The upsets have reared their wonderful heads as we conclude the round of 32! With a number 9, Iowa, knocking off a 1 seed, Florida, and a couple of mild upsets with number 6 Tennessee eliminating number 3 Virginia and the 5th seeded St. Johns knocking of the 4th seeded Kansas, the brackets in EQE March Madness have been thrown into total disarray. And we kind of like that. The Florida loss in particular resulted in a massive shuffling of the standings as just three entries had Iowa making the Sweet Sixteen while all but six had Florida advancing. Yeah, that’ll disrupt things a little.
At the top of the Current Points standings we have Steve is Boss and Epic Pipe Wrench in first and second place, each somehow having managed to pick 13 of this round’s 16 games correctly. Impressive…….ah, but looking at Possible Points causes things to change immensely as Steve is Boss tumbles all the way down to 68th place while Epic Pipe Wrench plummets even further to 94th place. Why such a huge differential? Well, sadly Florida’s loss threw a wrench into Epic Pipe Wrench’s plans due to a prediction that Florida would win it all. Meanwhile Steve Is Boss saw two Final Four picks go down to defeat. So much for reading too much into Current Points standings.
So we have to drop down to a couple of the teams that currently sit in third place to find entries that represent realistic threats to make some noise in the rest of the tournament. Newman1 leads the way in that regard as the bracket is one of just two that has all Elite Eight teams still alive. Right on Newman’s heels is KAOS Agent and Old School at 90 current/220 possible and 89 current/219 possible, respectively. Any or all of these appear to be among those with a decent chance to finish in the money.
But still it is too soon to draw any kind of conclusions and certainly it’s presumptive to count anyone out…………oh, except for those entries that presently display those pesky asterisks. Sadly eleven brackets have already been declared DOA. Shockingly Pope’s Picks is not among those eleven, although the bracket is solidly on the cusp. Only because of the semi-upset orchestrated by St. Johns is Pope’s Picks surviving.
It appears that this year’s Brandy Award will be bestowed upon Zoe Bracket. With only five correct picks among the 16 Round 3 games and the elimination of all but one of the selected Elite Eight picks, Zoe Bracket has broken the stranglehold that Pope’s Pick has maintained on the Brandy Award the past four years. The final Brandy Award score has not been determined yet as we wait for Zoe Bracket’s five surviving picks to suffer a slow death, but with 47 points presently and a maximum possible 62 it won’t be long before we officially crown the new Brandy Award winner.
You’ll notice also that each surviving team now displays a Best Possible Finish, most of them being first place through mathematical possibilities, but if you see a 4 or a 5 next to your bracket you might want to hold off on making any grand expenditures. Look for these numbers to begin changing dramatically as next week’s games get underway, but in the meantime for those fortunate enough to remain alive feel free to bask in the glory of the possibility of being an EQE March Madness champion.