Last night’s UNC vs. Villanova NCAA college basketball championship game, with its amazing finish, was one of the more fun basketball games I have watched in a while. The shots at the end, the reactions of the players and coaches, the fantastic refereeing*, the crying Jordan meme dominating twitter…all of it was just great.
What was also great is that the game determined the winner of our tournament pick ’em challenge. That winner is….espn63510675 with the Hand Down, Man Down bracket.
You, mr. anonymous espn63510675, won our challenge with 1180 points. Please step forward to claim your prizes. Which, if you have forgotten, are one copy each of Jonathan Abram’s “Boys Among Men“ and Andy Glockner’s “Chasing Perfection”. Both are outstanding books and you will be better off for having them.
To claim your prize, simply email me by clicking here and messaging no later than Friday, April 8th. We can work out the details then. If I do not hear from you by then, your rightful prizes will be given to the 2nd place person.
For the rest of you, go buy the books if you have not already. Seriously, they are excellent. Thanks to everyone for playing.
*This is not true. The refereeing was not good in this game. And by not good, I mean…really quite bad. There were so many touch fouls and 50/50 plays where I thought “that has to be a no call”, but of course it wasn’t. In some ways, I thought the way UNC played that final possession was indicative of them not wanting to draw a last second foul which would have put ‘Nova at the line for game winning FT’s. Anyway. I didn’t have a horse in this race, so the outcome doesn’t matter to me. But I thought the refs were not good in this one.
Ray says
Damn… this is not good.
Played the ESPN NBA lottery 10 times, we fell out of the top 3 five times, picking 4th meaning the 76ers got our pick.
Got the 2nd pick 3 times.
The other two times we picked 3rd.
Congrats to the winner.
Thanks again for hosting one for us DS.
Darius Soriano says
Ray,
So, basically, what you saw were the odds of what it looks like for a team with the 2nd worst record staying in the top 3 — which is about 56%.
Anon#1 says
Ray: I played the same number of times and got similar results. Yikes!
Its easy to see how keeping the pick gives the franchise lot’s of positive momentum (attractive to FAs and great coaches). Just as easy to see how losing the pick makes next year look a lot like this year.
Absent the pick, I’m not sure if the three kids are enough to attract any of the following: Whiteside, DeRozan, Barnes, Leonard or Batum given the number of better teams with cap space.
It would be painful, on so many levels, to have a team with a 25 win ceiling — again.
Baylor Fan says
Last night’s game was a great reason to watch college basketball. Two impossible endings happened with two clutch shots. The referees did not seem to be on the same page with each other. There was a missed basket interference and travelling call early and it looked like the referees were going to “let them play”. Then the mysterious touch fouls started piling up as the referees took center stage. In the end, both teams got to show off their strengths and weaknesses and gave us the competitive game we missed in the semi’s.