The pools are, as always, free to enter. Winners will get a t-shirt*, and eternal glory. Complete rules here. Entry links below. Good luck! Men’s NCAA Tournament Pool: Current standings here. Scoring system: 3-4-7-10-16-24-33. Women’s NCAA Tournament Pool: Current standings here. Scoring system: 4-7-11-17-24-33. NIT Pool: Current standings here. Scoring system: 7-10-15-20-25. *As I’ve mentioned before, I’m two years behind… Read more »
If there’s one region on my bracket that’s giving me major headaches right now, it’s the Southeast. The region has some incredibly weak top seeds (#1 Pitt, which always seems to be a paper tiger come tournament time; #2 Florida, grossly overseeded for no discernible reason; and #3 BYU, struggling without Brandon Davies) and five of the strongest mid-majors in… Read more »
It’s become clear to me that most pool administrators are handling this newfangled “First Four” different than me, and concerns have been expressed about the Tuesday deadline, and the uncertainties created by those Tuesday & Wednesday games. As such, I’ve had a change of heart about the pool deadline and rules. I’ve decided to utilize the ingenious “Option 3” described… Read more »
WHEEE!!!! It’s College Basketball Christmas!! Here’s my annual Bubble Scoresheet, to be marked up and followed-along-with during the Selection Show, to give a clearer idea of how many bubble spots are left. I show 13 teams competing for 6 spots (although really, VCU, Missouri State and Harvard could just as easily be in the “very likely out” category — I’d… Read more »
Before it gets completely lost and forgotten in the impending insanity of Selection Sunday, the Big Dance and the Living Room Times NCAA & NIT Pools, here’s the archive of my entire liveblog (via Twitter) of the Big Sky championship game Wednesday night. It was a truly epic experience — I was sitting just a few feet in front of… Read more »
First things first: you can now “like” the 16th annual Living Room Times NCAA & NIT Pools on Facebook. Do that now, and you’ll automatically get an update Sunday night when the pools are ready to go. Secondly… after much deliberation and some excellent analysis by blog readers, I’ve decided to abandon the “upset points” idea, and stick with a… Read more »
When I set up the first Living Room Times NCAA Pool in 1996, I was using a primitive piece of DOS software (yes, DOS!) that assigned, by default, point values through the tournament’s six rounds in a 5-7-10-15-20-25 fashion. I’m not sure if this was customizable, but even if it was, I gave it zero thought. I’d never run an… Read more »
At tonight’s Big Sky title game, courtesy of MockSession: Here’s the photo I took as that was happening: UPDATE: Northern Colorado is going dancing! And I was there to see it! Indeed, much like Kyle and Bally did at Long Island tonight, DU Bally and I rushed the floor with the UNC students: For more photos and video, see my… Read more »
Last night, the league I’ve been following all season (because of my Pioneer Pulse blog), the Sun Belt, provided us with what The Mid-Majority calls the “first eternal highlight reel moment” of this Championship Fortnight: a game-winning #superhoop by Arkansas-Little Rock’s Solomon Bozeman, showing why he was the conference’s player of the year: The entire ending of the game, particularly… Read more »
The fifth-place finisher in the six-team Sun Belt West, Arkansas-Little Rock (19-16 overall, 7-9 in regular-season conference play, RPI #200), is your 2011 Sun Belt Champion, bound for the NCAA Tournament (almost certainly by way of Dayton) for the first time since 1990, thanks to the last-second heroics of conference player of the year Solomon Bozeman. What a game! Congratulations… Read more »