Tuesday, April 08, 2008
It's Madness!
It's taken me five tries to do it, but for the first time in the history of our marriage, I've actually succeeded in beating Shelly at picking an NCAA Tournament bracket. Every year I get all confident in my male-enhanced abilities to pick the right teams (even though I don't really pay attention to college basketball before the tournament), and every year Shelly beats me. Even more frustrating is the way she does it - she almost never picks any upsets. This year, I think she picked three upsets, and two of them were 5 seeds beating 4 seeds in the second round. So sure, she picked the Final Four all correctly whereas I only picked three of them, but when it came down to 1 seed vs. 1 seed, I got the Final Two both right (although I picked Memphis to beat Kansas, which they would have done had they hit a stinking free throw*). The fact that I came in first in my friend's non-betting bracket pool (for the record, Shelly was second) was just icing on the cake.
* I watched the ending of the championship game last night, and for perhaps the first time (maybe second) in my life, I have witnessed an instance where a team is down in the final minutes and begins fouling just to stop the clock, and actually wins. Kansas was down by 9 points with less than three minutes left, but they made a key steal-and-three, and a couple of other clutch shots, like the 3 to tie it up with 2 seconds left, and Memphis choked on free throws, and then Kansas recovered in overtime. Amazing. So I guess if this strategy works one in 1,000 times like it did last night, it's still a better strategy than just giving up and letting the clock run out on you, which works 0 in 1,000 times.
* I watched the ending of the championship game last night, and for perhaps the first time (maybe second) in my life, I have witnessed an instance where a team is down in the final minutes and begins fouling just to stop the clock, and actually wins. Kansas was down by 9 points with less than three minutes left, but they made a key steal-and-three, and a couple of other clutch shots, like the 3 to tie it up with 2 seconds left, and Memphis choked on free throws, and then Kansas recovered in overtime. Amazing. So I guess if this strategy works one in 1,000 times like it did last night, it's still a better strategy than just giving up and letting the clock run out on you, which works 0 in 1,000 times.
Comments:
My congratulations for winning the Forbidden Donut bracket (and to Shelly for finishing second). I guess I'll have to start treating you with more deference now.
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