Busted brackets

Broken hearts and broken brackets. This year’s NCAA tournament featured both. With Butler’s devastating 61-59 loss to the four time national champion Duke Blue Devils, the tournament came to an end.

This tournament featured at least ten major upsets, which led to more problems with the annual tradition of making brackets.

Filling out a bracket is as easy as 1, 2, 3… all the way to 16. There are 64 teams in the tournament, split into four brackets of 16 teams each. All you have to do is predict the winner of every game of each round until you have a national champion crowned.

Photo Courtesy of AP. Butler University's Matt Howard shows his dejection after losing the National Championship game and in the process crushing thousands of brackets.

This year, more than 7 million people filled out brackets on ESPN.com, not to mention the thousands of office pools; not one person in North America had a perfect bracket.

Whether it was the dagger by #9 Northern Iowa’s Ali Farouhkmanesh that ended #1 seed Kansas’ title hopes, or the down-to-the-wire game between #1 Kentucky and #2 West Virginia, almost everyone’s bracket was destroyed because only one #1 seed made it into the semi-finals.

Second-year student and seventh-year bracket participant Colin Washburn said that it’s so much fun to do a bracket because of the challenge involved.

Courtest AP. Butler's Gordon Hayward hoists up his "almost" game-winning half court shot.

“I love getting a ton of [people] into a pool,” said Washburn. “It makes the tournament so much more fun to watch and it’s so unpredictable that when you pick a big upset, you can brag about,” he said jokingly.

Another bracket/tournament enthusiast, Andrew Barnett, has filled out a bracket in each of the last ten years and has only won his pool once.

“Last year, I won 70 bucks in a pool with 15 other people,” said Barnett. “But it’s so tough because you never know how it turns out.”

Finally, for Andrew Holmes, this year, much like the tournament, winning his pool came down to one final shot. Butler University’s Gordon Hayward hoisted up a half court with time expiring to win the NCAA National Championship… and for Holmes, that missed shot won him his pool.

“It was nuts, he threw [up the shot] and everyone in the room stood up,” said Holmes. “It kind of felt like slow motion for me, I can’t even imagine how [Hayward] felt when he put that shot up.”

The shot stayed in the air for what seemed like ten minutes, eventually banking off the backboard and off the rim. The Butler players were devastated, as was Ryan Macpherson. Butler missing the shot meant that he lost the pool to Holmes.

Courtesy AP. Duke's John Scheyer celebrates after winning Holmes and everyone else who chose Duke to win, their bracket pools.

“SO close,” was all Macpherson had to say.

And that’s what is so entertaining about the tournament and the science of bracketology every year. It always has a shot at being entertaining and unbelievable television for those participating. It can take even a casual fan like many used to be and turn them into hardcore college basketball fanatics for one month out of the year.

As legendary CBS commentator Dick Vitale loves to say, “This is where the magic happens. This is March Madness, baby.”

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Posted by Matthew Robertson on Apr 8, 2010. Filed under News, This Week's Edition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.