Welcome, Flick!

I created a KenPom on ESPN bracket just to see how the experts do. In any case, I expect KU to get beyond NDSU and I hope they get beyond WVU, but I'm not at all confident of that.

I am confident that KU will be fine beyond this year regardless of how they do in the tournament.

...and welcome doubleohsoul. so are you going to join our group, slug?

i agree, KU should be fine simply because i think cole and probably sherron will be back.

Group is joined, but as I said, the bracket is purely based on highest KenPom ranking wins. Which might be brilliant, or might be disastrous, based on on how WVU, ASU, and Memphis play (the lower seeds that go multiple rounds beyond their seed) do.

When I saw slug's comment, I thought it said "KenPorn" instead of "KenPom" and I was thinking that was awesome and I should check that out.

It's interesting that after 7 games, the kenpom method has been the least successful...

Since later rounds are worth more, I expect a higer-seed or KenPom strategy to do better as the tournament progresses. Where peoplel really get hurt is picking an underdog to go multiple rounds beyond their seed.

So far, KenPom has missed on 3 games, but none were picked to get to the Sweet 16, so the damage is pretty minimal.

Also, after 8 games, it's clear that engineers are smarter than the rest of us.

Darn engineers!

Your ass is mine, SimonSays. Mine.

Ah, Mr. Guapo you fool, you fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, only slightly less well known is this: never go in against an engineer when basketball is on the line!

Funny...I just watched that scene on utube yesterday.

I can't believe the first time I ever win one of these is the first time I've ever tried it without actually betting any money.

In a further act of nordic karma, a mere two hours after my big win here on Norlos, my car was towed from a semi-illegal parking spot requiring a bus ride home (from "The Wrestler", no less), a taxi to the impound lot and a $235 bill to spring my car out at 1:30 in the morning.

Yeah but you won it by picking Tyler Hansbrough's North Carolina. How do you sleep at night?

Like a friggin' baby.

This is the inevitable result of bracket tournament where every round has equal weight.

In these sorts of tournaments, correctly picking early round upsets simply don't matter. Picking high seeds does matter, as the penalty for picking a low seed to go deep simply becomes too great.

The Doubleohsoul bracket lapped the competition because he actually did pick the winner, but even without that, he would have won, because he was far safer overall.

An all "higher seeds win" bracket would have finished 2nd in this contest.

I see you guys all knew that's how it was going to turn out, but didn't want "the man" to win by filling out the brackets according to the most likely winning strategy and all...

Oh, who am I kidding? It was totally dumb luck. Even if it wasn't, how much smack can you talk about following the play it safe strategy? That's why I can sleep so well, Mr Guapo. I don't know what the eff I'm doing.

One last thing - I don't know how Hansborough can manage to look so dumb and uncoordinated and still dominate a game, but there you go. He can certainly shoot and rebound, but it probably doesn't hurt to have a whole team of people around him that can, you know, dribble.

Hansborough hasn't faced my cigarette defense, so until then I'll just consider him good, not great.