The art of making one’s March Madness picks is one fraught with choices that often require some very unique thinking. Sure, it’s easy -and tempting- to go with Number One seeds. After all they’re supposed to be the best in the field. Well, that turned out to be errant thinking as not one top seed made it out of the Sweet Sixteen. Same with the Number Two seeds………oh, and the Number Three seeds too. In this season of upsets it came down the point where a Number Four seed, Connecticut, ended up winning the NCAA Championship.
But no way did anyone in the EQE March Madness pool actually pick Connecticut to win, right? Uh, wrong. Actually, four entries had UConn winning it all. And those four entries all ended up in the money. Led by the entry entitled Bruininthedark (who interestingly had the Bruins bowing out in the Sweet Sixteen) those bold enough to pick a Number Four seed saw their creative thinking pay off. Or was it creative thinking? Well, we at headquarters through some intensive investigation found that the name “Bruininthedark” who we can now reveal was Lesley Pope, is in fact not a rabid UConn fan, but rather a UCLA grad and a massive Bruin fan. The entry came from her unique strategy of making completely random guesses in the dark when the power failed during one of those pesky atmospheric rivers. Take that all of you “experts” who spent hour upon hour studying matchups, team tendencies, and records while drinking Jack Daniels until Sean Davis made sense! Take a tip from Lesley – turn out the lights, click on random winners and then sit back and collect your winnings. Hope you learned something.
Finishing Number Two in the pool was the entry named “Connba Walker,” submitted by the wife of two-time pool champion, Tom Chan, who in fact did attend UConn and probably did not make wild guesses during a power failure. Loyalty does have its benefits.
Third place was taken by another UConn loyalist, “U CONN DO IT,” Todd Shoentrup. Evidently, he yells this phrase loudly at opportune moments.
Fourth was taken by the only entry that displayed faith in San Diego State, and the only entry that did not pick UConn to win it, EQE Sedan. Our own tournament director, Kent David, deftly and correctly predicted the Aztecs losing in the Championship game. Unfortunately, he had them losing to Texas, but still managed to finish in the money.
And you’re not going to believe who the fifth-place finisher was. Remember our old friends, the Badger family? The wildly entertaining and astonishingly misguided series of entries, three of which were contenders for the Brandy Award? The ones who placed three entries in the bottom five? Oh, and won the Brandy Award with Badger04? Yeah, that Badger. Well Jeff Baum came out of the tournament a winner in the end, snagging fifth place with an entry, Badger05, that correctly had UConn winning it all. A bit of a silver lining among an otherwise horrific series of entries. Thanks for providing us with some awesome entertainment, Jeff!