because i’m getting in late, so what the hell?
for the fun of it, i’m making late-round bracket picks for march madness.
and guess what?
i’m picking villanova.
sorry connecticut, but i actually do think they have a chance, if they take last night’s lesson to heart and don’t get themselves beat tomorrow.
and it would make for some good games, ya know?
so that’s the theme of my picks this year:
this is the way that i think it will go if the teams really bring it.
is that what will probably happen?
no.
at least not on all fronts.
and other shitty things could happen, like injuries and bad calls, and that’s part of the game too, so fair enough.
so i know i’ll probably get burned, but that’s what i get for playing with fire and waiting until the second round to put myself on the line, right?
i figured i’d better not just sap out and pick safe.
i’d better be willing to make things interesting.
:)
so on that note, i’m putting west virginia in the final four.
which, if you don’t have a bracket in front of you, means i’m putting them over duke.
i’m also picking witchita over tennessee this afternoon (sorry matt :), and i’m not going gaga for gonzaga (though i do think that they will probably beat us tonight).
all of it is within the realm of what i see as possible.
let’s see how wrong i am, shall we?
to see my full bracket, click below, and either read the backstory, or just skip to the bottom of the post.
:)
how i came to fill out a partial bracket this year, and related thoughts and events:
for the two years before this one (2004 and 2005), i played like an actual hoosier during march madness and participated in the math department’s office pool. it’s only $5, it’s fun, and it makes me have something to talk about when i’m out with other people during march, since it’s one of the top one topics of conversation for 95% of the population of indiana. ;)
i don’t really follow basketball for the rest of the year, so it’s always fun to watch myself pretend to take it seriously for a little while. it’s even more fun, though, because i actually kind of Do take it seriously. i know that i would probably be just as likely to do well, pool-wise, if i just picked by the numbers, fudged a little with teams that strike my fancy for one reason or another, or copied some expert picks off the internet. but that seems unsporting to me, and i like to be sporting, instead. if i’m going to play a game, i want to actually Play it, which means that i need Some understanding of what i’m doing and why. as a result, i have learned that filling out a bracket involves several hours of rooting around online, reading scouting reports and projections, and comparing guesses on who the sleepers will be and such.
i find it to be quite a bit of fun, really, and after three years, i must say that it’s an interesting way to learn a bit about college basketball. during the regular season, i am just comPletely overWhelmed by how many games there are, and how much postulating goes on about this and that and whoever. i can see how it would be engaging, but i also just can’t imagine devoting that much time and energy to it for months on end. reading just the end-of-season wrapups and lowdowns, however, i still find myself gleaning some sense of an overall picture of the field. i remember the up and comers from year to year, for instance, and i notice when major players are missing from the running. i start to get a sense of when people go for the underdog and why, and i even start to develop my own little allegiances. i’m not saying that i’m ready to sit down on sportscenter and start talking like i know what the hell i’m saying, but i am saying that, apart from just being a fun little microcosm of its own, the ncaa playoffs seem to offer more real information about the game as a whole than you get if you just decide to tune in for the super bowl or the world series, and i can imagine leveraging that information were i to ever decide to become more interested in the regular season, which is kind of cool.
so anyway, this year i didn’t fill out a bracket at work, nor did i elect to participate in the informatics championship challenge. i’ve been so bogged down in other stuff that the whole thing snuck up on me a little, and to fill out the bracket in time i would have had to spend half of one of the only days i was able to make it into the office last week on the task, and that just seemed too negligent. there are lines that even i will not cross in my slackerdom.
oh well.
last night, however, david and i went to see this divided state at the buskirk chumley, which i hope to write more about later. it was good and thought-provoking, and i owed david for the ticket, so we decided to get a beer afterwards. as we were deciding where to go, we walked past the uptown cafe, which is right next to the theater. now, the uptown has a little irish pub in it that i always forget about (and i mean little. there’s like a bar and two tables. and not a big bar, either.), and seeing as yesterday was st. patrick’s day, it seemed a good time to check it out.
we went in, sat at the bar between two people who were clearly there a lot, and ordered guinness. the michigan state game was on, and it was just becoming clear that they might really lose. the bartender was a michigan state alum, and she was pissed off. one of the regulars at the bar was a somewhat raucous, very conservative, genial-but-a-bit-overpowering former marine. he regaled us with his knowledge of the presence/absence of poisonous snakes on a variety of islands (after we talked about the origins of st. pat’s), quizzed us on the locations of the minor colleges whose names were flashing up on the score ticker, and joked, in a friendly but also serious way, about how he would love to shoot michael moore (after we talked about the movie we had just seen), and about how civil war would break out if someone like john mccain was ever elected, because the marines would assassinate him.
in other words, it was a good time, and i was glad we had decided to check it out. at one point, another regular came in wearing an old-fashioned postal service jacket, and i joked to david that it felt just like cheers. as the game(s) unfolded, everyone was sucked in, and one of the other bar regulars was all about the short-lived possibility that albany might oust u conn, which made the flipping betweeen games that cbs was doing really enjoyable. we all joined in wondering where the hell northwestern state was from and how they upset iowa. i think that was how the “where is _____” game started, actually, after david brought up the question of how well the average fan would do if pressed to identify the origin of a team like monmouth. the marine was good at the game (monmouth is in new jersey), but he still didn’t know where northwestern state was. i sent google a text message and they shone through, so we were all enlightened.
northwestern state is in natchitoches, lousiana.
good to know, huh?
anyway, the thing about the uptown that makes their pub hard to remember is that they close at 10, so we went one door further down the block to the trojan horse to watch the end of the next games. this was fun, too, and as it wound down i kept finding myself staring at the big bracket they had up on the wall, and i realized that i wanted to fill it out for the rest of the tournament even though i couldn’t enter any pools or anything. it just felt like the right thing to do, since i was enjoying getting swept up in the games. if i’m not going to put my money where my mouth is, i should still put my Mouth there, and the only way to do that fairly is to put it on paper, so i can’t change my mind.
so i made a bracket this afternoon, and i already told david that i think duke will win their game, so i’m covered as long as i post it soon.
it was still quite a bit of fun to put together, and i felt a bit more likely to take risks in favor of teams that really Could win, but very likely won’t.
this is what led to the approach i stated above: this is the way that i think it will go if the teams really bring it.
so with no further ado, here’s my bracket.
i did a little color coding to point out where i think i’m playing on thin ice:
the green teams are my actual picks – the ones i would bet on if i were going forward from here on in.
the purple options are nods to games that could go the other way without affecting later rounds, so all the greens after a purple option still hold. (for instance, i actually do think there is Some chance that IU could beat gonzaga tonight, but if that were to happen, i Don’t think they would make it any further, so UCLA->Memphis is still my vote.)
red options, on the other hand, are potentialities where i think that later rounds would be called into question. (like if georgetown beats ohio state, i think they will also probably beat florida, so i notated that, because i can. :)
if i didn’t put a purple or red option, it means that i don’t think that there’s much chance i’ll be wrong.
so yes, that means that if i Am wrong, you can enlighten me about what i should have considered, as long as you are mostly nice about it. :)
it seems only fair, since i missed out on any embarrasment from the first round, to open myself up to more for the remainder.
hope to see you at a bar near us soon.
