginia and beat Saint Mary’s at home, but the résumé is a […]
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