WRITINGS & NEWS
Hey, I'm back in this thing!
No, wait, I'm not. And I'm still getting creamed in the pool I created. One of the guys picked Vandy and Butler for two rounds, whereas I didn't pick them to win their first round games. The way things are going, it'll probably be those two teams in the finals, and I'll have a total bracket score of 38.
Well, on Day Two I ended up going 11/16, which is better but not particularly thrilling. That gives me a total of 21 for 32 for the first round, which is disappointing for me, since I usually do about 24 for 32 the first round. At least, that's how I remember it. I may be exaggerating my predictive abilities from years past.
The real reason why it stings so much, though, is that the best way to see how you're doing in the bracket is to calculate how many you would've gotten right if you'd just picked the higher seed, and how much you're doing better than that number is how good you're doing in the tournament. I'm usually two, three, maybe four points better after the first round. But this year, not so much.
The higher seed won 27 of 32 matches, and three of the other matches are games in which the 9-seeds beat the 8-seeds, and that doesn't count as an upset because there's literally no difference between an eight and a nine seed (by the way, I was 0 for 4 on my picks for 8 and 9 seeds. There's the ballgame, right there). So there were only two real upsets: Winthrop over Notre Dame and VCU over Duke, of which I called only one correctly.
Each year the tournament has been progressively more and more upset-prone, until a couple of years ago my dad and I calculated that, according to the results, there was almost no difference between a 5-seed and a 12-seed. It was like they were completely equal rivals. And George Mason last year (have you tired of hearing about George Mason this March yet? I have.) proved that a small team from nowhere can be a legitimate contender in the NCAA bracket.
So this year I picked a whole pile of dark horses (Ew. That's a disturbing mix of metaphors), figuring that with all the upsets about to happen, there was no reason why my picks couldn't be the right ones. It's a dangerous strategy, because the upsets that happen can end up being the ones you aren't expecting, and then you have a bracket twice as bad as everyone else - the upsets you picked that didn't happen, and the ones you didn't pick that did. But this - I wasn't expecting this. I wasn't expecting the favorites to dominate this dramatically.
Good news on the horizon, though: while I have a tendency to pick a lot of upsets in the first round, I play things pretty straightforward the rest of the way. So if the favorites-always-winning pattern continues, I'll be looking pretty good. And, all my Sweet 16 teams are still alive. I may be a little shell-shocked, but it is still mathematically possible that I could have a perfect bracket the rest of the way.
It's just not particularly likely at this point.
By the way, three days into my work week, and at the request of the Missions Department and Women's Ministry, we've gone bowling for lunch twice.
I don't have a comment. I just wanted to give you a piece of my world this week.
Well, Memphis and Virginia's wins briefly moved me above the magical 1 million mark, but then, for no reason whatsoever, I moved back down. I'm starting to not trust the math that Facebook is putting into this pool. Right now I've moved from 10/16 to 13/20, which is a slight improvement. And one of the upsets I called finally happened. Attaway Winthrop!
Long Beach State is 20 seconds away from getting bounced out of the tournament, so I'm about to drop a little further. And... yes, they're gone. Ah, well.
Nevada is battling Creighton to a standstill, and if Nevada goes, I might be losing the first of my Sweet 16 teams. And Wisconsin might be disappearing too, which would be a black mark on my bracket, but who cares? It's worth it to lose points on your bracket in order to see a team like Texas A&M-Corpus Christi beat a 2-seed. I love this time of year.
As a side note, when I put this bracket together, I was outrageously confident about it. It's sure to be a big winner, I thought, I've called all the upsets that no one sees coming.
Let it be known that it's more than worthwhile to slap yourself once or twice across the face if you ever say the phrase "I've called all the upsets that no one sees coming."
Still, it looks like Nevada will prevail over Creighton in OT, and Wisconsin will prevail at least into the second round, so my Nevada over Memphis second-round pick might just stand a fighting chance, and I've gathered hope that Oregon will nudge out Wisconsin. And maybe, just maybe, I might move back under the one million mark.
And if not, I'll always remember this as the year a million people finished ahead of me in my college bracket.
How many people are in this pool?
I'm 10/16 for the first day, and the only upset that happened was the one that I refused to pick because everyone else was picking it. My upset-heavy bracket is not looking so good right now.
Today, I'm rooting for upsets with 12-seeds Long Beach State and Arkansas, along with Winthrop and Georgia Tech. Here we go, guys.
