The 2022 Bracket64 Challenge Winner Is....

After the first half of the game, I thought the game was over and North Carolina would win. They were dominating, looked quick, and were playing defense to win the first half. That all changed in the second half and Kansas playing defense, looked quicker, and dominated the second half to win the Tournament Championship. 

• Final Score: Kansas 72, North Carolina 69   - 141 points

Winning our contest this year is AJ Wood. This is their first time playing in this contest. They had a 60% pick rate, and finished with the most points in the last four rounds. Congratulations AJ !!

1st - $550 - AJ Wood - (136 pts)
2nd - $230 - Kristi DiNello (132 pts, 10 correct Rd 3)
3rd - $120 - Mary Field (132 pts, 9 correct Rd 3)
4th - $55 - Nick Vedder (131 pts)
5th - $55 - Samly Wittchow (130 pts)
$20 - Tie Breaker Payout (141 Points) - Jay Erickson

Congratulations to all of the winners! I will contact you on how you want to be paid, then get your winnings out to you.

** Next Year's Pool Update

I pains me to say this, after 26 years of running this bracket contest, next year's contest is up in the air. 

I use Turbo Tourney Software to run the office pool contest and incorporate the standings into my website. The coder of the software is retiring, and he sold his company to another office pool company. So the way I am able to run this tournament and add the standings to my website is done. This was the final year for that. 

I certainly want to keep running this pool going forward, this is one of  my hobbies and I enjoy doing this. I've looked at a few options for next year, but all of them require you to login to another website and we join a group pool together. I don't know if I can incorporate the standings into my website, but maybe that's no longer needed.

So, big changes for next year unfortunately. I hope you all come along for the next version, whatever form it takes.

If you have any office pool suggestions, or other pool sites you've used that you like and may work here, please drop me a message

247 Stoppages Of Play In The 2017 Championship

It was a bit frustrating to watch at times. No flow to the game, constant whistles, too many fouls, poor shooting, fouls, really bad shots, TV timeouts, lets check the reply, terrible shooting, foul after foul after foul....it was more painful to watch than sitting through a two hour staff meeting at the office. However, when the explosive confetti settled, the Tar Heals of North Carolina were the victors on the night over Gonzaga's first trip to the championship game.  

He excelled in the first round with 28 of 32 correct picks, but fell to only three correct picks with eight teams left, however, 50% correct pick in the last three rounds was enough points to win the 2017 bracket contest. Congrats goes out to Drew Wittchow! 

Here are our top five pick sheets on the year.

1. Drew Wittchow
2. Kelly Crass
3. SeanQ
4. Jory Smith
5. Smitty

See you all in 2018!

Duke Wins....Again!

I must admit, being from Minnesota, I wasn't onboard with Wisconsin winning, yet again, because they have put together a great team and have great coaching and it's another sport they are doing well in. While here in Minnesota, we don't always seam to get our money's worth, while throwing plenty of cash at our coaches, just to see them leave or get let go after we sign them to an extended contract. However, the more I thought about it, put away my pettiness, jealousy, whatever you want to call it, I started rooting for Wisconsin to win.

I believe it's mainly because Duke has won it plenty of times, Wisconsin wasn't expected to win, and it was 1941 the last time they made it to the Championship game. But, I mentioned it in my last blog post, coaching appears to be key in this tournament. If you have great coaching, you typically have a better chance of advancing to the next round. You still need good players, but without good coaching, you're going to be sitting in my shoes rooting for Minnesota. Congrats to the Blue Devils on their victory.

As for the Office Pool results, with 76% picked correctly, Quincy Nguyen and his 186 points was our winner. Congratulations Quincy! Quincy correctly picked the lats four teams, the runner up and the champion correct. Impressive!

Here are your top five money winning brackets for the 2015 tournament

1. Quincy Nguyen
2. Mitchell Hahn
3. Jen C
4. Jamie Kiritschenko
5. Brock Pierre


See you in 2016 for our 20th Season of this office pool !!

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!

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.