We Have A Winner And A Champion

Wow. What a great game tonight by Villanova and North Carolina. It kept me on the edge of my seat and hooting and hollering as the last few shots dropped into their nets. Such an enjoyable game this was to watch versus the semi-final blowouts. Villanova's shooting percentage was just lights out and the difference in the tournament.

The Final Standings for the 2016 Bracket64 Office Pool contest are now posted, head over to the website to see your final ranking. Congratulations goes out to Tridi 1. He has played in this pool for seven or eight years now and his first time as the winner. He correctly picked the winner of the tournament, the runner up and three out of four of the final four teams. Well done!

The top five brackets are as follows:

1. Tridi 1
2. Cory Vogel
3. John Sundby
4. Ryan Stokes
5. Ren 1

I would like to thank everyone for participating in this years contest. I hope you had a fun tournament and enjoyed as much basketball as you could watch. We will see you next season for our 21st year.

Second Weekend Of Games Begins

We start back up tonight with four games on the schedule. It also looks like we are down to two TV stations as well, CBS and TBS.

Thursday, March 24 Tournament Schedule (all times Central)

On CBS
6:10 #3 Miami-FL vs #2 Villanova
8:40 #5 Maryland vs #1 Kansas

On TBS
6:37 #3 Texas A&M vs #2 Oklahoma
9:07 #4 Duke vs #1 Oregon

Friday, March 25 Tournament Schedule (all times Central)

On CBS
6:10 #4 Iowa State vs #1 Virginia
8:40 #11 Gonzaga vs #10 Syracuse

On TBS
6:27 #7 Wisconsin vs #6 Notre Dame
8:57 #5 Indiana vs #1 North Carolina

First Week Of Games Is Completed

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the Northern Iowa vs Texas A&M finish on Sunday evening. I, and I would imagine I'm not alone, wrote the game off as a victory to UNI. When I realized what was happening, I had missed ten of the twelve points that were scored with 44 seconds to go. I frantically turned the game back on with 3.8 seconds. Texas A&M has the UNI player trapped in the corner, he attempts to bounce it off the leg of his opponent, but instead it bounces right to the hands of one of the two guarding him. He then jumps to the basket, scores, game tied.

Wow. I missed the greatest comeback I've heard about in a while. I can't imagine all of the people in the stadium that had left the game to beat the traffic. To find out what they missed by leaving early is a story they will tell for quite some time. Or perhaps they will say there were there the entire time.

Well, we are two rounds into this years bracket contest. I always love it when there are plenty of upsets and this year did not disappoint. I'm unsure how many still can earn points from the last four teams remaining in their brackets, but I'd guess the number is quite low.

To see where your bracket stands, click this Current Standings Link.

The current Top Five brackets

1. Lindsey Lynch
2. Alan Schmid
3. Robert Ren 2
4. Amy Behrendsen
5. Ryan Stokes

Let The Games Begin

Just a quick blog post to let everyone know the site is finally up and running correctly. I had clicked the option to only update the current standings one time per day starting at 1:00 PM. Oops. It is now set to update once per hour, on the hour after results have been established.

I've also imported the additional pick sheets that were submitted this morning, so everyone is now included. You can also view your bracket, and anyone else's bracket that you'd like to take a look at.

If you're new to the Bracket64 Challenge, the current standings can always be found on the right column of this website under 'Current Standings'. From there the menu of everything office pool related can be found.

We have a long ways to go, as I write, the last game of Thursday night hasn't begun yet. Some exciting games so far as usual, though I do miss the days when CBS would auto-switch between the games that were ending. Now I have to manually do this or have a game on my TV running, plus one on my phone. Maybe I don't miss it after all.

Time to enjoy the games this weekend....

2016 Tournament Schedule

Pre-Tournament Events
March 13 - Selection Sunday @ 5:00 CST on CBS

First Week Of Games
March 15-16: 4 Play-In Games
March 17-18: Round One Games
March 19-20: Round Two Games

Second Weekend Of Games
March 24-25: Round Three Games
March 26-27: Round Four Games

Final Weekend Of Games
April 2: Round Five - Semi-Finals
April 4: Round Six - Championship Game

NCAA Division I Men's Tournament Dates (2016). Retrieved from http://www.ncaa.com/FutureFinalFour

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	Connecticut Huskies (24-10)
ACC	North Carolina Tar Heals (27-6)
American East	Stony Brook Seawolves (26-6)
Atlantic Sun	Florida Gulf Coast Eagles (20-13)
Atlantic 10	St Joseph's Hawks (27-7)
Big East	Seton Hall Pirates (25-8)
Big Sky	Weber State Wildcats (26-8)
Big South	NC Asheville Bulldogs (22-11)
Big Ten	Michigan State Spartans (29-5)
Big 12	Kansas Jayhawks (30-4)
Big West	Hawaii Warriors (27-5)
Colonial	UNC-Wilmington Seahawks (25-7)
Conference USA	Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders (24-9)
Horizon League	Green Bay Phoenix (23-12)
Ivy League	Yale Bulldogs (22-6)
MAAC	Iona Gaels (22-10)
MAC	Buffalo Bulls (20-14)
MEAC	Hampton Pirates (21-10)
Missouri Valley	Northern Iowa Panthers (22-12)
Mountain West	Fresno State Bulldogs (25-9)
Northeast	Fairleigh Dickinson Knights (18-14)
Ohio Valley	Austin Peay Governors (18-17)
Pac 12	Oregon Ducks (28-6)
Patriot	Holy Cross Crusaders (14-19)
SEC	Kentucky Wildcats (26-8)
Southern	Chattanooga Mocs (29-6)
Southland	Steven F Austin Lumberjacks (27-5)
Summit	South Dakota State Jackrabbits (26-7)
Sun Belt	Little Rock Trojans (29-4)
SWAC	Southern U Jaguars (22-12)
WAC	Cal State Bakersfield Roadrunners (24-8)
West Coast	Gonzaga Bulldogs (26-7)

NCAA Division I Men's Conference Tournament Dates (2016). Retrieved from http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/schedules/conference-tournament