RICK BOECKLER WINS WOMEN’S POOL
BECKY ZAK’S UNCLE CLINCHES WHEN TENNESSEE BEATS DUKE
Boeckler, first non-Connecticut champion, will break points record if UConn wins title;
Larry Caplin, another one of Zak’s uncles, will finish second if Tennessee wins title

Rick Boeckler of Silver Spring, Maryland clinched victory in The Living Room Times’s sixth annual NCAA women’s pool Sunday when Tennessee defeated Duke, 66-56, in a Final Four battle of #1 seeds.

Boeckler, an uncle of pool administrator Brendan Loy’s girlfriend Becky Zak, is the first pool champion in The Living Room Times history who is not a current or former resident of Connecticut. He is also the first champion whose connection to Loy stems, however tangentially, from Loy’s enrollment at USC. (Loy and Zak met at USC, where both are now seniors.) No USC student has ever won a Times pool.

If UConn defeats Texas tonight (Texas led 35-33 at halftime) and beats Tennessee in the national title game Tuesday, Boeckler will finish with 421 points out of a possible 477, breaking the all-time record of 409 set by Jenn Castelhano in the women’s pool last year.

On the other hand, if Tennessee wins the title, Boeckler will be joined at the top of the leaderboard by Larry Caplin, another uncle of Zak. Caplin, a resident of West Bloomfield, Michigan, will finish second if the Vols win. If Tennessee loses — to either UConn or Texas — University of Maryland graduate student Josh Rubin will finish second.

Presently, Boeckler has 376 points out of a possible 432. Rubin is second with 365, followed by Matt Kagan with 357, James Dixon with 352, Ben Benack with 348 and Caplin with 345.

Matt Thomsen, who would have won the pool if Duke had won tonight, is now seventh, and cannot finish higher than sixth.