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'RAY BUCKNELL!!
Stupid Bucknell being all dumb! They just HAD to ruin my bracket last year! Harumph. I am NEVER picking Kansas to win a national championship again...for at least another year. :)
I actually picked Bucknell over Kansas because I'm an alum and the Bison were a 14 seed (and thus, had better precedent for an upset on their side) rather than the usual 15 or 16 seed that the Patriot League usually gets. I didn't end up winning my bracket, but I was a mad genius for a day :-)
Another classic in the making right now on ESPN ... Michigan State v. Boston College.
You want to talk "mad genius"? I picked Bucknell AND Vermont AND Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and those were the ONLY 12-seed-or-below upsets I picked in the first round last year. I went 29-3, which was was an all-time record in the 10-year history of my annual NCAA pool! Alas, my bracket was torn to shreds the next day, when, in the FIRST GAME of the second round, my national champion pick, Gonzaga, lost. But ah, that first round was glorious!! :)
I also picked Valparaiso to the Sweet 16 in '98, Gonzaga to the Sweet 16 (alas, not the Elite 8) in '99, the first time they went, Gonzaga again in '00 and '01, Creighton in the first round and Southern Illinois and Kent State to the Sweet 16 in '02, Butler to the Sweet 16 in '03, and Manhattan in the first round in '04, and I'm probably forgetting a few others.
I pride myself on picking the upsets. Of course, I usually also pick a few duds. For example, in 2003, I picked #14-seed Northern Iowa to upset eventual national runner-up Georgia Tech. Oops!
What was unique about 2005 was that I didn't make a single false pick of a major first-round upset, and yet I got the three big ones. Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Vermont were legit picks -- I knew they were good. (Vermont was totally underseeded.) But Bucknell was a total "gut" pick. There was no good reason to pick them, but dammit, I wanted to. I agonized and agonized and finally decided to stick with it. Thank goodness I did!
Of course, I have yet to match the eternal glory (hat tip: Albus Dumbledore) that Becky achieved by correctly picking #15-seed Hampton in 2001, after I had explicitly warned her that picking #15-seeds was a very bad idea. (This from the guy who picked #16-seed Fairfield over North Carolina in 1997, out of home state pride. But hey, they almost won!!! I was on the edge of my seat.)
Impressive. Early upsets can carry you a long way if your pool rewards them by adding bonus pts equal to the seed of the team you picked . . .
Yeah... unfortunately, I'm locked in to the same basic points formula (5-7-10-15-20-25, no upset points) that I used n 1996, because I want to keep the scoring in my pools consistent through the years, so I can compare past scores with present scores etc.
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