Perhaps this advice is coming a week too late, but this morning I will give you free (and unsolicited) advice on how not to fill out your bracket.
1) Do not pick your team to win it all when they lack leadership, cohesion, and an inside presence (by which I mean a tall player who is capable of moving without “traveling” and who is able to put the ball in the basket (at least occasionally).
2) If you do pick your deeply flawed team to win it all in one of your brackets, forgodsake don’t do it in both.
3) Don’t pick your “other” favorite team to meet your favorite team in the final game when your “other” favorite team also lacks leadership and cohesion and when their (admittedly skilled) big man is out indefinitely with a fractured back.
4) Do not pick every member of your favorite team’s conference to advance in every game in a sort of giddy solidarity, casting aside such usual indices of success as seeding and record and ranking.
I’m sure there are other pieces of advice I could offer, but these are the ones that rise to the surface this morning, as I try to post-rationalize my dismal showing in the Idiots’Hoopla standings and try to contemplate the prospect of the tournament’s section weekend, which will feature games by neither my favorite team or my second favorite team. And only one member of the aforementioned conference with which I felt such misbegotten allegiance.
Let’s look at those standings now, shall we?
If those numbers are too small to read, click here to see them on the ESPN site.
At whatever scale, the truth is the same, in spite of my enthusiasm for college basketball, when it comes to picking games, I am defeated by wish fulfillment.
For now, please join me in congratulating TopologyKate, who leads our group with 470 points and 1,000 more possible points remaining.
In second is rower97bu, with 450 points but 1,200 possible points remaining. Which sets us up for a good old fashioned dog fight.
And let’s not forget Eeny Meeny Miny (with 440 points so far a 880 possible points remaining), who might still surge to the front of the pack depending on what happens next.
The only thing I know for sure is this: I will not be this year’s champion.
If only I had learned to follow the advice of my good friend who never picks his own team, using the following logic: if his team wins, he will be happy because his team won; if his team loses, he will be sad because his team lost but happy because he picked correctly.
I am left with a loss on top of a loss.
Please don’t weep for me. Instead, learn from my tragic mistakes.
I know I won’t.
