Editor Reflects on Past Top Bracket
As the winner of The Wooster Blade March Madness bracket challenge last year, I was awarded the opportunity to write about my achievement and to talk about how I went about in making decisions.
I like to take March Madness one round at a time. In the first round alone, you have to choose the winners of 32 games. I always choose the one through four seeds to win their respected games, unless a higher seed has a clear advantage, which is rare in itself.
After the one through four seeds are taken care of, I look at each team’s points per game and points allowed per game.
Defense sometimes trumps a good offense in the tournament, mostly because each team is fighting for their lives to move on to the next round. But, choosing the five, six, seven, and eight seed games often can make or break a bracket, and sometimes, it just comes down to lucky decision making, which I can easily say was a huge part of my success in the first round.
If you do not do so hot in the first round, do not sweat it, comebacks in the second round are easy. I chose low seeds to make it to my sweet 16, along with some gut decisions for upsets. Usually, in the second round, a higher seeded team loves to make a run that nobody saw coming. Last year, it was Gonzaga, which took a stab at my bracket, but it did so to everyone else’s.
After you choose your second round matchups, now it gets tough. You have top dog versus top dog, and here is where watching college basketball can come in handy. But, since I did not watch a single minute of college basketball all season, most of my picks were simple educated guesses.
From here, my elite eight and final four picks were all educated guesses except for UNC, and Villanova These were my two picks from the beginning two make it to the championship game. And because of these two correct picks, my bracket was awarded 240 points, which ultimately gave me the best bracket without even having to play the championship game.
I had one seeded UNC winning the tournament because of my love for the school and because the team was very well rounded. But, Villanova in the end would hit an incredible buzzer beater to win the championship.
But even that did not stop me from having the best bracket throughout the entire BLADE staff.
