Through day 2 of this March Madness, I still have a couple of brackets which are doing pretty well. I have different brackets on ESPN, Yahoo! Sports and Facebook. I’ll break each one down but the best of the 3 is a tie with ESPN and Yahoo! Sports both having 26/32 correct picks and then Facebook only one game behind at 25/32 but that might be the one in the best shape.
A couple of things to note before my review:
- With round one now complete … the ESPN.com Tournament Challenge looks like this:
- Approximately 4.8 million completed brackets were submitted.
- There are no brackets that are completely correct.
- There are 3 brackets that have missed only one game.
- There are 95 brackets that have missed two games.
- There are 1,111 brackets that have missed three games.
- Most brackets, on average, have missed 10 games.
Click ‘Read more‘ to read the rest of review of my brackets.
ESPN: (Link to Bracket)
Correct Upsets: (9) Northern Iowa, (10) Georgia Tech, (10) Missouri, (10) St. Mary’s, (11) Old Dominion, (11) Washington, (12) Cornell, (13) Murray State:
I was beginning to get a little worried in this bracket with so many upsets and I did get burned on a couple too many 5/12 calls but was rewarded for my faith in a weaker Big East and picking ODU and Washington to beat Notre Dame and Marquette. 8/9 and even 7/10 to an extent I don’t consider upsets as much but 11+ are the real ones where this should not happen but it does — every year. Congrats to Cornell and Murray State and hopefully they can win a game or two more and bust some more brackets.
Incorrect Favorites: (3) Georgetown and (8) Texas:
I don’t think anyone in their right would have taken Ohio to upset Georgetown. A really tough year in the early goings for Big East might have them re-evaluating the tough conference schedule and tournament but I don’t think you change anything. You see favorites like Syracuse and Pittsburgh really blowing their opponents out like they should and a Villanova team that really struggled down the stretch showed it in a tough one against Robert Morris.
As for Texas, they had that game to win. A missed free throw inside 10 seconds and unable to come up with a semi-loose ball in the paint allowed Wake Forest to come down the court and eventually hit the game winner. Tough way for Texas to go out but it just symbolizes how rocky of a season it was for a team that was ranked #1 in the country at one point in the season.
Final Four: (1) Kansas, (1) Duke, (4) Wisconsin, (7) BYU.
Champion: (1) Kansas defeats (1) Duke.
Overall: This bracket does have 3 incorrect picks from the Sweet 16 and ideally, you only want to lose 1 or 2 from the first round but I will take it for now. I really like what I have done in this bracket in terms of upset predictions but I think this one finishes 3rd best out of the 3 I am listing in this post.
Yahoo! Sports: (Link to Bracket)
Correct Upsets: (9) Northern Iowa, (10) St. Mary’s, (12) Cornell, (13) Murray State:
No new upsets here from above, nothing more to add here.
Incorrect Favorites: (3) Georgetown, (6) Marquette, (6) Notre Dame, (7) Clemson, (7) Oklahoma State:
Way too many favorites there incorrectly picked and this is more of a protection bracket in the chance that Big East did not fail, this would have done even better than where it is right now at 26/32.
Final Four: (1) Duke, (1) Syracuse, (2) West Virginia, (6) Tennessee.
Champion: (1) Duke defeats (1) Syracuse.
Overall: Incorrectly picking Notre Dame and Marquette to be in the Sweet 16 might end up costing me in this bracket but I like my chances for it to finish 2nd best out of the 3. 13/16 still alive for the Sweet 16 but no mistakes into the Elite 8 yet and hopefully that will carry me.
Facebook: (Link to Bracket)
Correct Upsets: (9) Wake Forest, (10) St. Mary’s, (11) Old Dominion, (11) Washington, (12) Cornell, (13) Murray State:
New Mexico State and Utah State gave me momentary glimpses of hope that every single one of my predicted upsets would come true but it was not meant to be.
Incorrect Favorites: (3) Georgetown, (7) Oklahoma State, (7) Clemson, (8) UNLV:
Less than a handful of incorrect favorites here and selections of OK St and Clemson were just foolish on my part to think they might pull out the win even though they were overrated coming into the tournament.
Final Four: (1) Syracuse, (2) Villanova, (3) New Mexico, (4) Maryland.
Champion: (2) Villanova defeats (1) Syracuse.
Overall: By far, the best shape any of my brackets are in. 7 incorrect picks in the first round but I have none of those teams advancing into the Sweet 16 and all of those teams are still in tact. I think (6) Tennessee should be able to beat (14) Ohio and (5) Butler might be able to hang on against (13) Murray State where the right half of this bracket for me is basically chalk — only into the Sweet 16 though.