Over two weeks ago, the annual NCAA Men’s Basketball Bracket was unveiled to the nation on a Sunday night. After the bracket with all 65 teams (1 play-in game) was announced, the so called “experts” on sports channels throughout television gave their predictions.
The #1 overall seed was Kansas; Kentucky, Syracuse, and Duke were the other #1 seeds. As soon as the bracket came out, I did a lot of “studying.” A lot of thoughts went through my head: Who would I pick for my #12 seed to beat a #5? Who is the possible Cinderella story? How many #1 teams will make it to the Final Four? And most importantly- who do I have winning the tournament?
After looking through stats and stats and records and records and considering this and considering that- I narrowed down my Final Four: Kentucky, Kansas, Kansas State, and Baylor; and I had Kentucky winning it all. Two weeks later, after what is being called one of the best tournaments in years due to the number of upsets, #1 Duke, #2 West Virginia, #5 Michigan State and #5 Butler are your final four. Yep that’s right- add them up- my number- ZERO. None correct for me.
ESPN had 4.6 million brackets filled out online; not one perfect bracket remained after the second day. Only 200 brackets of the 4.6 million filled out had correctly picked Butler, MSU, WVU, and Duke. Do the math: only 0.0004% of the brackets filled out had the correct final four- and I couldn’t even manage to get ONE TEAM RIGHT.
Do all the studying you want- compare a players free throw percentage, a team’s three point defense, what defense a team runs, what their positives are, what there negatives are- do it. Do it all. Compare all you want. In the end, the games are not played on paper, but on the basketball court. Forty minute games are played- sometimes more time is necessary- but in the end- all the tournament is for us fans is a lot of excitement- and a guessing game.
-Jerry Taylor
News Central 34 Sports
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