NCAA Tournament So FarOkay, it's way early to be gloating, but my picks are proving pretty good in the NCAAs so far, especially compared to some of the "experts". CBS Sportsline has four expert brackets prepared by the guys who supposedly know their stuff; all four have fewer points in the first round than I do, and all four have fewer points remaining that they can score. Hilariously, the
Dodd bracket had Syracuse winning it all, so he's now lost points in every single round of the tournament and is reduced to rooting for Bucknell, which would at least make everybody else look bad.
Doyell's Bracket had
eight losers in the first round, and more important, he's already lost five games in the second round because the teams he had picked bowed out in the first.
I lost five games in the first round (Alabama, LSU, Creighton, Kansas, and Syracuse). More important, I've only lost two games in the second round: Bama and Kansas, and none in the third or later (yet).
Mejia's bracket is only modestly better than Dodd's because he had Syracuse losing in the semifinals instead of winning it all. He had 10 wrong picks in the first round, but amazingly despite having the most of his first round teams losing, he's still got 14 teams that could win him points in the second round, the same as I. Still, with him guaranteed not to score points with Syracuse in the next two rounds, he's starting out well behind me, and in the other three brackets we come out the same, so he's not going to pick up any points except possibly in the Illinois/Wake Forest semi, where I pick Wake and he picks the Illini. I could lose to him but it's unlikely starting out with that big an advantage and very few opportunities for him to close the gap.
Darst's bracket does it again with Syracuse. Cool that the town I spent many summers around and where my mom grew up has a college basketball team that is so respected, but if they'd looked at Sagarin predictor, they'd have seen that yes, the Orange should have easily handled Vermont, but after that they'd be in trouble. They were almost four points behind Michigan State in predictor. If they won, they'd face Duke which was four points better than Michigan State!
After picking Syracuse to go to the Final Four, Darst has eight down in the first round (to my 5) and five down in the second round(to my two), and two down in the third (none yet), plus of course the regional championship. However he probably does have the best chance of catching me since he picks Ok State to go to the final, which is far enough different to have a chance.
BTW, the twelve seed/five seed jinx proved to be just a fluke as anybody with half a brain would have figured except for Alabama. The five seeds were 3-1 this year. Too bad the CW was the opposite.
My bracket predictions (some already wrong):
Chicago:
Illinois
Alabama (wrong)
Arizona
Oklahoma State
Finals Illinois/OK State
Albuquerque:
Washington
Louisville
Texas Tech
Wake Forest
Finals Wake Forest/Louisville
Syracuse:
North Carolina
Florida
Kansas (wrong)
Connecticut
Finals North Carolina/Connecticut
Austin:
Duke
Michigan State
Oklahoma
Kentucky
Finals: Duke/Oklahoma
And for the National Championship: NC/Wake
