Picktometry 101

Ahhh, Selection Sunday, the greatest Sunday of the year. A day where we anticipate the winners of the final conference championship games, guestimate which bubble teams will get in, and exonerate those teams which you think deserve the number one seeds.

However, it is after all the questions are answered and all the "I told you SOS" have been uttered, that all the fun begins -- filling in your bracket.

I consider myself somewhat of a bracketologist. In fact, my friend and I have our own selection Sunday and we pick the teams and seed them before the committee does, just to see how close our picks were to the committees. Of course, any difference in our bracket and the official bracket is a mistake made by the committee, not us.

I believe that being a good bracketologist, naturally makes me a good picktometrist. If I am able to pick the correct teams to have in the tournament and seed them reasonably close to how they get seeded by the committee, then I should be able to pick the winners of the games. Right?

Wrong. I have never won an office pool I have ever been in. That's zero wins in about 20 tries.

It is interesting to see how some people fill out their brackets. Especially those who don't really know a whole lot about college basketball. They come up with some really creative ways to fill out their brackets. These methods range from the preposterous to downright absurd.

I think I might try one of these ways. What do I have to loose? What I always loose at about this time every year, $10.

I have put together a list of some of these "methods" along with an example final four for each one:

The Shotgun Method

These bracket fillers using this method have no clue what the difference is between the PAC-10 and the BIG-10, Lute Olsen and the Olsen twins, or Big Monday and Black Sunday.

These are people who are usually pleaded to by office pool managers to get in the pool. Free money for all of us who have a clue.

They use various shot in the dark rituals to pick their winners -- the roll of a die, the flip of a coin, or they team up with a buddy and use paper, rock, scissors. My four year daughter, Alyssa, could pick winners with the same accuracy as the shot gunner.

Here is an example of a Final Four that I came up with by using playing cards. The team with the highest card won the game. Aces were high and jokers were even higher. Here are the results by region:

St. Louis - Utah

East Rutherford - Charlotte

Atlanta - Mississippi State

Phoenix - UL-Lafayette

This really is not that bad for a shot gunning method. All these teams with the exception of UL-Lafayette have at least a small chance to get to the final four. Maybe I'll try this method a few more times and pick the final four out of the bunch.

I remember when some friends and I pushed a friend that had no idea about college basketball into joining our pool. After about 24 hours of "come on, pleeeeease." He accepted. Easy money, we thought.

He picked his teams using a random number generator on a calculator. He won the pool.

Beware the Shot gunner.

The _______ Mascot Method

You fill in the blank. Coolest, cutest, toughest, most intimidating. The ways to choose teams using mascots are endless.

This method is similar to the shotgun method and gives similar results--amusing yet ineffective. Women are the most common users of this method preferring to choose the cute mascots over the tough, mean, scary ones. I'm not trying to put women down, there are a few good female picktometrists out there. My point is, that there is no way a Saluki could beat up a Blue Devil.

Many mascot choosers pick a theme and stick with it all the way to the final four. Here are a few examples:

The All Hades Final Four:

Atlanta - Duke Blue Devils

Phoenix - Depaul Blue Demons

East Rutherford - Wake Forest Demon Deacons

St. Louis - Ill-Chicago Flames

The What the hell is it anyway Final Four:

Atlanta - North Carolina Tar Heels

Phoenix - Vermont Catamounts

East Rutherford - Manhattan Jaspars

St. Louis - Lehigh Mountain Hawks

Okay, the Mountain Hawks aren't that strange of a mascot. But I think there's a question here that begs to be asked -- what's the difference between a Mountain Hawk and just your everyday run of the mill hawk?

The All Hades Final Four looks pretty good.

The Best Record Method

This has gotta work, right? Obviously, the team with the better record is the better team.

Makes sense... until your bracket is overrun with 12 and 13 seeds. In fact, using this method on this years bracket, three of four 12 seeds win their first round games and all four 13 seeds win theirs. Murray State, a 12 seed, makes it to the Elite Eight.

Yeah, that's a winning bracket.

Another drawback to this method is a lot of teams have the same record, thereby requiring some kind of tie breaker method. The mascot method and team colors are frequently used as tie breaking methods.

Going through this years bracket using this method, there were two instances which needed a tie breaker -- Illinois-Chicago Flames vs. Providence Friars and the Seton Hall Pirates vs. Arizona Wildcats.

How were these ties broken? I'm afraid the Friars will not win many tie breakers using the mascot method... Aaaargh.

Here is this years final four using the best record method:

Atlanta - Mississippi State

Phoenix - Stanford

St. Louis - Gonzaga

East Rutherford - St. Joseph's

Ummmmm.

The Hometown Hype Method

This method is used by those who think that there is no team out there who can defeat their hometown team. This belief is commonly spread out to the hometown team's conference or state.

Living in Austin, Texas, I see this a lot. The Longhorns are unbeatable, baby!

The people who use this method are also the people who call up sports talk shows and ask questions like, "Murray State played Kentucky pretty well this season, what do you think their chances are to win the National Championship?" Or, they make statements like "Alabama State is the real deal, Duke doesn't have a chance."

They also hang up quickly and "listen to the response off the air."

Here is an example of a Texas Hometown Hype final four:

Atlanta - Texas

Phoenix - UTEP

St. Louis - Kansas

East Rutherford - Texas Tech

Time to move to a different state.

Those are just some of the ways to pick teams in an NCAA tourney pool that I find, well, amusing. I have decided not to use any of the above methods. I feel that I possess a lot more knowledge of college basketball than most, and that I can use this knowledge to pick teams in a logical and successful way.

Besides, I'm due.

Using this bottomless well of knowledge, I have picked my final four:

East Rutherford - Pittsburgh

Atlanta - Duke

Phoenix - Maryland

St. Louis -- uhhhh, Georgia Tech and Kentucky, tough choice. Really difficult to choose. Georgia Tech is battle tested, have beaten a tough Duke team. Kentucky, probably playing the best basketball in the nation at this time...

Hey, Alyssa, who do you take in the Georgia Tech -- Kentucky match up?