The NCAA Basketball Tournament is complete, along with the requisite office pools. I finished 22nd out of 25 in my own office pool despite having the 2nd most number of picks correct. As you might have guessed, I did not have Florida or Ohio State in the final game. The last couple years I've theorized that I should pick teams who I don't believe have the best chance of winning because their chances of winning are still excellent and a lot less people will choose them to win than the prohibitive favorites. This year (and it's easy to claim now, but maybe my step-dad would back me up on this one) I repeatedly claimed that I believed Florida had the best chance of winning the tourney. However, I ended up picking Kansas because I believed they had the 2nd or 3rd best chance and not as many people would pick them to win. In theory, I have a better chance of winning if those picks come through because so many others picked the overall favorite.
I now believe this strategy is counter-productive because my knowledge of college basketball is greater than the average person who fills out their bracket. This means that my advantage over the field should be greatest in the first two rounds when there are a large number of games between (relatively) unknown teams. This is what happened this year, as I ended up in second place after the first two rounds before my picks dropped off the face of this earth.
It seems obvious in hindsight that Florida was the best team in college basketball by about a mile. The selection committee figured this out way before everyone else, naming Florida the overall number one seed in the tournament despite what quite honestly was not the best performance throughout the season. But apparently Florida got bored, and then when the tournament started they were no longer bored. Hey, I get it. And if I would have made the picks that I really thought would have occurred, I still probably wouldn't have won, since I really thought Ohio State would lose to Texas A & M (due to A & M's ridiculous home-court advantage thanks to the committee sending them to San Antonio for the Sweet 16).
Oh well, there's always next year for the picks. I've got to win another one of these. Dawnell thinks I am basking in the glory of my 2003 bracket win (I had Kansas and Syracuse in the finals).
On to the NBA, which, in case you didn't know, is only about ten times better than college basketball! Let's go Jazz!
No comments:
Post a Comment