247 Stoppages Of Play In The Championship

It was a bit frustrating to watch at times. No flow to the game, constant whistles, too many fouls, poor shooting, fouls, really bad shots, TV timeouts, lets check the reply, terrible shooting, foul after foul after foul....it was more painful to watch than sitting through a two hour staff meeting at the office. However, when the explosive confetti settled, the Tar Heals of North Carolina were the victors on the night over Gonzaga's first trip to the championship game.  

After an average first round of picks, Lisa Craig excelled when the points per round increased. Correctly picked 5 of the last 8 teams, three out of the last four, picked both winners and the champion. Nicely done! See Lisa Craig's pick sheet. 

Here are our top ten pick sheets on the year. Congrats to the leaders. If you were in an entry fee office pool, I'm sure you were the winner of it.

1. Lisa Craig 2
2. Katz
3. Pat Kowalczyk
4. Scott 2
5. Duncan
6. Diana Beauchamp 1
7. Jerry Stevens
8. Kelly Fitch
9. Diana Beauchamp 2
10. Eric Breiland 

See you all in 2018

We Have A Winner And A Champion

Wow. What a great game tonight by Villanova and North Carolina. It kept me on the edge of my seat and hooting and hollering as the last few shots dropped into their nets. Such an enjoyable game this was to watch versus the semi-final blowouts. Villanova's shooting percentage was just lights out and the difference in the tournament.

Congratulations goes out to: Clint Magness. He correctly picked the winner of the tournament, the runner up, two out of four of the final four teams and six out of the final eight teams. Very well done!

The top five brackets are as follows:

1. Clint Magness
2. Tridi 1
3. Jeff "Maxxxxxxx" Maxwell
4. Kelly Mooberry 1
5. Cory Vogel

I hope you had a fun tournament the past four weeks and enjoyed as much basketball as you could watch. We will see you next season for our 21st year.

Duke Wins....Again!!

I must admit, being from Minnesota, I wasn't onboard with Wisconsin winning, yet again, because they have put together a great team and have great coaching and it's another sport they are doing well in. While here in Minnesota, we don't always seam to get our money's worth, while throwing plenty of cash at our coaches, just to see them leave or get let go after we sign them to an extended contract. However, the more I thought about it, put away my pettiness, jealousy, whatever you want to call it, I started rooting for Wisconsin to win.

I believe it's mainly because Duke has won it plenty of times, Wisconsin wasn't expected to win, and it was 1941 the last time they made it to the Championship game. But, I mentioned it in my last blog post, coaching appears to be key in this tournament. If you have great coaching, you typically have a better chance of advancing to the next round. You still need good players, but without good coaching, you're going to be sitting in my shoes rooting for Minnesota. Congrats to the Blue Devils on their victory.

As for the Office Pool results, with 76% picked correctly, Quincy Nguyen and his 186 points was our winner. Congratulations Quincy! There was also three others with 76% correctly picked, however Quincy correctly picked the lats four teams, the runner up and the champion correct.

Here are your top ten brackets for the 2015 tournament

1. Quincy Nguyen
2. Byrneit!
3. Dan Dylak
4. Brendan Lindsley
5. Ales Kunc
6. Mitchell Hahn
7. Irish Texan
8. Chris Charters 2
9. Sue Brown
10. Steve Tronovitch

See you in 2016 for our 20th Season of this office pool !!

Final Weekend Of The Tournament

We are starting back up for the final weekend of games. Is it surprising that three of last years final four teams have returned, or is it a sign of good coaching from year to year? Which ever it is, the winner of last years tournament has not advanced, which brings in Michigan State as the final team, led by Coach Tom Izzo. Coaching does matter.

Both of the semi final games tonight are on TBS, not CBS. However there will Team Cast broadcast for each team on TNT or truTV.

On TBS at 6:09 EST
#7 Michigan State vs #1 Duke

TNT Team Cast for Duke Blue Devils
truTV Team Cast for Michigan State Spartans

Approximately 30 minutes from the the end of first game they will tip off for the final game of the evening.

On TBS at 8:49 EST
#1 Wisconsin vs #1 Kentucky

TNT Team Cast for Wisconsin Badgers
truTV Team Cast for Kentucky Wildcats

For the Office Pool standings, we have exactly eight tournament scenarios remaining. They are as follows:

If Kentucky beats Michigan St
If Michigan St beats Kentucky
If Kentucky beats Duke
If Duke beats Kentucky
If Wisconsin beats Michigan St
If Michigan St beats Wisconsin
If Wisconsin beats Duke
If Duke beats Wisconsin

Best of luck to ya peoples....

And Then There Was One

That's it, we have our tournament champion, the University of Connecticut Huskies, or Yukon for short. Thank you Twitter for that one.

Watching the championship game, was it just me, or was UConn passing a bit to hard at times? Or passing a bit careless, an under the legs pass of the opponent that didn't connect, really? Granted, they still won, but yeow, it made me feel a bit nauseous during the game.

I wasn't sure who I wanted to win tonight, since both teams are in the final game quite often, and UConn had their NCAA violation, Kentucky has all Freshman starters who are one and done, but in the end, I went for UConn. Mainly because they had star players that have been on the team longer than one year. Blah to the one and done. Give me three, four or five starting seniors and I'll put you far in my bracket.

Notes from the game:

I never saw a camera shot of Ashley Judd, did I miss it or was she not there tonight?

UConn went 101-115 on free throws throughout the tournament, 10-10 tonight. Wisconsin went 19-20 and lost by 1....ouch!

On ESPN's contest, 27,203 had UConn as the winner out of 11 Million+ (0.3%) Our bracket contest had 3 of 431 pick sheets. Someone do the math for me as a comparison and email me. (.007% - Thank you JC for the email)

Which brings me to our bracket contest results. Congrats goes out to Jason Peterson with 144 points. He is our 2014 OfficePool64 Bracket Challenge winner! And I mean no disrespect, but with a terrible 65% pick percentage and only correctly picking three of the final eight teams, he pulled off a miracle finish to win our contest. I'll give you a minute to let that sink in, you only correctly pick 3 of the final 8 teams and win the tournament.

Other notable pick sheets:

Bernie of West Linn, OR with 73% correct
Doug Force of Huntington, the only one to pick 3 of the last 4 teams.
Brent Dilk of MFI's bracket contest, welcome to my bracket contest MFI, see you next year.
R Beyer 2 of Cincinnati, OH, correctly picking UConn.
Jason Calabrese of Watertown, CT, correctly picking his homer team UConn.
Grand Master Flash of Funky, MN, for having such a cool name.

And last but not least, David Letterman is finally retiring!

It's Been Fun, It's Been Real

Our bracket contest is nearly completed. I'm always bummed when the final weekend of games arrives, however it's 48 more short weeks until the next bracket contest begins. We sadly have three games remaining with eight tournament scenarios left. There are only four teams that have not been eliminated: Florida, UConn, Wisconsin, Kentucky

The semi-final games are Saturday on TBS, not CBS!! With the championship match up Monday, this time on CBS.

Florida #1 vs UConn #7 at 6:09 ET
Kentucky #8 vs Wisconsin #2 at 8:49 ET

From my quick look, only one pick sheet had three of four correct. There were a quite a few 2 of 4 correct and a ton of 1 of 4 correct.

After the first weekend of games, I was away for my 20th wedding anniversary vacation and had the current standings on autopilot. Aside from my pick sheet, all went as planned. I did get to see a few of the games, but not enough to create a blog post about it. A big thank you to my wife, yet again, for putting up with this tournament during our anniversary week. I just cannot convince the NCAA to move the March tournament to dates that don't interfere with my anniversary. I'm kidding, my wife actually will sit and watch the games with me because I enjoy it so much.

As I mentioned, there are exactly eight tournament scenarios remaining, they are as follows:

If Florida beats Wisconsin
If Wisconsin beats Florida
If Florida beats Kentucky
If Kentucky beats Florida
If UConn beats Wisconsin
If Wisconsin beats UConn
If UConn beats Kentucky
If Kentucky beats UConn

Best of luck to ya people!

Louisville Wins Title

Louisville will finally cut down the nets tonight by defeating the Michigan Wolverines by a score of 82-76. What a fun, exciting game it was to watch. The game was a lot closer than the final score. Siva, Smith played hard, taking control of the game. At one point, Louisville was down by 12 points to the Wolverines, but went on a 15-1 run with Burke on the bench with two fouls. Albrect, for Michigan came into the game to replace Burke for the second half and played unbelievable in the first half. At the half, Michigan clung to a one point lead.

In the second half, both teams let it all out and the intensity level was maxed. There was several lead changes, Michigan took a big lead. Not as big as their 12 point lead in the first half, but Luke Hancock went on a 14 point run to push the Cardinals into the lead for good. Beanana was the difference on the offensive boards. Just a great game all around.

As for our 2013 Bracket Champion, congratulations goes out to Robert DePrau of Rochester, NY. Robert scored 161 points and a 67% pick percentage. Just edged out two others who scored 159 points, that's one game in the first round and another pick sheet with 158 points.

Here are the top 10 pick sheets for the 2013 OfficePool64.com bracket contest:

1. Robert DePrau - 161 points
2. Melissa Cuddihy - 159 points
3. Ray Perkins - 159 points
4. Ryne - 158 points
5. Paul Kreuzer - 150 points
6. JLope - 149 points
7. MFG - 146 points
8. Skip Hood - 146 points
9. John Carlo - 144 points
10 John Paddick - 143 points

Congratulations to all of the winners and we'll see you in 2014.

Like A Stuck Record, Gators Win, Gators Win, Gators Win

Well, it wasn't that dramatic, but Florida repeats as National Champions of the 2007 Men's Basketball Tournament. All around a decent game to watch. Ohio State was able to keep Oden in the game, which the experts all said needed to happen if they even had a shot at winning tonight. What didn't happen for the Buckeyes was their outside shooting game. It was on the bench in foul trouble this game instead of Oden.

Florida, returning all five starters from the 2006 Championship team proved once again and earned their second consecutive championship. Corey Brewer was amazing, in my eyes tonights MVP. Other than Brewer, no one really stood out from the Gators. That is a good team effort, as it took everyone doing their job for tonights victory.

Michigan State Wins

Congratulations to Adam Mack! He is this years OfficePool64.com winner. With a score of 105 points, he correctly picked Michigan State to defeat Florida. Thank you to everyone who participated in this years office pool. I welcome any comments on what to improve for next years pool or how you liked this years. The top item on my wish list for next year is to allow everyone to see their picks, I just didn't have enough server space to allow that this year.