The NCAA Tournament is underway (woooo!!!), and so is my 13th annual men’s basketball pool, presented by the UCLA Bruins. I’ll get the links to everyone’s brackets online ASAP.
[UPDATE: Here’s the bracket index. Each contestant’s name is a link to his/her bracket. Also, here’s the pool standings page, currently sorted in alphabetical order, as everyone is obviously tied at zero.]
The most popular champion picks are the four #1 seeds: North Carolina (33%), UCLA (18%), Kansas (14%) and Memphis (8%). The most commonly predicted first-round upset winners: #10 St. Mary’s (62%), #9 Texas A&M (57%), #9 Kent State (54%), #11 St. Joseph’s (47%) and #10 Davidson (45%).
We have a total of 244 contestants — a number that may fluctuate slightly if I end up having to disqualify anyone, or if I get any slightly late entries with, um, sufficient indicia of reliability, as we might say for evidence purposes. :) Regardless, this is the second-largest Living Room Times pool ever, behind last year’s 263 but ahead of the previous year’s 218.
The total of 244 includes five entries that you might call quasi-contestants: two dog brackets (one for Robbie Loy, my dog, and one for Willie Wheaten, Ken Inadomi’s dog), two cat brackets (one for Kristin’s kitten, Zoe West, and one for our cats, Toby, Sasha & Butter, who collaborated on a single bracket this year), and one baby bracket (for Loyette Loy — yeah, I made an exception to the "no nicknames" rule for my own daughter, so sue me). In order to maintain the "one entry per person" rule, these contestants are ineligible for the championship t-shirt, and if one of them were to win the pool, I would probably treat the top, uh, adult human contestant as at least a co-champion for historical purposes. :)
P.S. Jenna Auriemma, daughter of Geno, isn’t the only kinda sorta famous person in the pool. We’ve also got the "West F***in’ Virginia" guy, Eddie Regan. Who did he pick to win the national championship? West F***in’ Virginia, of course!
We’ve also got a Notre Dame law professor, Rick Garnett, and two judges on the Tennessee Court of Appeals in the pool: my boss, Charles Susano, and his colleague, Sharon Lee. Judge Lee is pretty excited right now because she picked #14-seed Georgia, which leads #3 Xavier 35-26 at halftime. Personally, I’m just really, really glad I changed my mind about Xavier going all the way to the national championship game. Otherwise I’d be a complete wreck right now.
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Categories: NCAA Basketball & Pools
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March 20th, 2008 at 1:17:02 pm
lol the atlantic 10 sucks.
March 20th, 2008 at 1:19:56 pm
Georgia is going to ruin my bracket at this rate. Xavier is supposed to go really far.
Boo.
March 20th, 2008 at 1:35:08 pm
I have Xavier in the Elite 8.
Going 16-0 in NIT, and losing an Elite 8 in game 1 of the real tourney.
Yet, that seems about right.
March 20th, 2008 at 1:45:27 pm
Wow. This whole “presented by the UCLA Bruins” thing is starting to annoy me. At first, I thought it was funny (I laugh EVERY time you and Mike agree on a bet … and when you lose, I laugh harder, since I know you better than I know him).
This one, though, is getting old fast. For shame on you, Brendan, for accepting a bet that would take THIS LONG to die. You should have just put Loyette in the onesie and gotten on with your life :-P
Of course, I say this now… Once I have kids, I don’t think I’d EVER put the kid in, say, a West Virginia or New York Yankees onesie…
March 20th, 2008 at 1:46:43 pm
If Xavier loses, you just have to root for somebody totally unexpected to reach the Elite Eight in their place. Basically, anyone but Duke. (Only 15% of the pool contestants picked someone other than Duke or Xavier. And inevitably, a lot of those 15% are probably people who picked a TON of upsets, and thus aren’t likely to be near the top of the leaderboard even if they get that one crazy pick right.) If Arizona or West Virginia or Purdue or Baylor or, hell, Georgia, goes to the Elite Eight, you won’t gain any points, but at least you won’t lose any compared to most of the field.
March 20th, 2008 at 1:56:46 pm
Heh - true enough. I’ll be in much worse shape if your bracket pick of ORU is right (not that it will be right, but that’s when I’ll be in trouble).
McCain is sending me e-mails. In my Dad’s name at my e-mail address. They all start with “my friends”. Pretty much like all his speeches.
March 20th, 2008 at 2:09:35 pm
to be fair this is a hell of an impressive second half. xavier got a horrible draw. no way georgia should be a 14 seed. i dont care if they are 10-20 going into the SEC tourney. a team that wins the SEC should not be a 14 seed. does anyone really think cornell is as good as georgia?
March 20th, 2008 at 2:13:20 pm
I completely disagree, yea. Teams are supposed to be seeded based on their body of work throughout the season, not just how they’re playing in the last few days of the season. Granted, late performance can bump you up or down the pecking order among teams with comparable resumes (see: Indiana falling to a #8), but in Georgia’s case, there’s no possible way you can justify putting them on even, say, the #12 line, based on their resume and their body of work throughout the season. It’s not even close. If anything, they’re lucky they aren’t a #15. The fact that they play in SEC doesn’t by itself establish that they deserve a good seed. They were 4-12 in the SEC in a down year.
The fact that they’ve played well today doesn’t mean they deserved a better seed, it means they’re playing better now than they did throughout the season, when they earned that seed.
March 20th, 2008 at 2:15:19 pm
HEARTBREAK CITY!!!!!!! /Gus Johnson
March 20th, 2008 at 2:15:24 pm
P.S. “does anyone really think cornell is as good as georgia?”
No, if by “is as good” you mean “is playing as well right now, at this point in the season.” But that’s not the right question. The question is, did they earn the same seed based on their respective bodies of work? And the answer is, yes. You can’t just throw out the first three months of the season and only count the final week.
March 20th, 2008 at 2:31:36 pm
i disagree. georgia won the sec. they beat some good teams to do that. they are automatically in anyway so once thats out of the way we should seed them based on how we think they compare to the other teams. its not fair to the higher seeds to have to face georgia in the first round. i dont think giving geogia a 12 seed is “just throwing out the first 3 months of the season”. i just think a 14 seed is too low.
if they can drop indiana to an 8, i think georgia can get a 12. its not fair to put a 3 seed against a team that just romped through the sec tournament. isnt the point of a 3 seed to reward a team for having a great season?
March 20th, 2008 at 2:41:08 pm
I just hope I don’t end up getting a lower score than pets and others unable to answer for themselves.
March 20th, 2008 at 2:45:19 pm
I understand your point, but I just think seeding become impossibly subjective under your criteria. This is the problem with the much-ballyhooed “eye test” that ESPN’s commentators always promote, for bids as well as seeding: it ignores the question of whose eyes we’re talking about, and what they’re watching. Obviously not as many people watch, say, the CAA or MVC or Sun Belt tournaments as watch the ACC, SEC or Big East tournaments, so nobody is going to give a team from one of those conferences the same kind of credit for an impressive tournament run that Georgia gets for its, even if they’re just as impressive (suppose they beat a bunch of pretty good teams by 20+ points each). They’ll get seeded on the basis of their resume, while Georgia will get seeded on the basis of the “eye test.” Not fair.
Temple is actually a good example. They had a great run in the A-10 tournament, beat some good teams, etc. Yet their profile was comparatively weak, so they get a #12. Under your criteria, they probably should have been a #8 or #9, though you wouldn’t know it from how they just played against Michigan State. But if we’re going to just say that anybody who makes an impressive late-season run should get a better seed, that’s where we end up. If if we’re going to based it not even on that, but on who the committee thinks will win, that’s not even seeding anymore, it’s the committee having an office pool.
Regardless, nice comeback by Georgia.
March 20th, 2008 at 2:52:38 pm
Er, Xavier.
March 20th, 2008 at 2:53:58 pm
that was too close. (Lando Calrissian voice).
March 23rd, 2008 at 10:25:49 pm
This isn’t about basketball; it’s more for your pets. I’d like to tell you that I’ve written a scathingly funny book, The World Is Your Litter Box, which will be out May 6th. The book is cleverly disguised as a cute cat book so humans will buy it, but is, in fact, a how-to manual FOR cats. Check it out on my website, www.theworldisyourlitterbox.com.