Other contests:
- The BTT Bracket contest ended in a tie between KarkoviceIsHawt, spartyboy40, and SpartanDan. All three entrants had Ohio State winning the tournament, Illinois and Purdue in the semifinals, and 2 of the 3 first-day winners correct. And they were each one possession off on the tie-breaker. That means we go to a random draw for the prize. The accounting firm of My Five-Year Old Son Rolling a Die conducted the draw. The winner of one copy of When March Went Mad is [drumroll] spartyboy40. Send me me your name and mailing address, sir (or madam), and we'll get the book right out to you. Kudos to all three first-place finishers.
- Pete's more traditional NCAA Tournament contest is here. (He's so old-fashioned. But his version does have automated scoring.)
The Smarter-than-Average Contest
Any schmuck can fill out a bracket by picking the higher seed in almost every game. This blog’s readers deserve a more intellectually-demanding competition. Hence the contest I've run the last three years (and by "run," I mean "post the rules for and hope that SpartanDan graciously takes care of actually keeping tracks of the scores again").
Here are the rules (same as last year):
- Each entrant picks a list of 16 teams from the 65-team NCAA bracket.
- For each game a team on your list wins, you receive points equal to the team’s seed. Example: If you pick an 8 seed and they win 2 games before losing in the third round, you get 16 points. This creates an incentive to look for lower-seeded teams likely to pull upsets.
- There are bonuses of (a) 1 point for making the Final Four, (b) 3 points for making the championship game, and (c) 5 points for winning the national championship. So picking a 1 seed who wins the national championship would be worth 15 points (6 points for their 6 wins plus 9 points for the three bonuses). This keeps the top seeds in play as potential picks.
Entries must be posted in the comments section of this blog post by noon on Thursday. Just list your 16 teams in any order. The tie-breaker is the number of possessions in the championship game (as determined by StatSheet).
Here’s the official bracket. Get those mental gears turning. Winner gets a book (the same one).