2014 Bracket Challenge

I hope I don't regret taking Michigan out of the Final Four in my completed bracket. It seems likely they have a good shot at the Elite 8 with Duke out now. For some inexplicable reason I decided they'd lose to Duke.

The only non-serious thing in my half finished bracket was Arizona winning. It was a reminder to pick a winner as I'd decided they weren't going to win as they haven't played well during the conference season.

Steven F. Austin 77 : VCU 75 final

PurpleGeezer wrote:Steven F. Austin 77 : VCU 75 final

Yet another upset picked by Matty "Nostradamus" Wizz!  

By the way, how does a trophy husband get maternity leave?

I got every single 5-12 game wrong and most of the overtime games wrong.

Based on my count, 25% of the opening round games resulted in an 'upset', per the seeding.

9 seeds - 1 winner (Pittsburgh)
10 seeds - 1 winner (Stanford)
11 seeds - 2 winners (Dayton, Tennessee)
12 seeds - 3 winners (Harvard, N. Dak. St., S.F. Austin)
13 seeds - 0 winners
14 seeds - 1 winner ( Mercer)

Tennessee may be the most impressive, considering they had to play the play-in game on Wednesday, and it went into overtime. N.C. State also had to win a play-in game, and should have beat St. Louis, losing in overtime.

S.F. Austin was a trendy upset pick, but it took a 4 point play with 3.6 seconds left, and a overtime to get their win. Crazy.

Warren Buffett wins again: billion-dollar-bracket-dream-dead

Couldn't help notice another story on that page

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1994616-10-march-madness-legends-that-flopped-in-the-nba

They saved the best for last

Dear Dayton,

I did not mind when you beat Ohio, but now you've taken out one of my Elite 8 teams. You must now make it to the Elite 8 so nobody else can get points either. I'm counting on you.

That's OK. I put Syr in my F4.   

Update: and I guess picking Villanova to win it all wasn't a great plan. Sheesh. My bracket is a disaster.

I made a Yahoo account for this? Crimes I'm bad at brackets.

Because everyone loves the guy who talks about his bracket in another pool....the one I turned in for the billion dollars went 8-8 yesterday.

mattywizz wrote:Because everyone loves the guy who talks about his bracket in another pool....the one I turned in for the billion dollars went 8-8 yesterday.  

You're right, everyone loves it when the guy in first place talks about how he has an even better bracket.   

Anyone know what happened to Yahoo's Scenario Generator? I want to see if my busted up bracket even has a chance.

I know! I really liked that feature....it made me feel like I could somehow scheme my way to victory! ESPN doesn't have it either (but they do let you check into a "Fans of (insert your school)" group automatically)

After the second round (sorry NCAA, play in games are not round one), Mesa's Revenge (is that anything like Montezuma's Revenge?) has a one point lead.  Most importantly, he also has the most possible points.

Matty "Nostradamus" Wizz is only one point back.  I'm still impressed he correctly picked a 12 and two 11's in the first round. No confidence in Dayton making the sweet 16 though.

PilotNut may be in 7th, but he's only one behind Mesa in possible points.  Woodless! is in good position with possible points as well.

Deaner is in real danger of losing to Dholcombe's unfinished bracket.  Speaking of which, Dholcombe, your finished bracket isn't much better than the unfinished one.   


I'm really missing the Scenario Generator.  I just don't have any interest in doing that work myself.

I don't think my finished bracket is as bad as the points make it out to be. I got most ( all but one?) of the overtime games wrong as well as several single possession games wrong.

Kind of like the pilots regular season I suppose. I'm hoping I set myself up for a surprising comeback and strong finish with my final four still intact and that I don't end up 0-5 down the stretch :/

blacksheep wrote:

I'm really missing the Scenario Generator.  I just don't have any interest in doing that work myself.

I just compared my bracket to Mesa's. Despite being behind by only two points and having 3 of my final four still alive, I can't catch him. I'm officially throwing my support behind Mesa  

blacksheep wrote: I'm officially throwing my support behind Mesa  

Hey!   

Brackets? Let's talk about something else, maybe beer?

up7587 wrote:Brackets? Let's talk about something else, maybe beer?

I found a link to the Scenario Generator   https://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/quickenloansbracket/scenariogenerator?utmpdku=1&tid=&gid

There is a real danger I will lose to my own half filled in bracket at this point  Should have stuck with my gut and kept Michigan in the Final Four.

Haha, I am tied for 2nd place, but I don't think it will hold. I don't have any more possible points. Every one of my Final 4 picks is out. Hard to generate any scenarios that help me.

Two great games tonight.....UV vs. MSU and UL vs. UK.

I have to say the Louisville vs. Kentucky game was one of the best I've ever seen.

Nice to see MSU advance, but I don't have a dog in the fight, so rooting for your favorites is a lot easier.   

The final minute or two of all the games are excruciating long.  Sure, there are a lot of fouls and timeouts, but I think the referees obsessing about replays to check the game clock and out-of-bounds possessions is really slowing the game down……but I suppose we all want those aspects to be accurate.  Too bad they can’t check their foul or non-foul calls.

I didn't time tonight's game's final minute, but they all appear to be averaging about 10 minutes for 60 seconds of clock movement.  

DoubleDipper wrote:
I didn't time tonight's game's final minute, but they all appear to be averaging about 10 minutes for 60 seconds of clock movement.  

It's actually shorter than that (5:57) for the first weekend's games.

http://regressing.deadspin.com/how-long-does-the-final-minute-of-an-ncaa-tournament-ga-1552305066

EDIT: The link now has a table at the bottom with this weekend's games added. Tennessee-Michigan took 18:09 in real time to finish.   The average is up to 7:09.

One thing I would love to see is a reduction in the number of team timeouts. I'm not really seeing why teams need five in a game when there are already eight media timeouts.

With using DVR the final 60 seconds takes roughly one minute for me.