Sunday, March 10, 2019

Same old, same old

Seems like every year we talk about how bad our contestants are at picking pools. Probably because it is every year. But in our 30th edition, this one's shaping up to be a classic.

We now have four conference champions, and in exactly none of them have our favorite won the conference. So far, the most popular winner was yesterday's news (Murray State in the OVC, picked by 23 (40.4%)). Three more teams joined the Racers today: those who said "Give me Liberty" in the Atlantic Sun won out, but that was only 16 entrants (28.1%). In the Big South, only one (1) of us managed to guess properly and take Gardner-Webb (that would be J Whiteside), which translates to 1.8%. But believe it or not, that showing surpassed our aggregate pool-picking power in the MVC, where zero (0, in other words, 0%) of us selected Bradley.

Four more conference titles will be decided in the next few days. In the last couple days in the MAAC, lowly Monmouth (chosen by two contestants, Gorenstein and Tester) beat Quinnipiac (taken by 13) and Canisius (liked by 5), and will face Iona (28) in the conference final tomorrow. Also tomorrow, Wofford (favored by 54) takes on UNC-Greensboro (favored by zero) in the Southern Conference. On Tuesday, it'll be St. Francis PA (28) v. Fairleigh Dickinson (21) in the NEC, and on Wednesday we'll see Colgate (32) v. Bucknell (18) in the Patriot League.

As one might guess, the current standings are a mess. Only 34 of us (59.6%) have scored any points at all. Amazingly, six of us (10.5%) have displayed sufficient legerdemain to have reached the lofty total of two (2) correct out of four (J Broder, L Donadio, M Josephs, R Simon, B Whiteside, J Whiteside) and those six share the early lead with ten points.

Stay tuned.

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