[Scott's Pool Updates]

Friday, March 28, 2014
Issue # 9.3.2 "Usual Suspects"
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TRADITION WINS OUT
Beyond Elite 8 goes 3-1 but Hawkeye holding on

9 MILES FROM 5.1 EPICENTER, CA (smt)- For all the talk of the narrowing of the gap between the elite traditional teams and the mid-majors, it'll be #7E-UConn (2 titles, 4 Final Fours since '99), blue-blood #8MW-Kentucky (3 titles, 5 Final Fours since '96), and #4E-Michigan St. (1 title, 6 Final Fours since '99) going to the Elite 8 and not better seeded #3E-Iowa St, #4MW-Louisville (despite being defending champion), and #1E-Virginia.  Those traditional elite teams played clutch down the stretch while the three losers committed costly turnovers, took bad shots and missed key free throws.  UConn hit 11 of 12 free throws in the last 47 seconds, Kentucky hit 6 of 7 in the last 2:12, and Michigan St. hit 5 of 6 (before missing the last one intentionally) in the last 33 seconds to seal their wins. 

In the first game of the day, #11MW-Tennessee had a chance to go up by 1 in erasing a 8-point deficit with 2 minutes left and 5-point deficit with 32 seconds left.  A controversial charge stopped that and overly great defense by the Vols actually cost them nearly 6 seconds leaving them only 3 seconds at the end - too little, too late, as #2MW-Michigan is one of 3 Big Ten teams in the Elite 8.  Seriously, there were way too many delays for 50/50 calls on balls that went out of bounds.  The replay should be used to reverse obvious INCORRECT calls, not ones where you have to analyze who's fingernail it went off of.

Beyond Elite 8 was the only one to go 3-1 to go from a tie for 46th to a tie for 7th (99 pts), and over the whole Sweet 16, leapt from a tie for 65th.  He was also the only one to go 6-2 for the Sweet 16.  But for the sixth straight gameday, Hawkeye is in 1st with 108 pts. He is followed by Bigtenfan2 (104), Wooden-Soldier (103), and Nwspring 1 (102).  First Four Out was one of 26 to go 0-4 today but is just the 4th entry ever to go 0-for-the-Elite 8.  He is now one of 6 that will go 0-for-the-Final-Four.  However, kind of like the 76ers, despite this run of futility (Milwaukee is the worst), he is not in last as that honor goes to Go Deep (63), who got 1 of 8 Elite 8 teams.

Despite being in 1st, Hawkeye is only 3rd (13.3%) in the chance to win the pool's record prize of $555Bigtenfan2 (32.8%) and Wooden-Soldier (15.6%) have a better chance.  All three have a better than 60% chance to win money.  46 still have a chance for money and only 14 can win the pool.

Just 66 are still eligible for the $40 Bonus.  The Big 10 has come on strong and leads with 9 wins (I remember some analyst saying the Big 10 will fizzle and that stuck with me... darn) with the Pac 12 and SEC with 8 wins each (remember, First Four wins do not count).  With the current matchups, the possible winning conferences could be the Big 10 (11-15 wins), the Pac 12 (10-11), or the SEC (10-13).  There is also a chance there will be a tie between conferences and if someone doesn't pick ALL tied conferences (or no one gets the correct conference and wins), then we would go to Bonus2 (total pts in final), putting a bunch of entries back into the mix.

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   Tids & Bits - The 4th Annual HWCI NCAA First Four for Charity benefiting The Friends of Renee was won by Guilio B who was the only person to go 4-0 and a write-up will be in a future update... including the First Four, there have been 6 OT games thus far but none in the past 28 games... Louisville coach Rick Pitino lost for the first time in the Sweet 16 (11-1)... 5 still have their Final Four alive...  Badzy is tied for 69th (89) but can still win the pool while Shibai69 is tied for 5th (101) but can't win 1st!... Bigtenfan and Luke I am Your Father are tied for 15th (97) but can't finish in the top 6 while Sisyphus69 is tied for 98th (82) but can still win 4th!... 65 picked Michigan, 8 UConn, 3 Kentucky (Here We Go Picks (30th-T, 89), Beyond Elite 8, and BigBlue (67th-T, 84)), and 84 Michigan St... 60 entries that won't win money or the Bonus1... if you want to know which of the 128 possible outcomes you could win money in, you can Tweet/Facebook comment/Blog comment; for example, here is mine (The Fabone XX (9th-T, 98))...

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Spencer's first real earthquake and he still wanted to continue to watch "The Pirate Fairy" (I was watching NCAA on Moto X); Ava's first, too, but too young (more frazzled by our actions) ...

Scott


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