The Wildcat's Lair

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Bracket Battle 2007, Episode II

Bracket Battle Update

Well, the first weekend of the NCAA Basketball Tournament has come and gone… and some of our brackets are looking pretty bad at this point. Poor Frank isn’t doing too well. In fact, he’s dead last. I’ve held on to the top spot so far, but Hip is hanging in there. Uncle Kerouac on the other hand… well, he’s not doing much better than Frank (at least Uncle K can blame the catnip). Uncle Kerouac has lost three of his final four picks, so odds favor Frank might manage third place before it’s all said and done. That depends on North Carolina.

For those wondering how the score in our bracket battle is tallied, I’ll try to explain. First round picks are worth five points. Second round, ten points. Third round, fifteen points. Fourth round, twenty-five points. The semifinals are worth fifty points, and a correct pick on the championship game is one hundred. If you got every game right, you’d end up with 740 points.

Each of us started with that idyllic 740 points, but each wrong pick deducts points. In the first round, I managed to squeak by with only two wrong picks. That cost me ten points. But that didn’t make my score 730. No, my score at that point was 720. Why? Because, I’d also chosen one of my first round picks to win a second round game. That means I’d already lost another ten points, so after the first round I’d lost a total of twenty points. If that doesn’t make sense… well, then just take my word for it.

If you want to see what our brackets are looking like, then I’ve got them posted below. You can click on each for a larger view. Even in those smaller versions, you can already see quite a lot of red “X’s” in there.

The sad news is that after the second round of the tournament, we’ve lost all of the teams that had “wildcats” for their mascots. Kentucky was the last to go. All the others bit the dust in the first round.

Frank Hip

Uncle Kerouac Wildcat

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Bracket Battle 2007, Episode I

Another Year, Another Bracket Battle

Beware the Ides of March… especially when that’s the starting date of the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Just like last year, Frank and I are holding a bracket battle to see who can better predict the winners of the tournament. Of course, this year, we’ve got a few others joining into the battle. Frank’s Uncle Kerouac and my wife’s new pet dragon Hip have turned in their own brackets. Who will win? You’ll just have to follow along and find out.

Frank and I are especially excited because this year’s NCAA Tournament includes five colleges with “Wildcats” as their mascots: Kentucky, Villanova, Arizona, Davidson and Weber State. Sadly, none of us picked any of these teams to win it all. In Weber State’s case, those poor guys might as well change their mascots from the “Wildcats” to the “Sacrificial Lambs.” They face number two team in the Western bracket, UCLA. We’re guaranteed to at least see one Wildcats team make into the next round, though. Villanova and Kentucky face each other in the first round.

You can click on the pictures of our brackets below to see our predictions. We’ll keep you updated as the playoffs move along.

Frank Hip