Wild, Wild North

We're sorry we haven't been able to post over the past four days. The writer-commissioner was on the road with spotty internet access. But we're back and have lots to talk about.

For starters, would you believe that out of the 12 automatic bid winners so far, a whopping 33% of them (that's four for the math-impaired) start their school name with "North"? Certainly easier to believe is that all four of these northern teams came as complete surprises to our contestants. Well, if we wanted to be fair we'd note that Northern Iowa winning the MVC was only a surprise to a bit more than half of us, having been chosen by 38 of our 79 entrants. But being fair has never been one of our goals, so we'd much rather dwell on the fact that only 22 contestants selected North Florida to win the Atlantic Sun, just 15 of us favored North Dakota State to win the Summit, and only 12 poolsters were savvy enough to go with Northeastern in the Colonial. To round out the theme, a mere four (4) entrants (Fitch, E Pogach, Mash Leach, T Cristinzio) had the sense to pick Robert Morris in the Northeast Conference.

Of course, this begs the question: how many of the 12 conference champions did more than half of us predict? That answer would be three (3), or 25% to the math-capable. Those three easy-to-guess conference champs were Gonzaga (chosen by 78), Wofford (taken by 68), and Valparaiso (selected by 58). No matter how you slice it, however, that's fewer than the number of conference-winners starting with "North."

It's also fewer than the number of conference champions (four) chosen by fewer than five of us: Robert Morris in the NEC (4, see two paragraphs above); Belmont in the OVC (4: Butscher, Crotts, L Leach, Booth); Manhattan in the MAAC (Madison Leach only); and Lafayette in the Patriot (nobody).

Pretty far away from North, 26 of us cashed in with Coastal Carolina in the Big South.

In the America East conference, Albany (taken by 65 of us) will take on Stony Brook (picked by just 6: Gorenstein, Atkinson, L Leach, M Peloso, Serri, Grossman), this coming Saturday. Other than that conference and the 12 conferences who have already crowned their champions, the only eliminated team chosen by any of our entrants is Bowling Green in the MAC (liked by 7: D Kornfeld, R Wanger, T Cristinzio, Kovolski, E Pogach, Serri, T Joseph).

Practically the last thing we said before our hiatus was that Yale had bulled its way into control of the Ivy League race. Practically the next thing Yale did was flop against Dartmouth, blowing their seemingly insurmountable lead and dropping into a first-place tie with Harvard, which will be decided in a one-game playoff this Saturday at the Palestra. This was sad news for Joe Mc, Templeton, E Pogach, Hahn, Steinhardt, and P Ripley, all of whom picked Yale, but not so sad for Nocilla, who we erroneously reported to have picked Yale but in fact picked Harvard.

Out of the 12 conferences that have been decided, just three (3) of our 79 contestants have gotten more than half right. Not coincidentally, those three are our current leaders: T Cristinzio is atop the leader board with 38 points, followed closely by E Leach and Rubinson, both of whom have 35. All three of these guys can stand proud knowing they've gotten 7 of 12 correct so far, for a percentage (58.3%) that would have gotten them held back in middle school. Even worse than our leaders, although still better than the vast majority of our entrants, are the six playahs who so far have predicted exactly half of the conference champs (that would be 6 for those pesky math-impaired): Dye, with 33 points, and S Leach, Mash Leach, Mahalko, R Simon, and J Whiteside, each of whom has 30. It should be noted that Mad Leach and L Leach are among the six contestants tied for 10th place with 28 points, meaning we have a Leachfest like never before seen in these parts, with five Leaches currently in our top ten.

Full standings may be seen here, or in the Standings link on the right hand side of the page.

Anyway, we're home now, so expect contest updates more regularly from here on out.