Louisville Wins Title

Louisville will finally cut down the nets tonight by defeating the Michigan Wolverines by a score of 82-76. What a fun, exciting game it was to watch. The game was a lot closer than the final score. Siva, Smith played hard, taking control of the game. At one point, Louisville was down by 12 points to the Wolverines, but went on a 15-1 run with Burke on the bench with two fouls. Albrect, for Michigan came into the game to replace Burke for the second half and played unbelievable in the first half. At the half, Michigan clung to a one point lead.

In the second half, both teams let it all out and the intensity level was maxed. There was several lead changes, Michigan took a big lead. Not as big as their 12 point lead in the first half, but Luke Hancock went on a 14 point run to push the Cardinals into the lead for good. Beanana was the difference on the offensive boards. Just a great game all around.

As for our Bracket Champion, congratulations goes out to Melissa Cuddihy and her 159 points. With a 68% pick percentage, she did all right in the first two rounds, but dominated the final four rounds by correctly picking 10 of the final 15 games. In my 17th year of running this tournament, my wife enters her first bracket. She is now 1 for 1, I'm 0 for 17. You gotta love it. I really enjoyed watch some of the games with her this year and listening to her root for the teams.

Second place will go to Steve Mason, 141 points 65% pick percentage. Third place honor will be Todd Swank and his 140 points, 67%. In the newly added 4th, 5th and 6th place: Nick Rahman, Krys Williams, Thongla Phommachack.

Saturday's Games

Two games tonight, #1 Louisville versus #9 Wichita State at 6:00 EST and #4 Syracuse versus #4 Michigan at 8:50 EST.

With that, having only four teams remaining means there are only eight outcomes in the bracket contest. They are as follows:

If Louisville beats Michigan
If Michigan Beats Louisville
If Louisville beats Syracuse
If Syracuse beats Louisville
If Wichita St beats Michigan
If Michigan beats Wichita St
If Wichita St beats Syracuse
If Syracuse beats Wichita St

Four Teams, Three Games

Saturday's and Sunday's games were so fun to watch, probably none more than Louisville versus Duke. As our bracket contest stood, 50 had Louisville advancing, 23 were in favor of Duke. This one game would help shape the results of nearly everyone's brackets. The game lived up to the hype, or at least the hype in my head. Though, the gruesome broken leg injury from Louisville's Kevin Ware, I couldn't have lived without seeing the replay of that. It reminded me of the Joe Theismann leg injury from the 1980's. (Thankfully CBS only played it twice and that was it) Best wishes and a health recovery goes out to Kevin.

The game was very close from the start, Duke and Louisville each were playing to their strengths. Then the nine minute injury timeout occurred and you're not sure how either team will respond, as it had an effect on many players. I will say, thankfully halftime was close so each team was able to regroup their thoughts and get their heads back in the game. During the second half, both teams came out strong, Duke was down, but went on a bit of a surge to tie the game at 42-42. I'm unsure if the coach called a timeout or if it was a TV timeout, but on the other side of that break, Louisville took the remainder of the game over and easily won. Nothing was falling for Duke and they lost by 23 points.

The other three games, the only other one that was sort of close was Wichita State versus Ohio State. Even then, Wichita State controlled the game with Ohio State coming on strong at the end to make it a game, but still fall short. In our bracket contest, no one correctly picked the outcome of this game.

Michigan won by 20 points over Florida, with 7 pick sheets selecting this one. While 2 pick sheets correctly picked Syracuse to defeat Marquette.

We'll pick this back up this coming Saturday with the championship game to play Monday evening.

Our current leader, is first time player, Melissa Cuddihy. Followed by Chris Belcher, and Stevo #4 (Mason).

Down To Eight Teams

Florida Gulf Coast could not repeat the magic from last weekends rounds of games. They started out hot, were ahead 24-14, and all was looking great for them. Then the tied turned and Florida Gators dominated for the remainder of the game, sending the virtually unknown school home.

We lost another #1 seed with Michigan, who appeared to be on their way to a loss. They found a way to string some points together and mount a comeback to tie the game with under 10 seconds and knock Kansas out of the tournament. Which, oddly enough, was the first overtime game of the tournament.

Stats From Our Bracket Contest

Top Three picks sheets: Chris Belcher, Melissa Cuddihy, Stevo M. #4.

Out of 84 pick sheets....
7 pick sheets correctly picked 5 of 8 teams correct.
77 picked Louisville to win
47 picked Duke
0 picked Wichita St
54 picked Ohio St
13 picked Michigan
44 picked Florida
8 picked Syracuse
11 picked Marquette

Upcoming Tournament Games

Saturday
3:30 - #3 Marquette vs #4 Syracuse
6:05 - #2 Ohio St vs #9 Wichita St

Sunday
1:20 - #3 Florida vs #4 Michigan
4:05 - #1 Louisville vs #2 Duke

Current Standings
Projected Standings
Player Scenarios

Round Three Is Here

There are four games on the docket for Thursday evening.

EAST: #2 Miami (FL) vs Marquette #3
EAST: #1 Indiana vs Syracuse #4
WEST: #2 Ohio St vs Arizona #6
WEST: #9 Wichita St vs La Salle #13

Round Two Is Over

Four straight days of intense tournament basketball games is finally over. And yes, like I say every year, this is the best weekend of basketball of the year.

Florida Gulf Coast looks really good. First #15 seed to advance to the field of 16 in tournament history by taking out #2 Georgetown and #7 San Diego State. Hopefully you were able to see this team play, they put out a tremendous effort and rightfully won their first two tournament games in their history. They'll face #3 seed Florida Gators next. Florida vs Florida GC. Can't wait. So how many pick sheets had FGCU winning in the second round, only one. Nicely done.

I've looked at quite a few of the pick sheets and the one section that we all struggled with was the West. All that remains is the 2, 6, 9, & 13 seed. Not surprising this bracket has the most red colored team names.

After two completed rounds, our leader board is shaping up. We have a tie for first place with 83 points from Todd Swank and Chris Belcher, and third place currently is Paul Woolson with 81 points.

Also, the Player Scenarios page is now live. It shows you your best place and worst place finish, as well as what teams you need to root for to get your best place finish.

Round One Finalized

Round one has completed and three pick sheets have lost their championship team already, ouch!

What a difference between the two days of games. Thursday's games pretty much finished like they should have, couple mild upsets. Friday on the other hand was insane. Hats off to the 16 of you who selected Ole Miss over Wisconsin, I didn't see that one coming. Georgetown losing to Florida Gulf Coast, surprisingly two of you picked that one right, how?

Our tournament standings, tops after round one was 25 correctly picked out of 32 games. This was done by seven pick sheets. Don Dennison has three of them, followed by Todd Swank, Connie C, Cory Vogel and Chris Belcher. Four pick sheets correctly picked 24 games and it tapers off from there.

Friday evening I was able to watch many of the evening games with friends. The early batch of games at a co-workers going away party, followed by the late games with a half dozen or so friends. We had two screens setup, one for the Minnesota game and the other for the Iowa St game. I know, Iowa State. While watching the games, we were talking about how long CBS has had the rights to broadcast the games. None of us could recall a time when the games were not on CBS. So, I did a bit of research and discovered that they've obtained the rights way back in 1982 from NBC, who had aired it since 1969. My quota of useless information is completed.

College Basketball on CBS. (2013, March 16). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:45, March 23, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Basketball_on_CBS

Half Way Through Round One

Well, I was loving life this evening watching one game on my HDTV and another game on my laptop via March Madness On Demand. Yeah, I was nerding out in the NCAA basketball world. The only thing I didn't do was grab Melissa's ipod and have a third game going on there. Though, if you watched the evening games, there wasn't many that were close.

Harvard was the biggest upset having a #14 seed defeat a #3. So the question is, how far did you have New Mexico going in your pool? Only one pick sheet (Donna Quinlan) had it picked correctly. Oregon vs Oklahoma St was, I guess, another fairly big upset as 25 people correctly picked this game. CAL defeated UNLV is another one correctly picked by only 16 people. I was really hoping for a St Mary's victory over Memphis since St Mary's played on Tuesday night. I thought they would be fresh and in the grove.

But yes, as for this years office pool, it is the biggest one ever! Thank you! We have 84 pick sheets entered, which tops last years 73 sheet by 11. I'll figure out the payouts before the weekend is up and email that out to everyone.

So, after the first half of round one, Don Dennison is tops. In fact, he has the top three pick sheets!! Followed by Paul Woolson, who was the 2012 last place finisher and new to the pool this year, Abbie Richardson. Friday night will finalize the first round, so we have a long ways to go yet.

2013 Office Pool Contest Is Live

Deadline: Tip-Off, March 19 @ 12:30 PM [EST]
Entry Fee: $10.00

Enter Your Picks Here

Make sure you hit the SUBMIT PICKS button at the bottom of the page or your picks will not be entered into the pool.

NOTE: When entering multiple times, please place a number after your name to make it unique [or it will over write you last submitted picks] For example: Timmy 1, Timmy 2, Timmy 3

Once again, the NCAA has expanded the tournament field from 65 teams (with 1 play-in game) to 68 teams (with 4 play-in games). These 4 games will be handled very similar to how the current play-in game was handled. You'll see two teams listed for the play-in games on the tournament bracket, no points will be awarded for winning. We'll continue to use the same round numbers as in the past tournaments. The deadline for entering the contest, as always, starts on tipoff Thursday morning.

2013 Tournament Dates

Pre-Tournament Events
March 17 - Selection Sunday @ 5:00 CST on CBS

First Week Of Games
March 19-20: 4 Play-In Games
March 21-22: Round One Games
March 23-24: Round Two Games

Second Weekend Of Games
March 28-29: Round Three Games
March 30-31: Round Four Games

Final Weekend Of Games
April 6: Round Five, Semi-Finals
April 8: Round Six, Championship Game

NCAA Division I Men's Tournament Dates (2013). Retrieved from http://www.ncaa.com/sports/basketball-men/d1

Automatic Bids - Conference Tournament

Conference	Winner [record]
ACC	Miami Hurricanes [27-6]
American East	Albany Grate Danes [24-10]
Atlantic Sun	Florida Gulf Coast Eagles [24-10]
Atlantic 10	Saint Louis Billikens [27-6]
Big East	Louisville Cardinals [29-5]
Big Sky	Montana Grizzlies [25-6]
Big South	Liberty Flames [15-20]
Big Ten	Ohio State Buckeyes [26-7]
Big 12	Kansas Jayhawks [29-5]
Big West	Pacific Tigers [22-12]
Colonial	James Madison Dukes [20-14]
Conference USA	Memphis Tigers [30-4]
Horizon	Valparaiso Crusaders [26-7]
Ivy League	Harvard Crimson [19-9]
MAAC	Iona Gaels [20-13]
MAC	Akron Zips [26-6]
MEAC	North Carloina A&T Aggies [19-16]
Missouri Valley	Creighton Bluejays [27-7]
Mountain West	New Mexico Lobos [29-5]
Northeast	LIU-Brooklyn Blackbirds [20-13]
Ohio Valley	Belmont Bruins [26-6]
Pac-12	Oregon Ducks [26-8]
Patriot	Bucknell Bison [28-5]
SEC	Ole Miss Rebels [26-8]
Southern	Davidson Wildcats [26-7]
Southland	Northwestern State Demons [23-8]
Summit	South Dakota State Jackrabbits [25-9]
Sun Belt	Western Kentucky Hilltoppers [20-15]
SWAC	Southern Jaguars [23-9]
WAC	New Mexico State Aggies [24-10]
West Coast	Gonzaga Bulldogs [31-2]