March Madness 2023 ESPN Tournament Challenge

It is time to make your selections for March Madness. 

March Madness Hopefuls group is free to play and you can enter up to three entries. There is no password on the group, so hoping it will be an easy process to join your entries, encourage your family and friends to join, and be sure to come back after Selection Sunday to make your entries. 

The directions for joining remain the same from last year. Group is read and can start getting the word out on joining the group. The more people in the group the more fun it is to make your selections. 

1. Visit ESPN which will take you directly to the March Madness Hopefuls.
2. If you are already signed into the ESPN web site, you can immediately create your bracket. If not, sign into the site and then you will be taken to the March Madness Hopefuls group or you can search for March Madness Hopefuls to join.
3. Join the group.
4. Repeat the above process to create additional brackets. In the March Madness Hopefuls bracket, you can have three entries.

Be sure to submit your entries by 10:00 am CST Thursday, March 16. This will make sure you get your entries submitted and have time to get them submitted. First game tips at 11:00 am on Thursday March 16.

If you have any questions or problems, please post a comment to this post.

Good luck and enjoy March Madness!

Happy Easter!

Awaken today for Easter Sunday to snow again on the ground. We are late into March and yet there is snow once again on the ground. We had a dusting of snow earlier this week too. Crazy Kansas weather!

I recall painting eggs when I was little and then getting up early Sunday morning to hunt for the Easter baskets. The candy was always good, but I still love a hard boiled egg with salt, pepper, and vinegar. Brings back good memories!

Happy Easter to all! Have a wonderful day!

March 2011 Update

Here we are facing March Madness right square in the face. We sit here on March 1 with the Kansas Jayhawks in first place after Kansas State knocked of the Texas Longhorns last night. Who would ever have though Kansas would be back in first place. Still, they have a lot of work to do with playing Texas A&M tomorrow night and to close out the season, Missouri on Saturday. Of course, KU beating Missouri would help out Kansas State a great deal.

So, here we are at the brink of the best sports month ever! If you enjoy college basketball, like me, you have been enjoying non-stop college basketball since October/November. Now, it gets even better with conference tournaments and NCAA tourney starting up too. This is one of my favorite times of the year ranking right up there with Thanksgiving.

So, it has been a few months since I last posted anything. What a broken record! I have been meaning to post and then before I know it the day (or the month) is over and nothing is posted. I had good hopes of keeping at least my blog, if not my web site, updated with current and "interesting" events from my life. That has not happened, so I am forced to do my updates in huge chunks of random thoughts all put together in a matter of a evening.

Football season last year was a interesting sport to follow. We had our Kansas City Chiefs who shocked everyone and ended up doing very well throughout the season. They even made it to the playoffs.... only to lose badly in their playoff game. We had the Washburn Ichabods who made it to a bowl game and kicked butt! Then, there was the Kansas Jayhawk football team who had a miserable season. Losing bad to the Kansas State Wildcats and other horrible loses. It was a fun football season and especially so for followers of the Washburn Ichabods. I love those tailgates!

Carrie and I had a good Christmas. We spent Christmas Eve with the Shirrons' and Christmas Day with the Havertys'. I helped to put on the program for the Havertys' Christmas where we took our karaoke machine. Everyone had a great time and it was good to see everyone. It was a odd Christmas... but something I do not feel like I should go into on a blog.

New Years Eve celebration was not a huge party for us either. We had our friends, Brenda and Javier, over to play games, watch movies, and of course drink some adult beverages. Greg and Kerrice came over later in the evening and we played games. It was a fun low key evening.

In early January, we learned that our friend, Ray Galloway, had passed away. Ray lived in Helena, AR and we made the trip to attend his funeral. What a great guy! I had known him for seven or eight years. He was a fun loving easy going guy who would bend over to do anything for his friends and family. I am so glad that we were able to make it down to be with his family in their time of need.

February was a complete blur. It seemed to have flown so fast that I cannot believe it is already March 1. Well, it is about my bedtime and I am ready to head to bed. This is one of those blogs where I have no idea if anyone reads this or not and I really do not care. I know that I like going back and reading posts as it brings back memories and I enjoy posting. I need to make it a priority (or set a reminder) to do it more often.

Until I post again, have a great day and a great month!

Forums Update....

The forums on this site lasted for a few years. This tends to be the top referrer for my site, so I wanted to update that forums will not be coming back to this site. The focus and direction of the site has changed, and I do not have any plans to bring back any type of forums. Instead, you get to read my weekly updates that I post every weekend. I would be interested in discussing with you through social media or directly through comments on the various posts. 

For now, please refer to my blog located at http://blogger.haverty.net for current happenings in my life.

Thank you for stopping. 

John

Tough Saturday Night for Jayhawk Fans

A difficult Saturday night for Kansas Jayhawk basketball fans yesterday. We watched the Jayhawks struggle the entire game against North Iowa. We started off sluggish and never caught up with what they were doing. When we had the chance to tie, we let them take a three point shot that they nailed. They UNI played their game and did not get intimated by the University of Kansas. Good job University of Northern Iowa!

Last night following the game I continued to follow Twitter comments while I watched the Kansas State game. It still surprises me how KState fans seem to rejoice when Kansas fails. What causes them to feel this way? Shouldn't we rejoice when Kansas schools do well unless they are playing one another? Shouldn't we pull for one another or if nothing else pull for other Big 12 schools? Well, apparently not if you are a Kansas State fan! You cannot understand why there should be a need to cheer for Kansas.... I guess it is a jealous behavior from KSU fans.

Well, I woke this morning thinking that it all had been a dream. It was not a dream! Whenever Kansas fails early in the NCAA tourney, it always brings back a flood of memories from when I was a kid. Going back to the Larry Brown era when we would lose early and I would get upset and go out and shoot baskets for hours on end. Going through what could have been or where we should have been.

Today I was left with not shooting baskets, but instead lounging around the house. I read some, watched television, and played on the Internet. I did not do much at all. I am watching the NCAA games from today.... currently watching Texas A&M have a battle with Purdue.

I know that I will continue to cheer for Kansas State and any other Big 12 team in the next rounds. I love this time of year and having MY team knocked out early will not change that love. Having my team knocked out early will not make me angry at the other Big 12 teams just because they are still in the tournament. I am proud of the season that the Kansas Jayhawks had this year and I look forward to next year. Another run at the title and another Bill Self basketball team!

Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

March Madness and Other Discussions....

I love this time of year! It is one of my favorite times of year since probably grade school. I remember writing papers during Spring Break in junior high and high school with basketball games playing. What a start to the NCAA tourney! K-State and Kansas both play tonight and it should be a lot of fun!

This year I took off Thursday and Friday to watch basketball. It was worth it! My sister, Dina, takes off two whole weeks during this time of year. I would love to do so, but I can probably only afford to be off work for the two or so days; I will probably plan on doing the same thing next year because this was great!

I was able to watch three games at once and then follow the score of the forth game in real-time via ESPN Insider. It was awesome! There is a lot more work to do for the Kansas Jayhawks! They started out flat in the game Thursday night and then woke up in the second half. They cannot afford to do that again if they want to win the national championship.

Well, it has once again been a while since I posted anything. Geez, I was going to try and do so much better. This is not one of the things that jumps in my head each time I sit down on the computer. Well, a post every two to three months will work for me.

I know I need to redo the forums here on Haverty.NET as they stopped working after my hosting company made some changes. Again, not a priority, so I have not gotten back to correcting the problem or adding a new forum.

If you have not tried Google Reader, do so now! It is available at http://reader.google.com and it is awesome! It is a RSS (or feed) reader, but it can also track standard web pages for changes. It definitely makes checking my feeds a lot easier and I can also access the feeds via my Blackberry. Check it out!

Well, we are getting ready to go do some grocery shopping, so I better sign off. It is a winter wonder land outside today after we got a blanket of snow. More is on the way.... This is the first day of Spring and we got about six inches of snow. More is on the way, but hopefully not a lot.

Have a great weekend and I will to you the next time!