Another exciting weekend of March Madness basketball finished yesterday and now only four teams remain- the South Carolina Gamecocks, the Gonzaga Bulldogs, the Oregon Ducks and the North Carolina Tar Heels. Only UNC has made a Final Four in the past 78 years, and South Carolina and Gonzaga are in the last weekend for the first time ever. It is safe to say that I didn’t predict this result, especially the shocking run of South Carolina, but I’m thrilled with how it turned out. Here is the best and worst of my bracket from the Elite Eight and Final Four games.
My Best Picks
As it turned out, I didn’t pick a single Elite Eight game right, ensuring that my bracket can’t get any correct picks in the Final Four or championship games. Xavier’s upset of the Arizona Wildcats, who I predicted to reach the title game, started to unravel my bracket, and the eliminations of Kansas and then Kentucky in the Elite Eight were the final nails of my bracket’s coffin.
On the other hand, my lady bracket has been downright brilliant. At one point, my lady bracket was in the top 3% of all lady brackets submitted to ESPN and within the top 15,000 brackets. Currently, it stands at the 95th percentile and in the top 20,000. I picked the UConn women to go all the way, and given UConn’s 110 game win streak, I doubt that my bracket will mess up there. What really aided me was 2nd seeded Stanford’s upset of top seed Notre Dame in the Elite Eight, and with both UConn and South Carolina also in the Final Four, I have a great chance at getting the final three games correct and moving up even higher. Already, my lady bracket has 350 more points than my men’s’ bracket. Go Huskies!
My Worst Picks
A lot went wrong. Three of my Final Four teams lost this weekend, including my national champion, Kentucky. I can’t score any more points in the following rounds, so I’m penciled in as the runner-up in my dad’s work league and somewhere in the teens in my track and field league. It stinks that two of the teams, Gonzaga and Oregon, were ones that I highly considered picking and a third, North Carolina, is my favorite team. The upside is that I won’t be cheering for my bracket anymore- I’ll be pulling instead for that North Carolina-South Carolina championship game and rooting for the Tar Heels.
Enjoy the Final Four!
Riker's Block 