NCAA March Madness - All entries are in!!!!

All right!!!  I finally got everyone's brackets entered into my master scoring spreadsheet.  I think this is a first for me - I actually get to watch at least half of the first game.  I want to thank the people that used the spreadsheet that I sent out with the pool announcement.  It may not have been necessarily easier to use than some other brackets on line, but it cuts down the time I need to transcribe the picks into my master scoring spreadsheet by about 90% - and eliminates any possible errors by me.  It really helps out.  Outside of tracking down payments, entering the picks into a spreadsheet for scoring is the thing that takes the most time.

But who cares about that?  Games are on - right now!!!  It looks like the powers that be decided to be kind to us and offer up some potential upsets right away, as both opening games are 12/5 matchups.   If you went on line for any kind of advice, you would see that at least one of these games results in an upset almost every year.  The 12 seed of choice this year was Middle Tennessee State, who had 120 people pick them to win vs. only 104 taking Minnesota.

Those that can do the math will no doubt see that we have 224 entries into the field this year.  This is slightly more than last year, which comes as a bit of a surprise to me, since my old company, Pratt & Whitney, shuttered the plant site I used to work at.  Luckily, a lot of my old co-workers were still able to enter, but there's nothing like a giant office building to gather brackets quickly.

All right, here are the pick distributions for the first 2 games:

Notre Dame: 197

Princeton: 27

This actually turned to be the most lopsided of the 12/5 games.  No love for the Ivy League this year, I guess.  That may be a mistake.  The Ivy League has a good track record in the opening rounds.  I think a big reason for that is because up until this year, they didn't have a tournament to decide the automatic bid.  I'm not a big fan of that.  I'd rather the regular season champ makes it.  I like to reward consistency over the course of a season as opposed to just getting hot over the course of a few games.

The second game looks like we may be primes to see our first upset -- NC Wilmington currently is only down 1 point at halftime to Virginia.  The picks were:

Virginia:  178

NC Wilmington: 46

I'm going to see if I can find Tru TV to watch the second half.  I'll be back shortly with some more stats and the pick distributions for the second set of games.

Good luck to everyone!!!!!