The Living Room Times

Ladies and gentlemen, the craziest Final Four ever, seen on my AYG #GiantBracket:

I thought for sure the bracket would be all boring black text by now. I’m thrilled it’s still colorful and exclamation point-filled. 🙂

Anyway, three years after all four #1 seeds made the Final Four for the first time ever, we have the first ever Final Four with no #1s or #2s. Instead, #3 UConn, #4 Kentucky, #8 Butler and #11 Virginia Commonwealth are the last four teams standing, all competing for college basketball’s national championship. And of course, virtually nobody predicted it.

In the ESPN Tournament Challenge, out of 5.9 million brackets submitted, exactly two — jspearlman and vinquach — have the entire Final Four right. In the 16th annual Living Room Times Men’s NCAA Pool, out of 206 contestants, only two managed to get even 2 teams right: Jen Deschenes of Newington, CT (UConn, Butler) and Matt Ralston of Chicago, IL (UConn, Kentucky). Another 57 contestants got 1 team right (UConn 46, Kentucky 8, Butler 2, VCU 1). 147 contestants, more than 70 percent of the total, didn’t pick a single Final Four team correctly.

Even so, there is enough potential for movement among those near the top of the leaderboard that a variety of scenarios are still in play. Specifically, there are four contestants still alive — a “Final Four,” if you will. They are: Dane Lindberg, currently in first place; Robert Carlos, currently in second; Ross Lancaster, currently tied for fourth; and Pat McGriff, currently tied for 17th. (Links go to their brackets.)

Lindberg, my friend and USC classmate who now lives in Arlington, Virginia with his wife Kristen Kotyk (whose brother attends VCU; Dane’s parents graduated from Butler), will win the pool if there’s a Butler-Kentucky title game, or if Butler beats UConn for the title. Put another way, he’ll win if Butler wins the championship or loses to Kentucky. (If he’d followed his wife’s advice to put VCU in the Final Four along with Butler, he’d have clinched the pool by now.)

Carlos, a USC Class of 2001 alum and former student trainer for the Trojan football and baseball teams, who I know only via Twitter, will win the pool if VCU beats UConn in the championship game.

Lancaster, a North Texas alumnus & grad student (SUN BELT WEST REPRESENT!) who I met via The Mid-Majority’s cult community of mid-major obsessives, will win the pool if there’s a Kentucky-VCU title game. Here’s a photo of Lancaster with the original Bally.

McGriff, an employee of Iowa State University who found my pools through the Internet some years ago, will win the pool if UConn wins the championship, whether over Butler or VCU.

Complete standings here.

Meanwhile, in the 14th annual LRT women’s pool, the tournament is down to the Elite 8, but a “Fabulous 15” are still alive to win — led by Andrew Long, currently in first place, who would win in 30 of the remaining 128 scenarios, and Jenna (Auriemma) Stigliano, daughter of the UConn coach, currently tied for eighth place, who would win in 26 scenarios. Full standings here; scenarios here.

Dane Lindberg, the son of two Butler alumni, who entered the 16th annual Living Room Times Men’s NCAA Pool via the above tweet (and a follow-up Facebook thread), retook the lead Saturday when #8-seed Butler shocked the world by beating #2 Florida and advancing to its second consecutive Final Four.

For Butler and its fans, the win not only clinched a stunning return to college basketball’s biggest stage for an archetypal mid-major program out of the Horizon League (where the Bulldogs went 13-5 this season), it also avenged memorable losses to Florida in 2000 and 2007 (the latter of which I witnessed in person, wearing the same t-shirt — bought before the game — that I wore today).

For Lindberg, the win means he now has 239 points out of a possible 364 in the LRT pool, and will win the pool if the Bulldogs win the national championship or lose the title game to Kentucky.

Lindberg, a friend and USC classmate of mine who now lives in Northern Virginia with his wife Kristen Kotyk, did not enter last year’s pool, but he wrote on Facebook (in the process of entering this year’s pool) that “I meant to tell you to put me down for Butler taking it all last year, and was bummed I had no way to prove it.” So he decided to do the same thing in 2011. And he almost did something even more remarkable: he tweeted Saturday that “Kristen wanted me to put in for VCU too, but I thought Butler to win was crazy enough.” Had he picked the Rams to reach the Final Four, Lindberg would have 263 points and a 25-point lead right now, and would be in position to clinch the pool Sunday if VCU and Kentucky win.

Instead, Lindberg has just a 1-point edge over Robert Carlos (@uscarlos) and just a 6-point advantage over Deanna Gabriel (@deannagabriel), who sit in second and third place with with 238 and 233 points, respectively. Carlos will win the pool if Kansas plays Kentucky in the title game, or if UConn loses the title game to either Kansas or VCU. Gabriel will win if VCU beats North Carolina in the title game.

Others still alive to win are Sergio Lopez, presently in 8th place with 223 points (wins if UNC beats Butler or VCU in title game); Charles Fenwick, 14th with 216 (wins if Kansas beats UNC in title game); Pat McGriff, 16th with 215 (wins if UConn wins the championship); Ross Lancaster, presently 23rd with 212 (wins if it’s a Kentucky-VCU title game); and Scott Paine, 38th with 205 (wins if UNC beats Kansas in title game).

Vicki Cheeseman is 4th with 228 points, but is mathematically eliminated from winning; the same goes for Darrell Kindle, Eric Schmoldt and 2005 champ Brian Kiolbasa, tied for 5th with 225 points. Even Jen Deschenes, presently in 16th place, is mathematically eliminated despite being the only contestant to pick both UConn and Butler to reach the Final Four. (Deschenes was just 21-11 in the first round.)

Complete standings here. I’ll update the women’s pool tomorrow — sorry for the delay there.

Dane, you may just win this thing. The Dawgs won’t stop barking! #fate?

GO BUTLER!!! BEAT FLORIDA!!! Avenge ’00 and ’07!!!

Your move, Richmond and VCU.

P.S. R.I.P., Jimmermania. 🙁

P.P.S. Duke sucks.

Heh. Gus has The Jimmer’s game tonight. w00t w00t.

Andrew Long and Jon Caplin — my best man and Becky’s cousin, respectively — are tied atop the 14th annual Living Room Times Women’s NCAA Pool with 200 points out of a possible 240. Each got just 3 first-round games wrong and 4 second-round games wrong.

Meanwhile, Jenna (Auriemma) Stigliano, wife of past pool champion Todd Stigliano and daughter of UConn women’s coach Geno Auriemma, is tied for third with Michael Watkins of Columbus, OH, with 197 points — and Stigliano, who has her father’s team emerging as national champion from a Final Four otherwise loaded with 2-seeds (Notre Dame, Texas A&M, and already-eliminated Xavier), is the slight favorite to win the pool, assuming all of the 32,768 possible scenarios for the tournament’s remaining 15 games are created equal. She would win in 13.8% of the scenarios, compared to 11.5% apiece for Caplin and Long, and 3.2% for Watkins. (Meanwhile, her husband Todd, my high-school classmate and the champion of the 2001 and 2005 LRT women’s pools, sits in 23rd place and would win in 2.2% of scenarios.)

Other notables: Defending champion Lauren Taylor is 22nd, and would win in 4.0% of scenarios. Becky is 12th, but cannot win because her remaining picks are identical to Watkins’ picks. Meanwhile Becky’s mother, Ginny Zak, is currently in 57th place, but would win in 12.8% of scenarios — second only to Jenna Stigliano — largely because of her highly unusual pick of #5-seed Green Bay winning the national title. I’m in 66th place, behind Becky, Ginny and Loyette, who is in 64th. No members of the Loy household are mathematically alive to win.

Full standings here and scenarios here.

The NIT Final Four is set — Colorado, Alabama, Wichita State and Washington State — and four contestants are still alive to win the 7th annual Living Room Times NIT Pool: Mike Quinn, Jeff Morrison, Matt Thomsen and my 3-year-old daughter, “Loyette.”

Quinn, a 2001 Illinois State alum, currently leads with 176 out of a possible 252 points. He got three of the Final Four right: Colorado, Alabama and Wazzu. Morrison, a 2004 Iowa State alum, is second, with 169 points. He also picked three of the semifinalists: Colorado, Alabama and Wichita. Morrison has Alabama winning the title; Quinn has Wazzu beating Alabama in the title game.

Thomsen, my 1999 Newington High School classmate and a 2004 University of New Haven alum, and Loyette, who is currently attending preschool, are among those tied for third with 154 points. They have identical picks going forward, and will finish tied with each other no matter what. The only question is where on the leaderboard they’ll be tied. If Colorado wins the NIT title — which both of them predicted — they’ll tie for first.

If Alabama beats Wichita State in the title game, Morrison will win. If it’s an Alabama-Wazzu title game, or if either Wazzu or Wichita wins the title, Quinn will win.

Ken Stern, a USC Trojan and long-time blog reader who lives in Thomaston, Maine, leads the 16th annual Living Room Times Men’s NCAA Pool after the opening weekend, with 193 out of a possible 252 points and a pool-best 12 of the Sweet 16 teams.

Among those twelve is VCU, though Stern actually picked USC to beat the Rams in the “First Four,” and then had the Trojans reaching the Sweet Sixteen. Under the rules, he gets credit for VCU’s run. (More on that later in this post.)

Gonzaga alum Benjamin Sloniker, presently of Moscow, ID, is second with 190 points. Alec Taylor is third with 189. Dane Lindberg — who has Butler winning the national title — Keith DeMonstoy and Jason Rogers are tied for fourth with 183. Full standings here.

(Incidentally, President Barack Obama would have 186 points if he had entered the Living Room Times pool, and indeed, would be winning the pool if the “First Four” picks — which he did not make — didn’t count.)

As for who is mathematically alive to win, the scenario listing is here. Lindberg, presently in 4th place, would win in the largest number of scenarios, 12.6%, presumably because he cleans up in nearly all scenarios in which his national champion pick, Butler, keeps advancing. In all, 82 of the 207 contestants are still alive.

Meanwhile, in the 14th annual LRT Women’s NCAA Pool, there’s a tie for first place between Peter Timbrell of Vernon, CT and Scott Paine of Pennsylvania, each of whom has 124 out of a possible 128 points after a 31-for-32 first round. (Timbrell wrongly picked #11 Dayton over #6 Penn State; Paine failed to predict #11 Gonzaga’s home “upset” of #6 Iowa. Both picked the tourney’s other mild upsets by #9 seeds Purdue, West Virginia and St. John’s, and #10s Marist and Temple.)

Six contestants are tied for third, one game’s worth of points behind Timbrell and Paine, and they include a member of women’s college basketball royalty. Jenna (Auriemma) Stigliano, the daughter of UConn’s coach, has 120 points (30-for-32), as do Becky Loy, Nate Evangelista, Michael Watkins, Lisa Velte and Matt Thomsen. Full standings here.

Finally, in the 7th annual NIT Pool, Jeff Morrison grabbed the lead from Charles Fenwick yesterday when Wichita State beat Fenwick’s predicted champion, Virginia Tech. Morrison has 114 out of a possible 162 points; Fenwick and Allan Lewis are tied for second with 107; and there’s a five-way tie for fourth among Matt Thompsen, Larry Caplin, Victoria Wagner, Tim Wiseman and Michael Greiner, with 104 points each. Full standings here; scenarios here.

Back to the men’s pool, where the new tournament format and pool rules have created an intriguing subplot in regard to Ken Stern’s lead. He is winning thanks, in part, to his pre-First Four prediction of a USC run to the Sweet Sixteen, with VCU filling the role of the Trojans. This very scenario was spelled out a week ago, as a hypothetical, and now it’s come true:

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What a great opening four days. Yeah, "my" teams (USC, Gonzaga and Notre Dame) are all gone, but still, a lot to love so far, and a lot to look forward to.

I’ll update the pools tomorrow. Must sleep now. Meanwhile, here’s my "As-You-Go" Giant Bracket (larger version here; webcam and explanation here):