CASTELHANO BREAKS 400 MARK, WINS BY LARGEST MARGIN EVER

   Jenn Castelhano pulled a Mark McGwire on Sunday, taking a record that
she had already broken and pushing it to new heights, setting an
altogether new standard for excellence in Living Room Times NCAA
basketball pools.
   The UConn junior, who clinched victory in the Times's fifth women's
pool when Oklahoma beat Duke on Friday and broke the "Times" scoring
record later that day when UConn routed Tennessee, surpassed the
400-point mark -- which no one had previously even approached -- when
her school's Huskies won the national championship, 80-72 over Oklahoma,
on Sunday. She finished with 409 out of a possible 477 points in the
pool, which is scored on a 5-7-10-15-20-25 basis.
   Castelhano was 52-11 in the pool, with ten of her mistakes coming in
the first two rounds. She was perfect from the Elite Eight on.
   By one statistical measure of "dominance" over the rest of the field,
Castelhano's performance was the most impressive ever, as she scored
nearly one-and-a-half times more points than the average of all
contestants' totals. By another measure, comparing the winner's total to
the average totals of only the top half of the leaderboard, Castelhano
was just slightly less dominant than Liz Acey was in the 1997 men's
pool.
   Either way, there was no arguing with Castelhano's margin of victory
over her nearest competitors -- 40 points, the biggest ever. The
previous largest margin in "Times" history was Acey's 30 points over
Matt Thomsen in 1997.
   UConn junior Kevin Hauschulz and St. Mary's School seventh-grader
Conor Sullivan tied for second with 369 points. They would have tied
Castelhano for the victory if Duke had beaten Oklahoma in the Final
Four.
   Close behind Hauschulz and Sullivan was Northeastern junior Ryan
McBride, in fourth place with 367. Then there was a 15-point drop-off
before Fordham junior Milan Cisar, who very nearly won the men's pool,
registered a fifth-place total of 352 points. Maryland senior Josh Rubin
and Central Connecticut State junior Jeff Cultrera tied for sixth with
349 points.
   USC junior Michael Wiser, who nearly became the first and only USC
student to win a "Times" pool last year until his predicted championship
team lost the title game and demoted him to second place, finished
eighth this year was 342 points, again making him the highest-ranking
USC student in the women's pool.
   St. Mary's School seventh-grader Danny Pilz finished ninth with 338
points. Delaware junior Bryan Rudolph and USC senior Kyle Okita round
out the Top Ten, tying for tenth place with 337 points.
   The 369 points scored by second-place finishers Hauschulz and
Sullivan were enough to place them in a tie for third place on the
all-time scoring list, just behind Jason Rose, whose 1999 record of 372
points was shattered by Castelhano's 409-point total. McBride, fourth
this year with 367, is tied for fifth on the all-time list with Bindee
Chokshi, who finished second to Rose in 1999.
   Somewhat surprisingly, the average point total of everyone in the
pool is not the highest in history. Even when USC junior Jenny Campbell,
whose "throw-away" picks earned her a "risk" rating of 100 percent and a
point total of 25, is thrown out of the equation, the average is 282.3
points -- fourth on the all-time list, behind the 1996 men's pool (305),
the 1997 women's pool (300) and the 1999 women's pool (288.6).
   This year's pool field was top-heavy, however. When the average score
of only the top half of the leaderboard is compared to the top halves of
past pools, the 2002 women's pool has easily the highest average in
history, 341 points. The 1997 women's pool had an top-half average of
332.6 points, the 1996 men's contest 330.4.


FINAL STANDINGS, FIFTH WOMEN'S POOL
* = correctly picked UConn to win championship

 1. Jenn Castelhano     409*
 2. Kevin Hauschulz     369*
    Conor Sullivan      369*
 4. Ryan McBride        367*
 5. Milan Cisar         352*
 6. Josh Rubin          349*
    Jeff Cultrera       349*
 8. Michael Wiser       342*
 9. Danny Pilz          338*
10. Bryan Rudolph       337*
    Kyle Okita          337*
12. Kristy LaPlante     327*
13. Matt Thomsen        326*
14. David Kirschner     322*
15. Andrew Long         320*
16. Dan Seremet         313*
17. Paul Grammatico     307*
18. Kimberly Stone      305*
    Todd Stigliano      305*
20. Rebecca Zak         298*
21. Michael Escoto      293
22. Mark Graves         284*
23. Daniel Port         281*
24. Beth Milewski       266*
25. Shamar Johnson      265*
26. Brendan Loy         263*
27. Brian Newbold       246*
28. Scott Loomer        230
29. Rosalie Town        227
30. Erin DeRubbo        225*
31. Rachel Walker       196
32. Kat Rickenbacker    195*
33. Kristy McCray       188*
34. Lisa Holl           186
35. Bryan La Rock       121
36. Jenny Campbell       25