2015 NCAA Basketball Tournament Pool: Friday Night Recap:

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Friday Night Recap:

Michigan State, Gonzaga, Louisville, and Duke joined the Elite 8 party tonight. In the process, the top of our pool's leaderboard changed as Davis Narey and Maria Dorn joined Ashley Jordan in first place. Those three brackets have 70 points, which is one point more than Donna Thiel's 69 points.

Only 19 brackets in our pool scored a perfect 12 points Friday night. Even more impressive, only 3 brackets in our entire pool (Davis Narey, Kelly Lacy, and Ryan Lown #1) nailed all of their Elite 8 teams. If you own one of those brackets, congratulations!

Our pool's average bracket correctly predicted 5 of the Elite 8 teams. Here's a quick summary of the number of brackets that predicted each of these teams would survive this long. Not surprisingly, Kentucky is at the top of the list:

For those of us that live in Wisconsin, Saturday's action will be highlighted by the rematch of last year's OT Elite 8 thriller between the Badgers and Arizona. Go Badgers!

For what it's worth, ESPN BPI gives the Badgers a 54% chance of advancing to the Final 4. On the other hand, most Las Vegas casinos have installed Arizona as a 1-point favorite.

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Pre-Tournament Odds to win 2015 championship:

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THE PERFECT BRACKET:

Want to be sure you have the perfect March Madness bracket this year? It's not possible.

If you were to stack the amount of paper it would take to fill in every bracket with every possibility among the 68 teams who will play 67 games over the next three weeks, it would not fit inside the universe.

So says Michael Weimerskirch, a math professor at Augsburg College who gets paid to think about numbers and the way they affect the Kentuckys, Butlers and VCUs of the world.

But there’s this small glimmer of hope. Weimerskirch says you could simply start flipping coins. The odds of finding perfection that way — by flipping a coin to pick the winner of every game: 1-in-100,000,000,000,000,000,000. For those keeping score at home, that’s 1-in-100 million trillion.

Or, to put it another way: “You’re just as likely to win Powerball three consecutive times as you are to picking a perfect bracket by flipping a coin,” Weimerskirch says.

NCAA Tournament History

The first men's college basketball game was played on January 18, 1896 between the University of Iowa and the University of Chicago. The final score was a mind blowing 15-12. Obviously, there weren't a lot of slam dunks and fast breaks back then.
The first NCAA Tournament was played in 1939 and was won by the Oregon Ducks. Back then, only 8 teams were part of the tournament. The final game drew 5,500 fans to Patten Gym in Evanston, IL
The 1941 tournament was won by Wisconsin. The Badgers beat Washington State 39-34 in the title game.
In 1951, the field expanded from 8 to 16 teams.
The 1956 tournament was the first in which the four regionals were given distinct names, although the concept of four regional winners advancing to a single site for the "Final Four" had been introduced in 1952.
UCLA won the 1967 national title - the first of seven consecutive titles for UCLA. The Bruins won 38 straight tournament games during their run of titles.
In 1970, Austin Carr scored a record 61 points for Notre Dame in a 1st round victory over Ohio U.
In 1971, the NCAA began forcing teams to accept an NCAA bid or not play in the postseason. The previous year, Al McGuire declined an NCAA bid in a dispute over Marquette's placement in a distant regional site. Marquette went to the NIT, instead, and won it.
In 1975, the field expanded to precisely 32 teams. This was the first NCAA Tournament to allow more than one team per conference. This change was a direct response to the 1974 ACC tournament final, which pitted arguably the two best teams in the country in NC State and Maryland.
In 1979, the field expanded to 40 teams and teams were seeded for the first time. Earvin "Magic" Johnson led Michigan State over Larry Bird and Indiana State to win the national championship. The matchup drew the attention of millions throughout the country. To this day, the 24.1 TV rating remains the highest ever for a college basketball game.
In 1980, the field expanded to 48 teams. The top-seeded 16 teams received 1st round byes.
In 1982, for the 3rd consecutive year, Depaul loses it's frst NCAA tournament game. This wouldn't be significant, except for the fact that DePaul was a #1 seed each year. The Blue Demons had earned a 1st round bye each year but lost to UCLA, St. Joe's, and Boston College in the 2nd round each season.
In 1985, the field expanded to 64 teams and every team played in the 1st round. Villanova made 22 of their 28 shots and defeated Georgetown in the championship game. The Wildcats remain the lowest seed (#8) to win the title.
The 1990 NCAA Tournament is remembered for an emotional run by Loyola Marymount in the West Regional. In the semifinals of the West Coast Conference tournament, Lions star forward Hank Gathers collapsed and died due to a heart condition. The WCC tournament was immediately suspended, with the regular-season champion Lions given the conference's automatic bid. The team went on to score surprise wins over New Mexico State, defending national champion Michigan (a game they won 149-115), and Alabama before running into a UNLV juggernaut in the regional final. Gathers' childhood friend Bo Kimble, the team's undisputed floor leader in the wake of the tragedy, paid tribute to his friend by attempting his first free throw in each game left-handed despite being right-handed. Gathers was right-handed, but struggled so much with free throws that he tried shooting them left-handed for a time. Kimble made all four of his left-handed attempts in the tournament.
In 1992, Duke won the national title. This tournament is best remembered for the East regional final pitting Duke and Kentucky. With 2.1 seconds remaining in overtime, Duke trailed 103-102. Grant Hill threw a pass the length of the court to Christian Laettner, who dribbled once, turned, and hit a jumper as time expired for the 104-103 win. Sports Illustrated has deemed it the greatest college basketball game of all time.
The 2000 Tournament was won by Michigan State. The surprise teams of the tournament were Wisconsin and North Carolina, which both made the Final Four despite being #8 seeds.
George Mason reached the Final Four as a #11 seed in 2006, tying LSU in 1986 as the lowest seed to reach the semifinals.
In 2008, all four #1 seeds reached the Final Four for the first time.
The 2011 tournament featured the first Final Four to not have one of the top two seeds from any of the four regions. VCU (an 11 seed), Butler (8 seed), Kentucky (4 seed) and UCONN (3 seed) combined to create the greatest seed number total ever (26) in the Final Four.