For posterity's sake, here are my NCAA tournament picks. I've entered a few pools, but these are my picks for the one I put money in. The scoring is 1,2,3,4,5,6 (I think?) and there is a 3 point bonus for correctly picking any 12-seed or lower to win in any round. Thus, Davidson to the Elite 8 and Cal to the Sweet 16. Thought about La Salle but went homer with Wisconsin.
Midwest
Louisville over Missouri
Oregon over St. Louis
Mich. State over St. Mary's
Duke over Creighton
Louisville over Michigan State
West
Gonzaga over Pitt
Wisconsin over La Salle
Arizona over New Mex.
OSU over Notre Dame
Ohio State over Gonzaga
South
Kansas over UNC
Michigan over VCU
Florida over Minnesota
Georgetown over SDSU
Florida over Michigan
East
IU over NC State
Cal. over Syracuse
Davidson over Bucknell
Miami over Illinois
Indiana over Davidson
Final Four
Louisville over OSU
Florida over Indiana
Florida over Louisville
I don't actually think Florida will win (If I was just picking a champ I'd pick either Louisville or Indiana) but I think picking Florida gives me the best chance to finish top three in a big pool.
I have had a heck of a time deciding who to take in the bottom half of the East bracket, so I decided to just go with a bunch of upsets for fun's sake. This more or less guarantees that it will be Miami over Marquette in the Elite Eight.
I won't be posting a bracket as I have too many. I prefer to diversify my risk and enter several brackets, rather than go for the big score and enter the same one in all my pools. Last year I picked the same champion (Kentucky) in all but changed up all my early round picks. This year I think the field is wide open so I kept the early rounds mostly the same but went with 4 different final 4s and champions. Winning the office pool is mostly luck because there are so many 50-50 choices that anyone can compete, so I usually just try to adjust my picks to the rules of the pool to get whatever small advantage I can. We'll see how this year goes. I'm sure I will beat Torvik in the pool we are both in.
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