[NCAA Tourney] Who's got their bracket filled out already?

[Ghostwind]

It's that time of year. Who's got their brackets filled out? What's your Final Four and ultimate winner prediction? I'm still working on my bracket...

 

[drothgery]

My final four is Illinois, Louisville, UConn, and Syracuse (okay, there's a little bit of Big East bias going on there), with the completely unrealistic pick of the Orange winning the whole thing.

[copied from the UK thread]

I've created an ENWorlders group on ESPN's Tournament Challenge.

http://games.espn.go.com/tcmen/frontpage
Password is d20atENworld ; anyone who reads the message boards is free to join...

"ByTheNumbers" is a brain-dead robot that always picks the higher seed to win. I'm guessing this will end up with a better record than "OrangeWest", where I actually thought about things, except when my Syracuse fandom got in the way.

 

[Ghostwind]

I haven't done a solid analysis yet of the teams, but at a glance my Final Four will liekly be Illinois, Louisvill, North Carolina and Duke with Illinois winning it all. I just don't see that team losing, especially with the motivation they now have because of their coach's mother passing away last Friday. Teams with a focus and a mission are very hard to beat if they have the talent. Illinois has it all.

 

[ph34r]

My final four is: Oklahoma State, Wake Forest, North Carolina, and Kentucky.

 

[Crothian]

I signed up, I'm not going to do well as I never do but hey its fun.

 

[Ghostwind]

I'm not as good as I used to be...

 

[dpdx]

I did a quick one (I always like to, based on my first impressions.) I'll do another one after I study it more.

I have Illinois, Gonzaga, Florida, and Oklahoma. Illinois over Oklahoma for the trophy.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

So far I have been too busy setting up the pool and trying to get people at my work to join to actually think about the matchups. I always thought it was odd that at a company as large as mine (~1500 people) for the past two years I was unable to find a pool. So this year I decided I would run it. I'm discovering that the reason I could not find one was that there is a surprising lack of interest in one here. Seems most people feel its too much thought and work. So far I have three people for sure and a couple of maybes

 

[Ghostwind]

I used to run a very simple point based pool that was easy to maintain and allowed people to possibly miss a couple of picks and yet still have a chance of winning. In a nutshell, you got one point for every first round pick right, two points for second round, three points for round three, and so forth right up to the title game being worth 5 points. Players then entered their guess at the total points scored in the final game in case of a tie-breaker. Overall, it worked quite well and we usually saw at least one come-from-behind charge. Too bad I don't work where I could run a pool like this anymore.

 

[Dinkeldog]

There are three legitimately better teams than Louisville in that bracket. I don't think they have a prayer against any of Washington, Gonzaga and Wake Forest.

The big question here is if defense is still more important in the NCAA than offense. If so, then Washington walks out. If not, then Gonzaga walks out. Of course, if being from Kentucky is the most important thing, then Louisville's got a pretty decent chance.