The Mystery Of The Bracket

Nice job by Wall basketball coach Mike Puorro and other organizers of the Shore Basketball Coaches Association Senior All-Star games which were played last night at the home of the Crimson Knights.

Maybe the best story of the evening was Colts Neck’s Brandon Federici winning the Boys MVP award and 3-point shooting contest, less than a month after suffering a serious groin injury which cut his senior season short.  Federici put on a show in the game as he hit 9 3’s and scored a game-high 29 points.  Middletown South’s Jackie Dluhi was MVP of the girl’s game.

There’s a pretty good chance that you’ve seen copies of this funky-looking thing around the office which contains lines, boxes, numbers and the names of colleges and universities.

To some it’s very confusing. To others like yours truly it’s a beautiful sight.  For the record they are called bracket sheets and are associated with the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament which gets into full swing today when 16 games are played in Lexington, Auburn Hills, Salt Lake City and San Jose.  Tomorrow another 16 games will be played in four cities, including Philadelphia.

While college basketball is loaded with problems the three-week long tournament remains a national obsession and often produces heart-stopping finishes, unlikely heroes and even introduces us to schools we knew little about.  Trying to pick the results of the 63 games on your bracket sheet is challenging to say the least and the odds of getting all of them correct are…well let’s say it’s a long shot.

A DePaul mathematics profession said that even if you know basketball it’s about a 1 in 128 billion shot you get them all right and if you’re just making your selections based on the schools nickname or colors…well the odds are even longer.  It seems like just about every company or office has some type of pool and even President Obama filled out his complete bracket on national television for ESPN.  By the way, he likes Indiana to win it all.

As for me,  I have flip-flopped a bit on the various bracket sheets I’ve completed and submitted but generally speaking I like Louisville, who is the favorite.  However I think they could lose in their own regional to Duke and if they do then the Blue Devils might win it all.  I also think Georgetown, Indiana and either Wisconsin or New Mexico could be on their way to the Final Four but don’t count out Florida, Miami or even UNLV.  In other words…I have no idea.