College Hoops Tip Off Marathon!

        The single greatest day (well 31 hours) of the season is just a few hours away. College Hoops Tip Off Marathon Day, ESPN's greatest TV achievement by giving all college basketball fans wall to wall basketball! It allows the high school student to wake up in the morning and instead of dreading your usual routine breakfast, on this one day you get to watch Wisconsin Green Bay at East Tennessee State. What more can you possibly need?

        I love this day so much that starting at 7 PM, I will be attempting my third consecutive marathon. This feat is getting more and more challenging each year with age, but thanks to my fortunate college schedule I am not even missing a class tomorrow (thank you Fred Jacobs for posting tomorrow's lecture online so I can learn during halftime of a game.)  So to add some extra motivation to this year's contest I called in my panel of college basketball experts (my dad, brother, cousin and my roommate) to predict this year's Tip Off Marathon games to determine the Marathon Champion (even though I automatically win by getting to watch 31 hours of wall to wall college basketball while they all have class or work). So without further ado, here are our selections:

Panel:
Nick Tuori: Freshman Michigan State- isportsweb MSU beat writer/Actuarial Science Major
Sam Tuori: 7th grade Forest Hills Central, Spartan and College Basketball Fanatic
Zach Tuori: 9th Grade Caledonia, Spartan and College Basketball Fanatic
Caleb Sleeman: Freshman Michigan State- Michigan State Pitcher/Engineering Major
Eric Tuori: Cal Thunder Basketball Coach/Founder, Spartan Alumni

Picks:                                                     Nick       Sam   Zach      Caleb    Eric
UCONN/Ohio State (Women) 5:30 ESPN2- UCONN UCONN UCONN UCONN UCONN
Virginia/George Washington 7:30 ESPN2-   UVA      UVA       UVA       UVA      UVA
LSU/Kennesaw State 9:00 ESPNU-               LSU       LSU        LSU        LSU       LSU
San Diego State/Utah 9:30 ESPN2-               UTAH    UTAH    UTAH    SDSU    SDSU
Baylor/Oregon 11:30 ESPN2-                        BAY      BAY       BAY      OREG     BAY
***TUESDAY***
BYU/Long Beach State 1:45a ESPN2-          BYU      LBSU     BYU       BYU       BYU
Nevada/Hawaii 4a ESPN2-                            NEV      HAW      HAW      NEV       HAW
UWGB /East Tennessee St 6a ESPN2-         ETSU    ETSU      ETSU     ETSU     UWGB
Steven F Austin/N. Iowa 8a ESPN2-             SFA       NIWA     SFA        NIWA    SFA
Valparaiso/Rhode Island 10a ESPN2-           RI          VALPO   RI           VALPO  RI
Alabama/Dayton 1:00 ESPN-                        DAY     DAY        BAMA   BAMA   BAMA
Colorado/Auburn 3:00 ESPN-                       COLO   AUB       COLO     COLO    COLO
Oklahoma/Memphis 5:00 ESPN-                  MEM     OKL       OKL        OKL      OKL
Kentucky/Duke 7:30 ESPN-                         DUKE   DUKE     DUKE     DUKE   DUKE
Georgetown/Maryland 9:00 ESPN2-            MARY  MARY    GTWN    MARY  MARY
Kansas/Michigan State 10:00 ESPN-           MSU      MSU       MSU       MSU      MSU
***TIE BREAKERS***
Harvard/UMASS 7:00                                  HARV   UMASS  HARV    HARV    HARV
La Salle/Rider 7:00                                       LAS      LAS         LAS        RID        LAS

So I will be tweeting thoughts and other tidbits not only for you pleasure, but to also keep me awake so refer back to this article to also check in on our pick standings. Hopefully you all enjoy the College Hoops Tip Off Marathon as much as I do, I already know that I will be watching these along with other games. Thankfully there is the ability to stream 4 games at a time on the WatchESPN app. Enjoy your marathon everyone. Also, if you need some reading material before the Michigan State game tomorrow night, check out all of the work the isportsMSU team has done at isportsmsu.com. My latest article on Gavin Schilling and Alvin Ellis is here.