NCAA Pre-Season and NCAA Tournament Games

So the tournament is almost upon us - I figured it would be a good time to look back and forward.

Now that the field is set let’s take a quick look back at my pre-season predictions for the Final Four for this NCAA basketball season


The Good!

North Carolina

This one looks pretty good. They are the number 3 over all number 1 seed. If Ty Lawson is healthy this team has the potential to win it all. If he doesn’t play, or play that well, I still don’t see much competition from the rest of the south. Looks pretty good

UConn

This one also looks pretty good. Not quite as good as UNC because of Dyson being out. But there are very few players who can change a team’s strategy like Thabeet. He is a monster on defense and starting to figure it out on offense. Memphis is a touch draw for them if they go that far. Looks good, not great.

The OK!

Purdue

Well they are in one of the top 20 seeds in the tournament. They struggled during stretches but not the Hummel is playing again they were able to perform more at the level I expected them. They did just win the Big Ten Tournament but they will run into UConn and Memphis if they go.


The Bad

Notre Dame

Well Mr. Harangody and Co. couldn’t keep the home court streak in tack or make it out of the tough Big East. Yeah, not too good a year for the Irish; Well at least St. Patty’s Day is still coming!


So I did ok with my predictions. Notre Dame really hurt me, and the fact that Purdue and UConn will have to play each other means the max my pre-season I can get right is 2. We will wait and find out how I did.


Now looking forward it’s time to fill out the brackets!

I traditionally wait until Tuesday to fill out my brackets just so I don’t make any rash and dumb decisions. I will have a post about this tomorrow

I will be doing at least 2 pools and maybe three. The for sure ones that I am doing is the office and family (free and bragging rights) pools. I am sure I will get roped into a few more.

I am also doing a fantasy tournament. In this, there are 11 teams and 25 players per team. Each team picks players in the tournament. Which ever team's 25 players score the most points throughout the tournament wins.

So not only do you want to take somebody who's going to score a bunch of points, but you want players going deep. If a guys scores 20 ppg, but loses in the first round, you only get 20 points; but if you have a guy scoring 5 points a game over 6 games, that's 30 points.

Pay out is:

Top three Scoring Teams pay out
Team with the highest individual scorer pays out
Each rounds highest scorer pays out

So there’s lots of ways to win. Here’s the official site for it http://swkncaa.com/


The last thing I might compete in is a Tournament Auction. Starting with the 16 Seed each team is auctioned off. 16 Seeds go for like a dollar while 1 seeds go for $150+. Each win your team gets, the more money they bring in. I am not sure if I will be participation in this auction this year.

There are lots of ways to enjoy the tournament, let me know of some of the things you guys will be doing.

Lastly, some random info about this year’s tournament. The State of Ohio is sending 5 teams to the tournament which is the most of any state. California, New York, Pennsylvania and Tennessee are all sending 4. 33 of the 50 states are represented.