NCAA Day 3 - Initial stats

Good morning.  They have a strange schedule of games today.  They are starting off with a double header all by themselves.  Then they start starting games just about every 45 minutes - 1 hour.  I'll try to get to games in chunks of two.  They kind of make it hard for me to do that well.  I guess I'll have to survive somehow.

I was looking at the brackets last night, and here are some stats that I came up with:

41 entries still have all 4 Final 4 teams alive.  Sadly, this includes the Gutless brackets.  The only consolation to that is that of the 41 entries in this category, 33 brackets are currently ahead of them in the standings, making their road to the money a lot harder.  I'm all for making their road harder.

There are only 10 people that haven't lost any Elite 8 teams.  These 10 brackets are:

Ava S.

Carin C.

Chris M. #1

Daisy N. #4

Howard S. #1

Irene H. #1

Jackson I.

Julie S.

Missy W. #1

Stefan K.

Nobody has all Sweet 16 winners still alive, but Irene H. #1 comes the closest.  She is only missing Michigan State in the Sweet 16.  There are two others who are only missing Michigan State in the Sweet 16 (Dan Du. #1 & Danny H.), but they also have Michigan State going to the Elite 8 or Final 4.  Irene H. #1 has Michigan State losing to Utah, so that's the extent of her potential losses.  That's the best in the pool currently.

Second best is our defending champ Daisy N. #4.  She is missing only 2 Sweet 16 teams, and nothing beyond that.  In an interesting twist, she is not missing Michigan State (she has Syracuse in the Sweet 16).  She is missing the other big upsets of yesterday (California & West Virginia).  Still that's some pretty good picking so far.

I will remind people to keep in mind that we still have a long way to go.  Last year, the person in 1st at this point in the pool finished in 82nd.  The eventual champ was in 7th, but the 2nd and 4th place finishers were at 136th and 143rd respectively.  As I say when I calculate the probabilities, as long as you aren't mathematically eliminated, you still have hope.

Here's the first two games of the day:

Miami / Wichita State:

Miami: 121

Wichita State: 21

Other: 71

I read an article this morning about how Wichita State may be struggling in this game compliments of the cruel schedule the NCAA put them through.  They played the play in game, travelled from Dayton to Providence, played a game the next game at night, and then scheduled them to play the first game today.  That being said, Vegas still has them as 2 point favorites.  That should be a fun game.  I like Wichita State, and not just because their mascot is the only one I can think of that is a plant.  I like being proved right about play-in winners.  I almost always take at least one to make the Sweet 16.  I'm guessing everyone is tired of me talking about that by now.

Duke / Yale:

Duke: 123

Yale: 14

Other: 76

I think we are going to see a lot of the "Other" numbers this tournament.  In this case, it was the poor people that picked Baylor.  In Baylor's defense, they did have a great post game press conference if you haven't seen that yet.  It's worth checking out the question about how Yale outrebounded Baylor.  Obviously, I'll be rooting for Yale.  I hate Duke.

Good luck to everyone!!!!!!