April Foolishness: This Blogger's Bracket — Then & Now

April Fools' Day has been extended through Monday, April 5, 2010, because the NCAA Men's Basketball National Champion will be the last one standing among Butler, Duke, Michigan State, and West Virginia. This intrepid bracketologist had none of the above in the Final Four, let alone the last team standing.

Click on the original March bracket to enlarge.

Click on the amended April bracket to enlarge.

If this is (fair & balanced) fiddling while the Land O'The Free & the Home O'The Brave is about to go up in flames, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
Breaking Down The NYTimes.com Bracket Pool
By The Quad (The NYT College Sports Blog)

About 40,000 brackets were submitted to the nytimes.com men’s bracket tournament, and users’ selections reveal the contrast between heavy favorites and underdogs. About 70 percent of brackets had Kansas in the Final Four, for example, while just over one percent put Butler there.

FINAL FOUR TEAMS

DUKE
About 8 percent of brackets had Duke winning the national tournament, the lowest of all the No. 1 seeds. It was the only No. 1 seed to make the Final Four.

WEST VIRGINIA
Most brackets (about 70 percent) had the Mountaineers winning in the Round of 16, but only 25 percent had them winning in the Round of 8, where Kentucky was better than a 2 to 1 favorite.

MICHIGAN STATE
Seeded fifth, Michigan State was a heavy underdog to get past the Round of 16, where 93 percent of brackets predicted Kansas would be waiting. Less than 1 percent of brackets have Michigan State winning the national title.

BUTLER
Butler, the biggest surprise of the Final Four teams, was an underdog to even make it past the second round. Only 35 brackets (0.09 percent) picked the Bulldogs as the national champion.

THE TOP TWO SELECTIONS

KANSAS
The heavy favorite among NYTimes.com brackets, Kansas was picked by almost 4 in 10 as the national champion. Their second round loss, to Northern Iowa, was predicted by only 177 users — less than one half of one percent of brackets.

KENTUCKY
About 60 percent of brackets put Kentucky in the Final Four, second only to Kansas. Ω

[About the Bloggers:

Pete Thamel is the national college sports reporter for The Times, where his primary responsibilities are college football and basketball. He is in his sixth season with The Times, witnessing everything from the Bush Push at Notre Dame to Ian Johnson's sideline engagement at the Fiesta Bowl to Mario Chalmers's long 3-pointer to give Kansas the national championship. Before joining The Times, Thamel covered college sports for ESPN.com, ESPN The Magazine, The Syracuse Post-Standard, and The Daily Orange. A native of Ware, MA, Thamel graduated from Syracuse University in 1999.

Thayer Evans is a contributor to The New York Times. Evans also writes for the Houston Chronicle as well as other newspapers and magazines. He played college basketball at Oklahoma Wesleyan University, an NAIA school in Bartlesville, OK.

Connor Ennis has been a staff editor in the sports department of The New York Times since November 2006. Before coming to The Times, he worked for The Associated Press, where he was a supervising editor on the national sports desk in New York. While with the AP, he covered the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, and the 2006 World Cup in Germany. A native of Dallas, PA, he graduated from Syracuse University in 2000.

Ray Glier is a freelance reporter who, in addition to The New York Times, contributes to USA Today, MSNBC, The Atlanta Business Chronicle, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Miami Herald, and, his favorite, Masters Athlete, a Chicago-based magazine for older athletes. Glier is a graduate of West Virginia University and his favorite part of being a freelancer is looking in the mirror in the morning and saying, “Hi, Boss.”]

Copyright © 2010 The New York Times Company

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Copyright © 2010 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves