March Madness 2023 Opening 4 games.

 Good morning everyone!!!  I finally finished entering brackets into my scoring spreadsheet.  I’ll post that this afternoon.  That will be really important for a couple of reasons.  First, some of you sent me PDFs or screenshots or something else where I had type in picks.  You’ll want to check that I did that correctly.  I use this spreadsheet for all scoring, and if I have something wrong, you could lose out on points.  I won’t be accepting any changes after this weekend, so please make sure you double check those.

Second, it’s always a bit of a challenge to match up payments with brackets.  I think there may be some people that have paid, but I don’t remember seeing a bracket from them.  If that is the case, send me your picks and let me know.  I tried to enter everything I got, but I may have missed something.

Third, some people gave their brackets nicknames.  In years past, I have kind of ignored those and stuck with people’s names.  This makes my life easier when it comes to paying people off at the end of the pool.  It’s a little harder to know who to pay when the winner is “Go Zags!”.  About half way through, I made a compromise with myself and decided to put nicknames in and the owner in parentheses.  It makes the names a little longer, which may be a little less aesthetically pleasing, but it’s probably not a big deal.

So, barring any missed brackets (see above), we wound up with 232 entries this year.  That’s about 20 or so more than last year, but still a little shy of the 250 I said would need to pay out 5 places.  That means that I am only paying out 4 spots.  The good news is that the winners get more money – and it’s less work for me.  Still 5 places would keep more people alive for longer, so it’s both good and bad.

So, all morning I’ve been putting in sheets for everyone, so I have watched exactly 0 minutes of actual basketball.  Luckily, the first game is one of the most irrelevant games of the whole pool.

Game 1:

Maryland / West Virginia

Vegas Line: West Virginia -2.5

Picks for Maryland: 91

Picks for West Virginia: 141

Only 12 people have the winner of this game winning even one more game.  That means that for most of us, this game means a grand total of 1 point out of 192.  I’d like to think that wouldn’t make any difference, but who knows.  It might.  With this many people and so many people picking similar games.  I think it would be pretty wild if the 8/9 game on Day 1 was the deciding factor in the tournament.

Game 2:

Virginia / Furman

Vegas Line: Virginia -5.5

Picks for Virginia: 195

Picks for Furman: 37

You know, I have a love / hate relationship with Virginia.  I know they are the only #1 team to ever lose to a #16.  The next year, they were a #1 seed again and they won the whole thing.  Most years, I love Virginia, but this years team has been overrated all season in my opinion.  They’ve been ranked as high as #5, I think, and I don’t think they should have been ranked at all or barely ranked.  Another thing working against Virginia is that the Vegas line opened at -6 and moved down to -5.5.  You never want that line to move against you.  That’s usually a good sign of where the public is.  That being said, Furman is not the #13 seed most people have as an upset over a #4.  We’ll get to that one later.  Virginia is actually the #4 seed 2^nd most likely to advance based on the pick distribution of our group.  Only Connecticut is picked more times.

Game 3:

Utah State / Missouri

Vegas Line: Utah State -1.5

Picks for Missouri: 91

Picks for Utah State: 141

Do people realize that Missouri is technically the “favorite” here?  They are the #7 seed, but people really seem to be hating on them.  Honestly, I did too, so I shouldn’t throw stones.  Part of that is my bias toward the Mountain West.  I don’t know many people that know much about Missouri.  They used to be really good about 20 years ago.  They were one of those perennial top seeds that lost early.  This is also a good indicator of who is only picking by the seeds.  I think Utah State and West Virginia are maybe the only 2 lower seeds that Vegas has as the favorite.  Full disclosure, I really hate any person that picked only by the seeds.  One of the best day of the tournament is when everyone that does that is eliminated from the pool.  In years past, I have done a good job of discouraging that type of entry.  That had a negative side effect of not knowing when that bracket was knocked out.  This year, I entered a “Sacrificial Gutless Bracket” that is only by the seeds.  We should all celebrate when that brackets gets knocked out.  If it wins, I’ll give all the money to charity.

Game 4:

Kansas / Howard

Vegas Line: Kansas -21.5

Picks or Kansas: 231

Picks for Howard: 1

Mad respect for Brandie H.  I always think it’s not  great idea to pick a #16 over a #1.  The risk/reward really doesn’t make much sense for this pick.  Brandie H is the only person that saw that risk / reward calculation and laughed in its face.  She will have bragging rights over all of us if it happens.

Speaking of which, if that happened, would it be the biggest upset in NCAA history?  Kansas is the defending champion.  A lot of people thought they should be the #2 overall seed over Houston.  I don’t know if it would be bigger than UMBC over Virginia, but it would be a close call.

Also, people seem to be pretty down on Kansas this year.  I feel like this Kansas team has a lot in common with Kansas of last year.  It seems like last year, people really liked the other #1 seeds (Gonzaga, Arizona & Baylor).  I agree that this region looks to be the toughest, but Kansas is still really good.  Of all the #1 seeds, Kansas has the fewest picks to win it all.  They actually have fewer people picking them to win than UCLA.  I’ll break down the regions later, but this region looks like a total toss-up if you look at the picks.  There’s always one wacky region.  Maybe this will be it.  Regardless, I predict they have no problem with Howard.

Enjoy the first games.  I’ll be back after the first set of games.

Good Luck!!!!!