| Jacques Chirac ... he wouldn't have the guts to go with Vermont, like Allard did. (but he'd probably pick Creighton though!) |
| I'm hatin' Creighton! |
| The evil Commissioner His not so evil wife Daughter Lauren Final 4 Kansas over Kentucky Pittsburgh over Arizona Arizona over Pittsburgh Texas over Syracuse Texas over Wake Forest Texas over Syracuse Champs Kansas over Texas Pittsburgh over Texas Texas over Arizona |
| 11th Annual Great American NCAA Basketball Pool (be afraid, be very afraid) |
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| Wow. Now that I look at it, I think I went a little overboard on the upsets. As you can tell, theres no love lost for the Creighton Bluejays, so that explains that one. And you can probably also tell I'm down on the Big 10 as I've got 3 of their boys going out in the first round. I figure Alabama is humiliated to have made the tourney in the first place (how do they |
| Weber St (12) over Wisconsin (5) C. Michigan (11) over Creighton (6) Alabama (10) over Indiana (7) Colorado (10) over Michigan St (7) NC State (9) over California (8) |
| The fact we're at war and the NCAA toyed with postponing things aside, this year's pool was whacky before it even started. So, like, the NCAA just NOW realizes that "hey ... wait a minute ... BYU doesn't play on Sundays???" Hello??? Grrrrrrrr. This BYU thing was just one more headache I didn't need. Welcome back, folks. Year #11 for our pool is now upon us and this year we have an enrollment of 114 students in our course on "Bracketology 101." Given the tuition fee of $5, the total pot this year stands at $570. My efforts at pool population control were successful it would appear as I'm finally down to a manageable level. As always, the breakdown of prizes is as follows: |
| 1st place - $324 (60%) 2nd place - $162 (30%) 3rd place - $54 (10%) Best 1st rd - $25 Last place - $5 |
| Tiebreakers are a bit different this year as the top 3 prizes are all subject to guessing the total points in the championship. Tiebreaker for best 1st round is still the same; whoever nails the biggest upset of the first round. Ok, back to this BYU thingy. Like I stated in my followup email on Monday and explained on the website, if you wanted to have BYU advance past 2 rounds you actually had to map out that scenario on your sheet and have them switching over to the Midwest bracket, yada, yada, yada. For the first time in my career as Evil Commissioner, I was actually happy to have such an overabundance of UConn fans involved as hardly anyone had BYU getting past the Huskies. To noone's surprise Kentucky proved to be the most popular selection in this year's pool. An unofficial tally of "who had who" showed the following: |
| 50 Kentucky 15 Arizona 13 Oklahoma 10 Pittsburgh 8 Texas 6 Kansas 3 Duke 2 Louisville UConn Wake Forest Syracuse Illinois 1 Oregon Florida |
| Full disclosure time: The evil Commissioner and the residents of his household are going with the following selections: |
| And since you asked, here are my first round upsets I went with (ok , you didn't ask, but I'm gonna tell ya anyway): |
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| make it over BC and Texas Tech???) and I'm hoping they go out and try to show they belong. Now, I almost ("ALMOST" I said) went with Sam Houston State (15) beating Florida (2) over in the South bracket. The Gators are coming into the tournament off of 3 straight losses while Sam Houston State is on a bigtime high having played their way into the tourney off a dramatic last second victory in their conference championship game. I think the Gators can be had and will go down early, but in the end "I went French" and didn't have the guts to pull the trigger. Now, you've got to respect OCG's Dave Allard (husband of 1999 pool champion Lisa Allard). Dave went with Vermont over Arizona in the first round. Boo yah! |
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| As you can see, the Commish is throwing his eggs into the Big 12 basket. Best conference in the nation, hands down. And I know folks are somewhat down on Texas, but look at that bracket they're in! Noone on the right hand side jumps out at you as a real favorite to go to the finals do they? So Texas is just as good a bet as anyone else (obviously the rest of my household agrees). You will also note that this year marks 8 year old Lauren Dennehy's first ever "swim" in the pool (she turns 9 next week by the way). She made her picks on her own. Did pretty well for herself I think. Her arch nemesis, 6 year old brother Jack, plays Nintendo NCAA Basketball religiously at home ya see. And in the Nintendo version, Pittsburgh has this guy on their bench named "Hobson" who nails 3 pointers like they're going out of style. The guy hits on 75% of them according to the stats. So of course, Pittsburgh is Jack's team when we play, since all he does is inbounds the ball to Hobson who just heaves it up from wherever the heck he is on the floor and SWISH! I'm not allowed to steal the ball, so between that and this Hobson guy we usually play each other to a draw. Wait ... where was I going with this again??? Oh right ... Pittsburgh. Yeah, so anyways, I think that the other residents of my household may have had their selections influenced by the Nintendo success of Jack Dennehy's Pitt Panthers. I guess its fortunate for them, "Hobson" didn't play for IUPUI (or "Oooey Pooey" as they are otherwise known as). |
| We hope to have updated standings available online tomorrow morning, so check back then. We also hope to offer some less than insightful observations with regard to people's, ahem, less than insightful picks ... or what has now become known as "The Hall of Shame." So beware. In the meantime, feel free to post any commentary on the pool's message board. And as always, if you need to reach me, send me an email me at [email protected]. Sincerely, The evil Commissioner |
| LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLE!!! |