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Fantasy Week in Review - NCAA Tournament Opening Weekend

By yellow fever


Group Standings (Top 10 of 177)

Rank
Bracket
Correct Picks
Points
Possible Pts
1 racsan anuragjain2006 39 of 48 51 119
2 Bear in Seattle JonathanC 36 of 48 47 143
2 Monty's Pythons Joe 38 of 48 47 99
2 GoBearsOn3 David 37 of 48 47 95
5 BenBraunsDeliBears ethan0l 36 of 48 46 126
5 CBKWitness WFS 36 of 48 46 114
5 Montezuma's Revenge Rich 34 of 48 46 114
5 ATQ Dave atqdave 36 of 48 46 110
9 Phoenix Five demkid2008 34 of 48 45 169
9 oh zhang! Todd 35 of 48 45 157
139 Yellow Fever * Brother Bruce 29 of 48 35 67


Ouch!

Take a look at the opening weekend's trends and some of the more notable comments on our group message board after the jump.

Of the 177 participants we have this year, six courageous, though misguided, souls chose Cal to go all the way. These were:

Not surprisingly, none of us ranked in the top 20.

Meanwhile, in stark opposition to picking Cal to go all the way, a disturbing number of people picked Louisville in the first round as CBKWit pointed out in last Friday's DBD. To put it more succintly:

Re: Picking Louisville

  • Message ID: 10
  • Mar 18 2:24am
you are a dickhead
Posted by: CBKWitness ( WFS )

While I didn't feel like going through all of the 176 other brackets to see who picked against our Bears, I'm with CBKWit. Never pick against your team. Never! And this is why I don't put money down on Nets games.

Anyway, let's take a closer look at some of this weekend's results, starting with those whose brackets got busted. And what better way to do that than to take a look at the distribution of championship picks?

Team Picks
Kansas 108
Kentucky 19
Syracuse 17
West Virginia 8
California 6
Ohio State 3
Duke 2
Robert Morris 1
Florida State 1
No Pick 12

  • Yes, 61% of our brackets took Kansas to go all the way.
    Ku_bkc_uni_nk_09_t640_medium
  • All four no. 1 seeds were picked to go all the way. Which means two terrible, terrible people picked Duke. These were Neuheisal's Winners and tbardhan-1. For shame.
  • Im with Coco apparently didn't realize you have to make all of your picks at once. I really hope this is the first time you've ever filled out a bracket, son.
  • Who took Robert Morris? Why, that would be DC Trojan's Last Place Picks. Which is only a misnomer because 12 people didn't make any picks. And also because Willy's Wild Picks took Florida State. Wait, what?
So who's going to win? Let's run the numbers under two very simplified scenarios.

If we have no more upsets and go with the higher seeds the rest of the way, Pippen Ain't Easy jumps from 85th to first, while AaronRodgersforPresident also moves from 85th into second.

If we have nothing but upsets and the lower seeds win the rest of the way culminating in a shocking national championship for the Cornell Big Red, Monty's Pythons will move from second into first, racsan will drop into second, and inexplicably I will move from 139th to third. No, really. It doesn't make any sense to me either.

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