Pondering March Madness Picks

This year I did something I’ve never done before. I filled out my very own March Madness brackets. The picking of winners in the NCAA tournament has been a ritual in my home for as long as I can remember. As in years past, my husband and son pondered—no, painstakingly labored—over their picks, considering things like player and coach quality, tournament history statistics and testimony from columnists and ESPN commentators before printing out on their web-site generated brackets form. Their picks were chosen with the wisdom and meticulous care only the most compulsive college basketball fans possess. I, on the other hand, did something only slightly more sophisticated than eanie meanie minie mo before scribbling my picks on the newspaper brackets sheet.

The one bit of information I paid attention to were the seeds, the ratings between 1 and 16 assigned to teams in each region based on records and schedules. I stubbornly ignored the advice of the handicapping help sidebar, information that included statistics and tournament history to supposedly help pick the winners. I paid no attention to things like the top 25 teams by region, nor did I check last year’s tournament record that showed the Big East with more bids, first round wins and a higher winning percentage than the Big 12 or Pac 10.

I ignored information about the Final Four berths and national titles from the past twenty years. And I skipped over the seeds of hope section that revealed the not-so-surprising news that #1 seeds had a winning percentage of almost 80% as compared to a 0% winning record for the #16 seeds. No, these things I looked at only afterwards in a useless attempt to understand what my husband and son deem critical to the successful pick process.

Though I wasn’t as knowledgeable as the men in my family, I took the whole thing quite seriously. I wanted to take some risks—to show some guts, so to speak—so I chose a few upsets in the first round. My heart played somewhat into the process as I picked my childhood hometown teams to go far—Georgetown to the Elite Eight and Maryland to the Final Four. My other Final Four picks included Pittsburgh, Texas and Louisville, this last pick made because—and this is one thing I know—Rick Pitino is a great college coach.

Sentiment also played into my pick for the overall tournament winner. One of the few players I’d heard of was A.J. Abrams, a guard for the Texas Longhorns, and for reasons that might seem both silly and obvious, I was rooting for him. For this namesake reason—in addition to the presence of freshman phenomenon Kevin Durant—Texas was my choice to win it all.

It wasn’t until I’d finished my picks that I realized I’d failed to have any # 1 seeds make it beyond the Sweet Sixteen. Not too smart in retrospect, a scenario that would no doubt leave bracketology experts snickering and shuddering and shaking their heads. But I’d scribbled my picks in ink, so that was that.

So how have I fared so far? The good news is that eleven of my picks made it to the Sweet Sixteen. The bad news? Three of my Final Four picks were knocked out, including Texas. Though my picks were admittedly pathetic, it was fun following it all, rooting for teams that, with a mere stroke of a pen, became “mine.” And I will definitely fill out my brackets next near, though only after analyzing every last tournament trend, record and statistic from the beginning of time.

(This column was originally published on townonline.com March, 2007)