nothing edifying

Sorry everyone, I don’t know why but I just never got around to posting this, even though I watched the championship game more or less.

So, let’s do the Final Four:

Standings:
YB: 81
Kay: 67
mim: 62
CT: 60
Seth, Yut: 58
Lew: 56
misa: 55

So wow, YB was like a million points ahead already, and I don’t think I’m giving anything away when I say that it won’t change. (Congrats!) But, just to be all official, here’s the rest of the scores.

Final Standings:
YB: 89
CT (!!!): 68
Kay: 67
Seth: 66
me: 62
Yut: 58
Lew: 56
misa: 55

There was actually some movement in the rest of the standings, but YB won it all! This is her second win. I’ll think of something but so far there’s been nothing in terms of prizes. I figure I have ’til May when I am actually going to see YB to worry about it. (Master Procrastinator)

Somehow, CT ended up being 2nd. I don’t even know how this happened. I almost feel like maybe I need to go double check all of her scores. :) Then Kay. Sheesh! Meanwhile, on the bottom, misa didn’t even manage to beat Lew, whose championship team was out by the first weekend! Sorry Lew, I should’ve given you more credit. Turns out the rest of your bracket must’ve been ok!

So again, congratulations YB! Enjoy your Winner’s title ’til next year. :)

Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight games were played this weekend. In the Sweet Sixteen, there were two regions that ended up with the 1 and 2 seeds, one with the 1 and 3 seeds, but luckily in the West Region, Louisville (4) beat Michigan St (1) and Florida (7) beat Marquette (3) to make things more exciting. Of course, Yut doesn’t think it was too “lucky”, since he picked Michigan St all the way.

Standings after the Sweet Sixteen:
YB: 61
Kay: 53
Yut: 50
mim: 48
CT: 46
Lew: 42
Seth: 38
misa: 35

Hey look, no one’s tied with anyone else anymore!

Okay, now on to the Elite Eight games. Somehow, even though we picked different teams to win, all of us picked two games correctly no matter what, although no one picked Louisville. Amazingly, Lew’s random coin + UVa bias is still working out ok for him since Virginia was in the West region with Louisville, and no one picked Louisville anyway.

YB: 69
Kay: 61
Yut: 58
mim: 56
CT: 54
Lew: 50
Seth: 46
misa: 43

So how is it that YB and Kay are the only two with scores in the 60s?! And why didn’t I pick Kansas to the Final Four?! Darn UNC.

On Saturday, YB picked every. single. game. correctly — that’s sixteen points! Needless to say, she took over the lead. On the other hand, Lew’s coin totally failed him, and he only got two. He still had a the best day of any of us on Sunday, but it wasn’t enough to beat the YB juggernaut. She has 8 points more than the next possible person; she’s basically reached new heights of basketball awesomeness. I am totally shocked!!! (I know, and I was being so nice, too.) :)

It seems like what’s going on is that on half the round, it’s almost completely following the seeding, but on the other half, things have gone crazy. Not that I mind — I love upsets, even if they are totally messing up my bracket.

Standings after the first two rounds:
YB: 46
Kay, Yut: 38
Lew: 36
CT: 34
mim: 33
Seth: 29
misa: 26

Wow what a day! If yesterday was almost completely chalk, today … well today for the first time ever (right?), two 15 seeds beat two 2 seeds! There have been 15 beating 2 before, but never two in the same tournament. And one of them was Duke! I don’t even care if it screws up my whole bracket! Upsets are more exciting anyway, and no more Duke! Actually, I don’t know why I dislike Duke… seems like an ACC fan sort of thing to do. Although I suppose if Duke won, at least there’s the fact that they are ACC. It’s just that I’m so sick of it always being about UNC and Duke. Hopefully, K is right and Florida State goes all the way or something. Even if that means K wins again, and I die from shock. :D

The only thing left that would make me super happy is if Kentucky lost. I don’t like that Calipari guy who’s their coach, I don’t think.

Okay, okay, enough basketball talk (such as it is). Standings!

Lew: 24
Kay, YB, Yut: 22
CT: 20
mim, Seth: 19
misa: 16

Okay, for some reason this year, two of you (2!) didn’t take my free advice about 16 vs 1 seeds! Yes it’s true, CT picked UNC Asheville over Syracuse (which was a close game) and misa picked Vermont over UNC. Craziness!

Also crazy, all of us loved Florida State and Kay and Lew picked South Florida (only I doubt they knew they were picking South Florida, since South Florida had that play-in game vs Cal).

Even crazier (or at this point craziest? Have I gotten to craziest yet?) Lew, who picked Virginia all the way, and I believe took my advice about 16 vs 1 games, but otherwise threw a coin for all of the rest is leading. Yes he’s ahead of you. All of yous! Random coin FTW!

Is it just me or does he manage to lead for at least a day every year? Still though, I don’t think this is going to be his winning year since Florida (a state that has at least three teams still in it) beat UVa. I’m sorry, Lew!

The first two days are always the most exciting in a way. There are just so many games!

So after the first day, here’s the standings:
YB: 14 Alone at the top!
CT, Kay, Lew, Misa, Seth, Yut: 12
mim: 11 LAST! OMG I am LAST!

I take back what I said about the first day being exciting. I think it’s all about Day 2!!!

The number of people willing to self identify as Know Nothing or willing to play for Not Much Upside was lower than usual this year. I’m assuming that the No Downside part wasn’t too much of an impediment. Nevertheless, we have a game! And all of the previous winners are back!

Sorry I’m so slow — crazy busy. But here are all the brackets! And I’ll restate everyone’s picks, too, since we got two more that I didn’t have time to deal with this morning. CT (“Kentucky Fried Chicken FTW!”) sent hers in while I was sleeping, and Lew sent his in late because of an exam. Must be an extra mean professor. I mean, scheduling an exam for the first day of the tournament?! Sheesh! Now normally, I would penalize him by discounting points from all of the games and teams that had already begun when he turned it in, but I actually have no idea which ones had started so unless it’s super close I think I’ll just calculate it like normal. If it’s super close at the end, I’ll go back and figure it out to the best of my ability and subtract the points. But if Virginia wins, he wins it, and I’m not gonna bother ’cause he wins!

YB: Kentucky – Kansas (165)

Seth: Kentucky – Kansas (130)

Kay: Florida St – Kentucky (122)

misa: Kansas – Kentucky (135)

Yut: Michigan St – Ohio St (130)

CT: Kentucky – UNC (117)

Lew: Virginia – Kansas (123)

mim: Ohio St – Kentucky (130)

I will be posting up the brackets, but filling mine out took me a long time, so now I am way past sleepy (it’s like 1 am!), so I am just going to post up the quick and dirty stats so you know what everyone picked. I’ll add on more if anyone else submits, and publish at around 9:30am Pacific.

YB: Kentucky over Kansas (“Ok! Ok! Here ’tis. :)” After my mild strong arming.)
Seth: Kentucky over Kansas (The defending champ… likes every St. school not in the South Region)
Special K: Florida St over Kentucky (“kickin butt this year. ohhhh yessss!!!”)
Yut: Michigan St over Ohio St (“Winner winner chicken dinner!”)
misa: Kansas over Kentucky (“A little on the late side but it’s on time! :D”)
mim: Ohio St. vs Kentucky (extreme indecision this year, more so than usual! But that just means I thought extra hard, so I’m gonna win.)

I had to resort to threatening bunnies to get some of these. <shake head> What is the world coming to?!

I’ve sent out the brackets, y’all! If you think you should have received one and didn’t, please please let me know. We need all the trash talking losers we can get, but in this age of contact autofill and whatnot, I can no longer remember phone numbers or email addresses very well.

Ok, as a reminder, as if you need or care for them, here are the rules (credit to Todd):

• Pick the winners of all 63 non-play-in games. The scoring will be: 1 pt for each first round game, 2 pts for each second round game, then 3, 4, 6, and finally 8 pts for the championship game.
• The tiebreaker will be the total number of points in the championship game. Please please please please remember to include this.
• Entries are due by 12 noon EDT/9 am PDT (it’s D right? we’re done with S for a while?)
• Winners will receive a miscellaneous prize, maybe. But you’ll be listed in yearly as a previous winner, definitely. All for about five minutes of your time! (I figure that’s the average time people spend on this.)

Free hint:

• Don’t pick a 16 seed over a 1 seed. It will probably happen one year, but it hasn’t yet!

I know, I am so arrogant, giving out free hints like that! :)