By Paul Palazzolo
Imagine picking your favorite college basketball team going all the way in this year’s NCAA tournament. You also picked your team to win in your bracket before the selections came out on CBS last Sunday night. During the next few weeks, you were absorbed into the tournament. Your team survived a few close calls until a game winning shot by the opposing team in the final four ends the Cinderella story. The big last-second turnaround causes brackets to be ripped up, emotions to swing and anger for the hours that follow.
“At the end of the Duke-Connecticut final four game last year, a couple of my suitemates threw chairs and one of them punched a hole in the wall,” Michael Stokes, a sophomore engineering major, said.
Stokes’ story is one of many that occur at the University during the NCAA basketball tournament, also known as March Madness. Students get caught watching the games seeing if their bracket holds up against their friends and counterparts.
“I was angry when North Carolina lost last year but I didn’t throw chairs at my suitemates,” Stokes said.
Often a team falls short of the big win, however there are times when a team comes back and wins the big game. The outcome of the game would make or break a tournament bracket.
“Last year I picked Georgia Tech to make it to the finals in my bracket. I was nervous during the final four because the entire game was so close and my bracket was riding on the outcome,” Brett Franckowiak, a freshman business major, said. “The win got me a lot of points and since nobody else had them go that far, I won my pool and $125.”
Some games can become emotional because it involves their team, not just because their bracket is on the line.
Chris Orr, a junior music education major, experienced an emotional rollercoaster back on March 31, 2001 when Duke and Maryland played in a final four matchup. Maryland was up by 18 points in the first half. But Duke eventually came back.
“I was upset, I felt as if Duke didn’t come to play that game at all. Their defense was shabby and there shooting was as bad as I have ever seen a Duke team shoot,” Orr said. “But I had faith in my Blue Devils, I just kept yelling at Shane Battier to start making some three pointers and for them to play with more heart. They won the game just barely.”
Orr picked Duke University to win the championship in 2001. When Duke won, he was not the only one who had a breakout bracket in his pool.
“I won my high school math teacher $400 in 2001 when Duke beat Arizona for the national championship. I often talked about college basketball with my math teacher and once bracket time came out we filled them out together,” Orr said. “I told her to take Arizona and Duke in her pool because they would face each other in the final game and Duke would win. She took my advice and won her pool and the $400.”
Orr was not the only one who has had success in playing the tournament brackets.
“I came in second two years ago in my pool that I had with my friends,” Stokes said. Stokes’ pool determined that he was second because the pool played with a point system where one point is given for correct first-round picks, two points for second-round, five points for each correct sweet 16 picks, 10 points for elite eight picks, 20 points for final four and 35 if the national champion is picked. The parameters allowed double points to be awarded for first and second-round upsets. Since he had the second-most points, he earned his money back.
Stokes has also had success with his brackets in online pools.
“Last year on espn.com, I played a [tournament bracket] against 50000 people,” Stokes said. “My bracket placed in the 97.8 percentile. This year I am playing another espn.com bracket and try to do better.”
The majority of success students have from their tournament brackets are based on picking early-round upsets and the correct final four teams. These are the categories that are stressed in many tournament structures.
“To spot an early first-round upset, I look at the conference the teams play in, the strength of schedule and wins against difficult opponents,” Stokes said.
There is never a definite way to find that seventh or 11th seed Cinderella team that few pick to advance but play in the sweet sixteen or beyond. There are many concepts that can be used to help pick correct early-round upsets.
“I look for how hot or cold the teams are coming into the tournament. I usually look at the last few games of the conference season as well as how they did in the conference tournament for the higher seeds,” Orr said. “If the lower seeds are on television, I will see how they play. When the brackets come out, I see how they potentially match up.”
Some students choose their victors with a less empirical system.
“I see what the analysts have to say about the tournament and who they think will upset,” Franckowiak said. “You don’t pick too many upsets worse then a 12 seed beating a five seed.”
Sometimes the picks are based purely on intuition. No concrete piece, statistic or winning streak can determine some picks.
“Some teams I have watched and if I like their guard play, I will pick them based on that,” Stokes said. “This is because I played basketball in high school and I know when someone has a key match-up that can exploit an opposition’s weakness.”
There is no exact science when it comes to intuition and March Madness.
“Sometimes, I am stumped on how the teams will match up and go with what my gut says. I won $50 in 1999 when North Carolina, even though I despise them, made it to the final four,” Orr said. “When I was filling out my brackets that year, I got this strong gut feeling they were going to make it to the final four and sure enough they did.”
Some students think picking an upset is never based on intuition; it is based on statistics.
“No big upset is on intuition,” Franckowiak said. “The only upset I can go with just my gut is a nine seed beating an eight seed.”
Several bracket pools weight the amount of points a person can get based on how far the picks go. Therefore,
picking the correct final four teams is crucial to winning a bracket pool.
“Depth is very important for a final four team. If a team has a bench then it’s a good choice to pick because a team is more likely to be able to succeed through the tourney like injuries,” Franckowiak said. “Players becoming tired by the late rounds of the tourney could hurt a team if their bench is weak.”
To some, a strong final four team must have innate qualities.
“For a team to contend for the final four, it must have leadership, skilled coaching, good perimeter shooters, good transition from offense to defense and strong interior rebounders,” Stokes said. “I would say they have to be a well rounded basketball team.
If the teams picked to win the early-round games are incorrect, a bracket could be ruined by the end of the second round.
“I didn’t tear up my bracket last year but it was still bad. I had Kentucky, Wake Forest, Duke and Connecticut, Orr said. “Wake lost in the sweet 16 and Kentucky lost in the second round. It was just my worst bracket.”
The NCAA tournament causes a slow-down in work production not just for students but for adults as well. According to www.CNN.com, United States’ employers lost a total of $850 million in work production during March 2004 because each employee spent an average of 17 minutes per day viewing the scores online. However, the games do not affect Orr and Stokes during classes.
“I was able to concentrate during classes, but whenever I was near a computer, I went to espn.com to check the scores,” Stokes said. “But when I wasn’t in class, I watched any game that was on. My suitemates and I had four televisions on [in our suite] and each had a different channel to get updates and to watch the games.”
The effects of the NCAA tournament are at their worst during the first two days, which is the firstround. The first round consists of 32 games. This year, the first round is this Thursday and Friday.
“I do not really lose focus in class on those first two days but sometimes I cannot wait to watch the games,” Orr said. “If I miss any games because of class, I usually just check the scores online.”
“I am probably going to be distracted on Thursday and Friday during my classes because the games are on. Actually one of my teachers is into sports so he put on the television during class, so it wasn’t too bad,” Franckowiak said. “But I was always checking the game scores on the Internet and breaking news about the team during school.”
Franckowiak is going to be potentially distracted later this week because he is the leader of his bracket pool.
“I just started my bracket pool [on Monday]. I didn’t get it because nobody wanted to start a bracket. So I just said I would start one,” Franckowiak said.” The problem is I started mad late so I’m not going to have many people in it. I only have eight so far but I just started yesterday. I’m telling my friends if they know anyone else who wants to play to join the pool before Wednesday night.”