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!

On ESPN's contest, 27,203 had UConn as the winner out of 11 Million+ (0.3%) Our bracket contest had 3 of 431 pick sheets. Someone do the math for me as a comparison and email me. (.007% - Thank you JC for the email)

Which brings me to our bracket contest results. Congrats goes out to Jason Peterson with 144 points. He is our 2014 OfficePool64 Bracket Challenge winner! And I mean no disrespect, but with a terrible 65% pick percentage and only correctly picking three of the final eight teams, he pulled off a miracle finish to win our contest. I'll give you a minute to let that sink in, you only correctly pick 3 of the final 8 teams and win the tournament.

Other notable pick sheets:

Bernie of West Linn, OR with 73% correct
Doug Force of Huntington, the only one to pick 3 of the last 4 teams.
Brent Dilk of MFI's bracket contest, welcome to my bracket contest MFI, see you next year.
R Beyer 2 of Cincinnati, OH, correctly picking UConn.
Jason Calabrese of Watertown, CT, correctly picking his homer team UConn.
Grand Master Flash of Funky, MN, for having such a cool name.

And last but not least, David Letterman is finally retiring!

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

From my quick look, only one pick sheet had three of four correct. There were a quite a few 2 of 4 correct and a ton of 1 of 4 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.

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!

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.

OfficePool64 Current Standings

Out top pick sheet is from Bernie of West Linn, OR. His bracket was almost flawless, with two incorrect picks in our first round and currently has 60 out of 64 points. We have four pick sheets tied for second with 56 points, and fifteen pick sheets are tied for third with 54 points. We'll see where everything stands on the other side of Sunday night when our second round has completed.

Last Call For Bracket Picks

There is roughly 17 hours as of this posting to enter your brackets into the Men's College basketball office pool for the 2014 contest. There is no need to register, just submit your picks, leave your name and return to view the current standings. Your email address will not be seen by anyone, it will be used to send you an invite for next years office pool only.

Tip off of the first game is at 12:15 EST between #6 Ohio State vs #11 Dayton. I'll give a bit of a leeway to get the last minute pick sheets completed.

Enter Your Bracket Picks Here

Make sure you hit the SUBMIT PICKS button at the bottom left corner of the page or your picks will not be entered into the pool.

NOTE: When entering multiple times, please place a number after your name to make it unique [or it will over write you last submitted picks] For example: Timmy 1, Timmy 2, Timmy 3

2014 Office Pool Bracket Contest Has Begun

Deadline: Tip-Off, March 18 @ 12:30 PM [EST]
Entry Fee: $0.00

Enter Your Picks Here

Make sure you hit the SUBMIT PICKS button at the bottom of the page or your picks will not be entered into the pool.

NOTE: When entering multiple times, please place a number after your name to make it unique [or it will over write you last submitted picks] For example: Timmy 1, Timmy 2, Timmy 3

2014 Tournament Office Pool Brackets
Blank Bracket
Printable Bracket

2014 Office Pool Brackets

I've partially updated the men's office pool brackets for this year. The four regions are still set from last years tournament, as well as the asterisk symbols for the play-in games. Once the pairing and regions are announced and finalized, I'll update the brackets with the correct locations and add in the pairings.

Blank Office Pool Bracket for 2014

Printable Office Pool Bracket for 2014

The conference tournaments will begin shortly and the pairings for the men's tournament are about a month away from being selected.

All of my tournament brackets, results and winners dating back to 1997 can be found here.

2014 Tournament Schdeule

Pre-Tournament Events
March 16 - Selection Sunday @ 5:00 CST on CBS

First Week Of Games
March 18-19: 4 Play-In Games
March 20-21: Round One Games
March 22-23: Round Two Games

Second Weekend Of Games
March 27-28: Round Three Games
March 29-30: Round Four Games

Final Weekend Of Games
April 5: Round Five, Semi-Finals
April 7: Round Six, Championship Game

NCAA Division I Men's Tournament Dates (2014). Retrieved from http://www.ncaa.com/final-four/future-dates-sites

Automatic Bids - Conference Tournaments

Before the pairings are announced from the selected 68 teams on Sunday, March 16, there are 32 teams that will earn an automatic bid via their conference tournament or by winning the regular season outright. Here is a list of all 32 conferences with tournament dates. When the winner is determined, I'll update this post with the teams receiving automatic bid in place of the tournament dates.

Conference	Winner [record]
AAC	Louisville Cardinals [29-5]
ACC	March 12-16
American East	Albany Great Danes [18-14]
Atlantic Sun	Mercer Bears [26-8]
Atlantic 10	March 12-16
Big East	Providence Friars [23-11]
Big Sky	Weber State Wildcats [19-11]
Big South	Coastal Carolina Chanticleers [21-12]
Big Ten	March 13-16
Big 12	Iowa State Cyclones [26-7]
Big West	Cal Polytechnic Mustangs [13-19]
Colonial	Delaware Fightin' Blue Hens [25-9]
Conference USA	Tulsa Golden Hurricanes [21-12]
Horizon	Wisconsin-Milwaukee Panthers [21-13]
Ivy League	Harvard Crimson [25-4]
MAAC	Manhattan Jaspers [25-7]
MAC	Western Michigan Broncos [23-9]
MEAC	North Carolina Central Eagles [28-5]
Missouri Valley	Wichita State Shockers [34-0]
Mountain West	New Mexico Lobos [27-6]
Northeast	Mt St Mary's Mountaineers [16-16]
Ohio Valley	Eastern Kentucky Colonels [24-9]
Pac 12	UCLA Bruins [25-8]
Patriot	American Eagles [20-12]
SEC	March 12-16
Southern	Wofford Terriers [20-12]
Southland	Steven F Austin Lumberjacks [31-2]
Summit	North Dakota State Bison [25-6]
Sun Belt	March 13-16
SWAC	Texas Southern Tigers [19-14]
WAC	New Mexico State Aggies [26-9]
West Coast	Gonzaga Bulldogs [28-6]