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The Sixth Annual TOC Pick 16 NCAA Tournament Contest

Tired of filling out an entire bracket for your tournament prediction contests? Neither am I, but here's something else to try anyway.

Kevin C. Cox

NOTE: The deadline for entry is tipoff of the First Four games, since those games count for the contest.

Back in the Spartans Weblog days, KJ instituted a different sort of picks contest, and here (even after KJ decided to take a less active role) the tradition has continued.

Here's how it works:

  1. Each team earns a certain number of points for each game they win, depending on their seed and the round:
    First Four: Half of the team's main-bracket seed (a 16-seed play-in winner gets 8 points, an 11-seed gets 5.5, etc.). If that team continues to advance, they get full seed value for each win beyond that.
    Main Bracket: Full seed value for each win.
    Final Four bonuses: 1 point for reaching the Final Four, 3 for reaching the final, 5 for winning the final. These bonuses are cumulative (a 1-seed champion gets 6*1 + 1 + 3 + 5 = 15 points).
  2. You pick 16 teams (hence the contest name) out of the 68 in the tournament. Your score is the total number of points earned by those 16 teams, as described above. Post a comment to this thread with your list of teams and, as a tiebreaker, the number of possessions in the championship game. (Statsheet's determination of said number will be considered official, should a tiebreaker be necessary.)
  3. There is no requirement as to where your 16 teams must be in the bracket; if you want to choose teams that are playing each other in the first round, or the First Four for that matter (guaranteeing that you get one of the teams advancing, even if you are guaranteed to lose one), you can; if you would rather pick one from every pod so that you could have 16/16 in the second weekend, you can do that. In the past, the best possible set of selections has sometimes had as many as 6 teams from a single region.
  4. Want to change your entry? Until the First Four tip off Tuesday night, you can do so. To make the bookkeeping easier, please do so by replying to your original entry. The last entry will count. (You don't need to redo the whole thing, unless you're changing enough that it's easier to do so; if you're just switching one team out for another, and the rest of the list is the same, you can just say so.)
  5. In the event that there are problems with your submitted entry, here's how we'll handle it:
    No tiebreaker: Your tiebreaker will be 0 possessions (which means, unless the final is Notre Dame-Wisconsin, you will lose the tiebreaker).
    Not enough teams: If you have an entry with 16 before this and try to change it but only put in 15, we'll use the earlier entry instead. If not, all the teams listed will count, but you'll be at a disadvantage with fewer teams.
    Too many teams: Again, if you have an earlier entry with the right number of teams, we'll use that. If not, you will get the 16 lowest-scoring teams out of your list. So don't put in too many.
  6. Tiebreakers are as follows:
    - Closest to the correct number of possessions in the final
    - Individual team scores among the selected teams, from highest to lowest
    - Total number of games won by selected teams
    - Random selection

Score updates will be posted periodically. Pick your 16.

Here's the regular TOC bracket contest