Wild, Wild, Wildcats

We've run this contest for 25 years, and in every one of those years, our contestants have chosen a consensus champion. And every single one of those consensus champions have won. What? You find that hard to believe? Would you believe (we said, in our best Maxwell Smart voice), that almost every year our contestants have been right? No? Well, would you believe our contestants have at least been right more often than they're wrong? Still, no, eh? You're a tough customer. How about this, would you believe our entrants are correct often enough to, you know, be on the cusp of being sort of, maybe credible?

Aw, come on.

All right, you win. The actual answer is, a majority of our contestants have accurately predicted the national champion six (6) times in 25 years. Yeah, that does come out to 24%, what of it? well, if you're going to be that way about it...

So, while people who have time to click on internet polls on ESPN may think Kentucky has a better shot of winning than the field, they probably haven't heard that 37 of our 79 entrants (almost 47%) have chosen Kentucky to be their champion. So, yeah, we don't know about you, but we're taking the field.

Overall, eight different teams got votes for champion. And in what may be a contest first, all eight of our choices are either #1 seeds or #2 seeds. And the top four vote-getters are the four #1 seeds. Freaky, right? The full breakdown is as follows:

Kentucky: 37
Duke: 18
Wisconsin: 11
Villanova: 4 (Bi Acchione, Geo B, A Cristinzio, O'Brien)
Virginia: 3 (Brenner, Templeton, C Whiteside)
Gonzaga: 3 (Booth, M Josephs, K Ripley)
Arizona: 2 (N Donadio, S Leach)
Kansas: 1 (J Whiteside)

Also, note that three of the eight teams getting votes for national champions have the nickname "Wildcats." We'll let you figure out which three they are.

Meanwhile, for NCAA tournament games that nobody ever watches, the "First Four" had a lot of excitement this year (if something that nobody watches can be exciting, it's the falling-tree-making-a-sound thing all over again), featuring three games decided by four (4) or fewer points. Advancing to the actual NCAA tournament are Hampton (a team that evened its season record at 17-17 with the only double-digit victory of the four), Mississippi (comeback winner by 4 over BYU), Robert Morris (comeback winner by 4 over North Florida), and Dayton (comeback winner by 1 over Boise State on Dayton's home court in front of 12,000 Dayton fans).

The real games start tomorrow.