We Are Though First Round Of Games

Thank you to everyone for submitting your brackets. We ended up with 111 pick sheets for the 2022 contest. That should be around $1030 in collections. We are through the first round of games with Kentucky the highest seed to be eliminated.

I started writing this out during the Baylor vs North Carolina game, when it was well out of hand. Baylor was down by 25 points. I missed the player ejection, but was glued to the game pretty much from that point on. An hour later, and I'm just starting this email again. What a game it was to watch, but we did lost our first #1 seed.

If you are new to this pool, the web standings update once per hour, on the hour, after a game has completed. The direct links are above.

I have collected the majority of the entry fees. Just a few more to go before everyone is paid. I'll add the payment info to this email, so please get your entry fees in if you have not. 

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.

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.