Brackets! First round upsets! Your surprise team!
Listen closely, no one cares. Sorry to break the news to you but no one wants to hear what you think about the east region. And no one wants to know your Final Four.
Sounds cold, but it's true.
There is nothing worse than the guy in the office, or these days on zoom, telling you why he thinks Gauchos of UC-Santa Barbara can beat Villanova and then uses things like: "they run the floor well" or "these can guys can flat out shoot" and this doozy "they are fundamentally sound". That guy didn't see a single second of UC-Santa Barbara basketball.
You will likely hear how good Liberty is. The Flames are really good, but other than fans of Liberty, no one watched them play unless your last name was Bilas.
We had no tournament last year and many offices are still not opened so we all will miss the guy that lives for Selection Sunday so he can be the person to press send and drop your mailbox with the "office pool" and reminding you how much it cost, how much you can win and when you have to have your picks in. He then would kill somewhere between 10-14 hours over the next three days in the office reminding you and everyone to play and get your picks in.
And who doesn't like the guy who runs around telling others that he thinks he's coming down with a cold and might have to "call in sick Thursday and Friday". We all know that guy. He knows all the upsets and tells everyone the wing restaurant "everyone" is headed to on the first day of the tournament and brags that all the waitresses love him. He is also a bad tipper and no one in the restaurant likes him.
Everyone has a friend who just laughs and says "I pick teams based on their mascots". Great, get lost.
There's always the guy that in the bracket contest you can see his picks goes 18-14 after the first round but tells you in this "online contest" he entered he is 7th among 1.5 million entrants.
Ok, now to some actual data if you are considering entering a bracket contest:
--83% of Final Four teams are seeded 1, 2, 3 or 4
--But a 5 seed or lower has made the Final Four five consecutive years
--A 1-seed has a 86% chance of making it to the Sweet 16
--Since the current format of 64/68 teams, a 1-seed has won 22 times
--No 5-seed has ever won the title but a 6, 7 and 8th seeded team has
--People love 12-seeds to beat 5-seeds. It happens 36% of the time
--9-seeds have won 51% of games over 8-seeds
--Since 1985, 58 of the 70 teams to play in the title game were a 1, 2 or 3-seed
--1-seeds have won 22 of the last 35 tournaments
Notes:
--Colgate plays in the Patriot League. They did not start playing their season until January and played no non-conference games. They played on 15 games and they came against only five opponents
--San Diego State has won 14 straight
--Rutgers hasn't made the NCAA Tournament in 30 years and haven't won a game in 38 years
--Texas Southern is in the tournament with a strength of schedule at 341
--FSU opponent UNC-Greensboro is located in Greensboro
--Iona was on pause for 51 days before returning and then getting a positive test and then sat out again until the MAAC Tournament, which they won
Good luck in your pools and remember, they guy who claims to know, knows nothing.
Final thought:The first NCAA Basketball Tournament was held in 1939 and featured eight teams and saw Oregon beat Ohio State 46-33
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