And Then There Was One

That's it, we have our tournament champion, the University of Connecticut Huskies, or Yukon for short. Thank you Twitter for that one.

Watching the championship game, was it just me, or was UConn passing a bit to hard at times? Or passing a bit careless, an under the legs pass of the opponent that didn't connect, really? Granted, they still won, but yeow, it made me feel a bit nauseous during the game.

I wasn't sure who I wanted to win tonight, since both teams are in the final game quite often, and UConn had their NCAA violation, Kentucky has all Freshman starters who are one and done, but in the end, I went for UConn. Mainly because they had star players that have been on the team longer than one year. Blah to the one and done. Give me three, four or five starting seniors and I'll put you far in my bracket.

Notes from the game:

I never saw a camera shot of Ashley Judd, did I miss it or was she not there tonight?

UConn went 101-115 on free throws throughout the tournament, 10-10 tonight. Wisconsin went 19-20 and lost by 1....ouch! Oh Badgers....

On ESPN's contest, 27,203 had UConn as the winner out of 11 Million+ (0.3%) Our bracket contest had 0 of 74 pick sheets.

Which brings me to our bracket contest results....

No one correctly picked either team to be in the final game tonight, so not much to play for unfortunately. I personally didn't care for any of the #1 seeds this year, and I was on to something having a #7 and #8 play in the final game.

Our Bracket64 Challenge winner is Miles Nelson with 118 points and 2 of the final 4 teams correct. You're gonna hate this, but Miles is only 9 years old! We all got schooled by a nine year old. He was however, second place in pick percentage with 67% correctly picked.

Second place went to Dave Borgman with 116 points and also had 67% correct (2nd best), but only had 1 of the final 4 teams correct.

Third place went to Drew Wittchow with 116 points, 65% correct and 2 of 4 of the last four teams correct.

Forth place, with 114 points and 65% correct is Dominic Fortuna. If my intel is correct, he is 11 years old! If Wisconsin had won Saturday night, this contest would have been his.

Finally our fifth place finisher, Kelby Kraft with 68% correct, which was the top pick percentage this year, congrats. They also were tops with 11 of the final 16 teams correctly picked. I thought they would run away with this contest, unfortunately their bracket went south and settled with 5th place this year.

I will contact the five winners on Tuesday on how they want to be paid since it's getting quite late. Congrats to all and see you in next years contest.

It's Been Fun, It's Been Real

Our bracket contest is nearly completed. I'm always bummed when the final weekend of games arrives, however it's 48 more short weeks until the next bracket contest begins. We sadly have three games remaining with eight tournament scenarios left. There are only four teams that have not been eliminated: Florida, UConn, Wisconsin, Kentucky

The semi-final games are Saturday on TBS, not CBS!! With the championship match up Monday, this time on CBS.

Florida #1 vs UConn #7 at 6:09 ET
Kentucky #8 vs Wisconsin #2 at 8:49 ET

Our best guessers had only two of the last four teams selected correctly, only ten of you did that. There were a ton of one correct out of four, and a real small number that had zero correct.

After the first weekend of games, I was away for my 20th wedding anniversary vacation and had the current standings on autopilot. Aside from my pick sheet, all went as planned. I did get to see a few of the games, but not enough to create a blog post about it. A big thank you to my wife, yet again, for putting up with this tournament during our anniversary week. I just cannot convince the NCAA to move the March tournament to dates that don't interfere with my anniversary. I'm kidding, my wife actually will sit and watch the games with me because I enjoy it so much.

If you haven't looked at the payouts for this year, the link is here on the Tournament Payouts Page. There are five winners this year. I will send the payouts as soon as I contact the winners to determine how they want to be paid.

As I mentioned, there are exactly eight tournament scenarios remaining, they are as follows:

If Florida beats Wisconsin
If Wisconsin beats Florida
If Florida beats Kentucky
If Kentucky beats Florida
If UConn beats Wisconsin
If Wisconsin beats UConn
If UConn beats Kentucky
If Kentucky beats UConn

Best of luck to ya people!

Our First Round Of Games Is Completed

I probably mention this every year, but we are half way through the annual greatest weekend of sports. 32 games have been played, four different television channels, one broken foot for Iowa St Georges Niang (NOOOOO), six overtime games, eight upset finishes, one really incredible comeback. With all that and more, we are down to 32 teams remaining in this years tournament.

One question for you, the teams that are victorious, are they required to do a team dance for the cameras? It really stood out the past couple of days. I was amused by the first couple team dances that I saw, then it became apparent that everyone was doing this. Perhaps this is something that has happened for years, but I'm just picking up on it this year. Who knows.

Speaking of the one really incredible comeback....if you missed the VCU vs Stone Cold Steven F Austin game, you missed, in my opinion, the best game of our Round One. In my bracket #1 pick sheet, I have SFA as one of my final four teams in the tournament. Yeah, I can't believe that's what I did either, but it is what it is. I had a huge interest in the game that was dominated by VCU in the second half, but somehow, SFA pulled off an incredible flurry in the final three minutes. Including a four point play, which I thought was a bad call by the official. Yet, that was the play of the game.

Our round two games are just getting going, Florida is up 29-22 over Pittsburgh at the half. Two more full days of basketball to enjoy.

Bracket64 Current Standings

We currently have five pick sheets in first place with 52 points, and eleven teams tied for second with 50 points. No real major losses, aside from the Duke game, two pick sheets had them as their championship team, yeow! But we'll see where everything stands on the other side of Sunday night when our second round is completed.

You can access the current standings and all of the other reports from the OFFICE POOL MENU on the right column.

2014 Bracket64 Office Pool Contest Has Begun

Deadline: Tip-Off, March 18 @ 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

2014 Tournament Office Pool Brackets
Blank Bracket
Printable Bracket

2014 Tournament Schedule

Pre-Tournament Events
March 16 - Selection Sunday @ 5:00 CST on CBS

First Week Of Games
March 18-19: 4 Play-In Games
March 20-21: Round One Games
March 22-23: Round Two Games

Second Weekend Of Games
March 27-28: Round Three Games
March 29-30: Round Four Games

Final Weekend Of Games
April 5: Round Five, Semi-Finals
April 7: Round Six, Championship Game

NCAA Division I Men's Tournament Dates (2014). Retrieved from http://www.ncaa.com/final-four/future-dates-sites

Automatic Bids - Conference Tournaments

Before the pairings are announced from the selected 68 teams on Sunday, March 16, there are 32 teams that will earn an automatic bid via their conference tournament or by winning the regular season outright. Here is a list of all 32 conferences with tournament dates. When the winner is determined, I'll update this post with the teams receiving automatic bid in place of the tournament dates.

Conference	Winner [record]
AAC	Louisville Cardinals [29-5]
ACC	March 12-16
American East	Albany Great Danes [18-14]
Atlantic Sun	Mercer Bears [26-8]
Atlantic 10	March 12-16
Big East	Providence Friars [23-11]
Big Sky	Weber State Wildcats [19-11]
Big South	Coastal Carolina Chanticleers [21-12]
Big Ten	March 13-16
Big 12	Iowa State Cyclones [26-7]
Big West	Cal Polytechnic Mustangs [13-19]
Colonial	Delaware Fightin' Blue Hens [25-9]
Conference USA	Tulsa Golden Hurricanes [21-12]
Horizon	Wisconsin-Milwaukee Panthers [21-13]
Ivy League	Harvard Crimson [25-4]
MAAC	Manhattan Jaspers [25-7]
MAC	Western Michigan Broncos [23-9]
MEAC	North Carolina Central Eagles [28-5]
Missouri Valley	Wichita State Shockers [34-0]
Mountain West	New Mexico Lobos [27-6]
Northeast	Mt St Mary's Mountaineers [16-16]
Ohio Valley	Eastern Kentucky Colonels [24-9]
Pac 12	UCLA Bruins [25-8]
Patriot	American Eagles [20-12]
SEC	March 12-16
Southern	Wofford Terriers [20-12]
Southland	Steven F Austin Lumberjacks [31-2]
Summit	North Dakota State Bison [25-6]
Sun Belt	March 13-16
SWAC	Texas Southern Tigers [19-14]
WAC	New Mexico State Aggies [26-9]
West Coast	Gonzaga Bulldogs [28-6]