Since I always pick Duke to win, this messes up my bracket somewhat.
Okay, I don’t follow college basketball very closely. How astonishing was this particular upset? Duke is, well, Duke (in my books, one of the Mount Rushmores of college basketball along with UNC, Kansas, and Kentucky, I guess), so even if they were only a 3 seed that still seems like a huge upset, and I didn’t know Mercer had a D1 basketball team. So is this of historic not to say biblical proportions, or just an impressive and unexpected feat that ranks up there with a bunch of others every year?
Fun fact: One of my grandfathers taught at both institutions.
Take solace in being the front-runner for the “Most Hilariously Understated Admission of a Busted Bracket” Award.
If there’s a guy with a perfect bracket now, I’d like to shake his hand. And ask him to pick some lottery numbers. I’d like to know what % picked Mercer to knock off Duke.
I’d imagine a non-insignificant number. There is just a lot of Duke hate. Every pool I’ve ever been in had a couple guys put a Duke first round loss, out of spite, but did the rest of the normal standard.
It was pretty unexpected, but in hindsight it seems like it could be the start of a trend. The Bears are from the same conference (Atlantic Sun) that gave us last year’s Cinderella team, the Florida Gulf Coast Eagles.
The deciding factor was the player’s ages, IMO. Mercer put out a squad of 21 & 22 year olds; Duke’s average age was about 19.5. That’s a whole lot of experience, and a whole lot of experience playing together, that Duke couldn’t match. I thought at the end you could see the youth of Duke’s players in the too-quick shot attempts and the suddenly sloppy rebounding, where Mercer’s team locked down the fundamentals and ran away with the game.
I suppose. They’re kind of the Yankees of college basketball, you either love them or hate them. Plus all the Mercer grads probably penciled in their own school. But if you’re playing for money and betting with your head and not your heart, I’d be astonished at anyone who called this one going in. And if you got the Harvard-ND State-Mercer perfecta, you’re on your way to winning whatever pool you got in to.
Picking early upsets and winning the pool are not highly correlated in my experience.
A number of years back, someone in my pool picked 15 of 16 first day games correctly. The game that was not picked correctly was a minor upset of Louisville. Who did that guy pick to win it all? Louisville. So, good day for a broken bracket.
There are still 50+ still in the running for the Billion. Good luck to them all !
That is impressive.
I am in the 99.8%, but i had Duke going to the elite 8, so that particular region is hosed.
I am kicking myself about Duke, however. Not that I would have picked them to beat Mercer. I never saw Mercer play this year, and know literally nothing about them except their team nickname. But I should have not picked them to get to the elite 8. Even the sweet 16 was a stretch for Duke this year, and logically I knew it. I just tend to see Duke playing the opening rounds in a NC state location, and automatically move them through. But they were a very average team this year, certainly not up to normal Duke standards, and I believe they were too highly seeded at a 3.
I would imagine that many people got hosed by Duke, so for the ones still left in the running for the billion, that is simply impressive. And lucky. You cannot be perfect in the brackets without luck.
I doubt anyone will be perfect after this weekend.
If anyone sees the UMass basketball team, could you let them know that their game started a while ago now?
:smack:
This puts me at 1-1 on my money picks so far today.
At this point, the only prediction I would make with any confidence is that the billion won’t be paid out.
ESPN is reporting that the Buffett Billion challenge is done, as nobody is perfect at this point. In the ESPN pool, out of 11 million entries, three are still perfect. But the late Friday games are still to come. They also said that in all of the years that they have been doing this, only one has gotten the first 32 games correct.
I was actually surprised that no one has ever put together a completely correct bracket.
It just would seem that with all of the entries, all of the pools and all kids of people with all sorts of selection methods, one person somewhere would have randomly put together a perfect bracket.
But now that. I know it hasn’t happened once (officially, as far as anyone knows, anyway), I doubt it will ever happen.
It’s an impossible task. People that know about college basketball will pick more right than wrong, but no one could possibly predict every upset. People that know nothing about basketball will pick many of the upsets, but they will also miss games that favorites win.
The only way for a perfect bracket to happen is if the tourney went chalk.
And that has never happened.
I went ¾ today. Picked Gonzaga, SF Austin & Baylor correctly.
My bracket only missed on Duke, New Mexico and Colorado. That said, I think this speaks to a larger issue in college basketball, namely, the parity. This parity exists because name brand teams like UNC, UK, etc can no longer field teams with any semblance of continuity.
Look at Kentucky. Won it all two years ago, a year ago, lost in the first round of the NIT to Robert Morris…this year started out as the consensus number 1 and slowly slid all the way out of the rankings at season’s end. Yes, they won today and they are talented, but they aren’t a TEAM. Calipari has lamented this fact over and over yet he still pursues the one and done talent.
Their matchup against Wichita State is VERY intriguing to me. Heck, UNC should have lost to Providence today, and that’s yet another example of a “dynasty” program struggling to compete against the mid-majors.
This has probably been said a lot but the fact that the super players enter the NBA early has made the NCAA much more interesting. The thought of an Alcindor/Jabbar carrying a team for four years is unthinkable.
Parity, teamwork and great coaching is what it is all about. That, with a big dose of luck.
It’s not necessarily the level of talent that makes for great athletic competition. It’s competitiveness. Blowouts are booooooring. Tight games, comebacks and upsets are what make it entertaining. That’s what the NCAA tourney has. It’s only the second day and we’ve had it all.
I’m not a big basketball fan but the NCAA mens BB tournament is the best.
It isn’t until Duke has gone down in flames that I can really, truly enjoy watching the tournament. God love the Mercer Bears for their public service.
When Lew Alcindor/Jabbar) was playing for UCLA they only had 25 teams in the tournament. UCLA, as a top seed, only had to play 4 games to win it all in 1969. That certainly helps. Of course, before the late 70s only conference champions made the tournaments (plus a few independents), and almost all of those conferences didn’t have a conference tourney, the champion of the conference was based solely on the regular season results.
The current NCAA championship is now more of a crap shoot… a raffle, really, where better teams are buying extra raffle tickets, but no guarantee. I don’t know why they don’t just scrap the regular season and just seed every college team, regardless of size; maybe let Junior colleges participate… add in a few top HS programs to fill out the field. Start the tournament the weekend after the Super Bowl. Early losers get seeded into consolation tournaments, with even more brackets they can play. And, while I’m only jesting, I’m sure it would get big ratings.
I understand why March Madness is a big success, but I’d still like to see a playoff system that’s a little more sane. The great UCLA teams, under Wooden, would not have fared so great under the current system – maybe 5 or 6 wins.
I mentioned this in the Tourney Pool thread last night but thought I would ask about it in this thread. Before the tip of the Kansas State - Kentucky game, Kentucky got to shoot two free throws (and made one) due to a technical foul being called on a K-State walk-on for dunking during warm-ups.
As someone mentioned in the other thread, this rule has been around forever. But why? What’s the point of it? Is this an archaic rule like “You can’t have an ice cream cone in your back pocket on Sunday” that probably had a good reason for existing at one point, but is no longer reasonable yet is still on the books? Why is a dunk any different than a free throw, or a three point shot, or any other kind of shot that might be taken during warm-ups? Is it considered poor sportsmanship or showboating or something?